Plucks Gutter
| Plucks Gutter | |
| Kent | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TR268633 |
| Location: | 51°19’29"N, 1°15’21"E |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Canterbury |
| Postcode: | CT3 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Dover |
Plucks Gutter is a hamlet in the parish of Stourmouth in Kent. It stands where the Little Stour and Great Stour rivers meet.
Name
The hamlet is named after a Dutch drainage engineer called Ploeg, whose grave is in All Saints Church, West Stourmouth. It is said that Ploeg's family name from the Dutch practice of draining marshland by creating a ploughed ditch; ploeg meaning 'plough'. This much is mere speculation however.
History
A mile upstream from the Dog and Duck Inn public house is 'Blood Point', where local tradition has it that King Alfred's ship defeated a Viking invasion force and is held therefore to be the Royal Navy's first successful engagement of an enemy.
During the Middle Ages, the two rivers met the Wantsum Channel at Stourmouth, but the combined rivers now (called the River Stour downstream from Plucks Gutter) flow onward to the sea by way of Sandwich to Pegwell Bay near Ramsgate, leaving Plucks Gutter six miles in a straight line, and ten by river, from the English Channel.
In 1821-23, a North Kent Gang of smugglers used Pluck's Gutter. One account from a Revenue Officer stated they travelled fourteen miles on foot, through Trenleypark Wood to Stodmarsh, then by way of Grove Corner to Pluck's Gutter, where they crossed the river by the ferry, and onward north-east to Mount Pleasant near Acol, then to Marsh Bay – the former name for what is modern-day Westgate-on-Sea.
About the village
In the hamlet is a riverside inn with a holiday caravan and lodge park, and facilities for non-residential riverside moorings.
The old ferry cottage (an earlier public house), is the eponymous 'House at Plucks Gutter' and was the inspiration for the book of the same name by Manning Coles. The freeholder of the cottage has an obligation to provide services to any officer of one of 'His Majesty's Ships of War' lying in the Wantsum Channel as payment to the Crown for the rights to operate the ferry.
Fishing on the river is controlled by the Wantsum Angling Association and Plucks Gutter is a location for fishing competitions; pike, bream and roach are most commonly caught, with ducks, swans and kingfishers seen. Representatives from two of local rowi clubs (and the University of Kent and Kent College Canterbury), undergoing medium- to long- distance inland water "steady state" training.
River trips run from Sandwich to Plucks Gutter.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Gutter Plucks Gutter) |