Within the town one or two houses remain, perhaps in their foundations, from the fifteenth century.  The best of these is that on the left just west of the church, at the corner of Bullis Lane.  This house, according to Dunken, the historian of Dartford, was the dwelling of one “John Grovehurst in the reign of King Edward IV.  That gentleman in 1465 obtained permission of the Vicar and church-wardens of Dartford to erect a chimney on a part of the churchyard, and in acknowledgment thereof provided a lamp to burn perpetually during the celebration of divine service in the parish church.  The principal apartment in the upper floor (a room about twenty-five feet by twenty feet) was originally hung round with tapestry, said to be worked by the nuns of the priory, who were occasionally permitted to visit at the mansion.  The principal figures were in armour, and two of them as large as life, latterly called Hector and Andromache; in the background was the representation of a large army with inscribed banners.”

[Illustration:  Dartford church and bridge]

The churchyard upon which John Grovehurst was allowed to erect a chimney was till about the middle of the nineteenth, century larger than it now is, part of it at that time being taken “to make the road more commodious for passengers.”  This road was of course the Pilgrims’ Road, the Watling Street.  That this always passed to the south of the church is certain, but it may have turned a little in ancient time to take the ford.  It turns a little to-day to approach the bridge, and thereafter climbs the East Hill.

Dartford Bridge, which already in the Middle Ages had supplanted ford and ferry, happily remains to the extent of about a third of the width of the two pointed arches which touch the banks.  It was kept in order and repair by the hermit who dwelt in a cell at the foot of the bridge on the east, a cell older than the bridge, for the hermits used to serve the ford.  Here stood the Shrine of Our Lady and St Catherine of Alexandria, which was much favoured by the pilgrims, so we may well suppose that Chaucer and his friends did not pass it by without a reverence.

Here too at the eastern end of the town stood a hospital dedicated in honour of the Holy Trinity, but this Chaucer knew not, any more than we may do, for it was only founded in 1452.  It seems, however, to have been built really over the stream upon piers, perhaps in something the same way as the thirteenth-century Franciscan house at Canterbury was built, which we may still see.

Dunken tells us that “the steep ascent of the Dover road leading towards Brent was in ancient times called St Edmunde’s Weye from its leading to a Chapel dedicated to that saint situated near the middle of the upper churchyard.”  This chapel, of which nothing remains, Edward III. bestowed upon the Priory of Our Lady and St Margaret.  On its site, such is the irony of time, a “martyr’s memorial” has been erected to the unhappy and unfortunate folk burnt here in the time of Queen Mary.