THE RATEPAYER’S HOME
Very beautiful indeed. Now let us see the home of one of Croydon’s poorer ratepayers:
On one side of the hall are two rooms, called respectively the parlour and the kitchen. Beyond is the scullery. The walls of the staircase are covered with a sort of plaster called stucco, but closely resembling road-scrapings: the skirtings are of pitch-pine, the balusters of the same material. The floorings are of deal. The roof lets in the rain. One of the windows is broken and stuffed with rags, the others are cracked. The walls are stained a delicate green tint relieved by a film of blue mould, owing to lack of a damp-course. None of the windows close properly, the flues smoke into the rooms instead of out of the chimney-pots, the doors jam, and the surroundings are wretched beyond description.
Electric tramways now conduct along the Brighton Road to the uttermost end of the great modern borough of Croydon, at Purley Corner. Here the explorer begins to perceive, despite the densely packed houses, that he is in that “Croydene,” or crooked vale, of Saxon times from which, we are told, Croydon takes its name; and he can see also that nature, and not man, ordained in the first instance the position and direction of what is now the road to Brighton, in the bottom, alongside where the Bourne once flowed, inside the fence of Haling Park. It is, in fact, the site of a prehistoric track which led the most easyways across the bleak downs, severally through Smitham Bottom and Caterham.
Beside that stream ran from 1805 until about 1840 the rails of that long-forgotten pioneer of railways in these parts, the “Surrey Iron Railway.” This was a primitive line constructed for the purpose of affording cheap and quick transport for coals, bricks, and other heavy goods, originally between Wandsworth and Croydon, but extended in 1805 to Merstham, where quarries of limestone and beds of Fuller’s earth are situated.
This railway was the outcome of a project first mooted in 1799, for a canal from Wandsworth to Croydon. It was abandoned because of the injury that might have been caused to the wharves and factories already existing numerously along the course of the Wandle, and a railway substituted. The Act of Parliament was obtained in 1800, and the line constructed to Croydon in the following year, at a cost of about £27,000. It was not a railway in the modern sense, and the haulage was by horses, who dragged the clumsy waggons along at the rate of about four miles an hour. The rails, fixed upon stone blocks, were quite different from those of modern railways or tramways, being just lengths of angle-iron into which the wheels of the waggons fitted:[image]. Thus, in contradistinction from all other railway or tramway practice, the flanges were not on the wheels, but on the rails themselves. The very frugal object of this was to enable the waggons to travel on ordinary roads, if necessity arose.
From the point where the Wandle flows into the Thames, at Wandsworth, along the levels past Earlsfield and Garratt, the railway went in double track; continuing by Merton Abbey, Mitcham (where the present lane called “Tramway Path” marks its course) and across Mitcham Common into Croydon by way of what is now called Church Street, but was then known as “Iron Road.” Thence along Southbridge Lane and the course of the Bourne, it was continued to Purley, whence it climbed SmithamBottom and ran along the left-hand side of the Brighton Road in a cutting now partly obliterated by the deeper cutting of the South Eastern line. The ideas of those old projectors were magnificent, for they cherished a scheme of extending to Portsmouth; but the enterprise was never a financial success, and that dream was not realised. Nearly all traces of the old railway are obliterated.
The marvel-mongers who derive the name of Waddon from “Woden” find that Haling comes from the Anglo-Saxon “halig,” or holy; and therefrom have built up an imaginary picture of ancient heathen rites celebrated here. The best we can say for those theories is that theymaybe correct or they may not. Of evidence there is, of course, none whatever; and certainly it is to be feared that the inhabitants of Croydon care not one rap about it; nor even know—or knowing, are not impressed—that here, in 1624, died that great Lord High Admiral of England, Howard of Effingham. It is much more real to them that the tramcars are twopence all the way.
At the beginning of Haling Park, immediately beyond the “Swan and Sugarloaf,” the Croydon toll-gate barred the road until 1865. Beyond it, all was open country. It is a very different tale to-day, now the stark chalk downs of Haling and Smitham are being covered with houses, and the once-familiar great white scar of Haling Chalk Pit is being screened behind newly raised roofs and chimney-pots.
The beginning of Purley is marked by a number of prominent public-houses, testifying to the magnificent thirst of the new suburb. You come past the “Swan and Sugarloaf” to the “Windsor Castle,” the “Purley Arms,” the “Red Deer,” and the “Royal Oak”; and just beyond, round the corner, is the “Red Lion.” At the “Royal Oak” a very disreputable and stony road goes off to the left. It looks like, and is, a derelict highway: once the main road to Godstone and East Grinstead, but now ending obscurely in a miserable modern settlement near the newly built station ofPurley Oaks, so called by the Brighton Railway Company to distinguish it from the older Purley station—ex “Caterham Junction”—of the South Eastern line.
It was here, at Purley House, or Purley Bury as it is properly styled, close by the few poor scrubby and battered remains of the once noble woodland of Purley Oaks, that John Horne Tooke, contentious partisan and stolid begetter of seditious tracts, lived—when, indeed, he was not detained within the four walls of some prison for political offences.
HORNE TOOKE
Tooke, whose real name was Horne, was born in 1736, the son of a poulterer. At twenty-four years of age he became a clergyman, and was appointed to the living of New Brentford, which he held until 1773, when, clearly seeing how grievously he had missed his vocation, he studied for the Bar. Thereafter his life was one long series of battles, hotly contested in Parliament, in newspapers, books and pamphlets, and on platforms. He was in general a wrong-headed, as well as a hot-headed, politician; but he was sane enough to oppose the American War when King and Government were so mad as to provoke and continue it. Describing the Americans killed and wounded by the troops at Lexington and Concord as “murdered,” he was the victim of a Government prosecution for libel, and was imprisoned for twelve months and fined £200. He took—no! that will not do—he “assumed” the name of Tooke in 1782, in compliment to his friend William Tooke, who then resided here in this delightful old country house of Purley. The idea seems to have been for them to live together in amity, and that William Tooke, the elder of the two, should leave his property to his friend. But quarrels arose long before that, and Horne at his friend’s death received only £500, while other disputed points arose, leading to bitter law-suits.
In 1801 he was Member of Parliament for Old Sarum; but how he reconciled the representation of that rottenest of rotten boroughs with his profession of reforming Whig does not appear.
He was a many-sided man, of fierce energies and strong prejudices, but a scholar. While his political pamphlets are forgotten, his “ΕΠΕΑ ΠΤΕΡΟΕΝΤΑ; or, the Diversions of Purley,” which is not really a book of sports, is still remembered for its philological learning. It is a disquisition on the affinities of prepositions, the relationships of conjunctions, and the intimacies of other parts of speech. His other diversions appear to have been less reputable, for he was the father of one illegitimate son and two daughters.
His intention was to have been buried in the grounds of Purley House, but when he died, in 1812, at Wimbledon, his mortal coil was laid to rest at Ealing; and so it chanced that the vault he had constructed in his garden remained, after all, untenanted, with the unfinished epitaph:
JOHN HORNE TOOKE,Late Proprietor and now Occupierof this spot,was born in June 1736,Died inAgedyears,Contented and Grateful.
Purley House is still standing, though considerably altered, and presents few features reminiscent of the eighteenth-century politician, and fewer still of the Puritan Bradshaw, the regicide, who once resided here. It stands in the midst of tall elms, and looks as far removed from political dissensions as may well be imagined, its trim lawn and trellised walls overgrown in summer by a tangle of greenery.
But suburban expansion has at last reached Tooke’s rural retreat from political strife, and the estate is now “developed,” with roads driven through and streets of villas planned, leaving only the old house and some few acres of gardens around it.
Returning to the main road, we come, just before reaching Godstone Corner, to the site of the now-forgotten Foxley Hatch, a turnpike-gate, which stood at this point until 1865. Paying toll here “cleared,” or made the traveller free of, the gates and bars to Merstham, on the main road, and as far as Wray Common, on the Reigate route, as the following copy of a contemporary turnpike-ticket, shows:
Foxley Hatch GateRclears Wray common, Gatton,Merstham and Hooley lanegates and bars
“To Riddlesdown, the prettiest spot in Surrey,” says a sign-post on the left hand. It is not true that it is the prettiest place, but, of course (as the proverb truly says), “every eye forms its own beauty,” and Riddlesdown is a Beanfeasters’ Paradise, where tea-gardens, swings, and I know not what temerarious delights await the tripper who accepts the invitation, boldly displayed, “Up the Steps for Home Comforts.”
MILESTONES
Here an aged milestone, in addition, proclaims it to be “XIII Miles from the Standard in Cornhill, London, 1743,” and “XII Miles From Westminster Bridge.” This is, doubtless, one of the stones referred to in theLondon Evening Postof September 10th, 1743,which says: “On Wednesday they began to measure the Croydon Road from the Standard in Cornhill and stake the places for erecting milestones, the inhabitants of Croydon having subscribed for 13, which ’tis thought will be carried on by the Gentlemen of Sussex.”
I know nothing of what those Sussex gentlemen did, but that the milestoneswerecarried on is evident enough to all who care to explore the old Brighton Road through Godstone, up Tilburstow Hill, and so on to East Grinstead, Uckfield, and Lewes, where this fine bold series, dated 1744, is continued. What, however, has become of the series so liberally provided in 1743 by the “inhabitants of Croydon”? What indeed? Only this one, the thirteenth, remains; the other twelve, marking the distance from the “Standard” in Cornhill, in addition to Westminster Bridge, have been spirited away, and their places have been taken by others, themselves old, but chiefly marking the mileage from Whitehall and the Royal Exchange.
We all know that the Brighton Road is nowadays measured from the south side of Westminster Bridge, but it is not generally known—nor possibly known to one person in every ten thousand of those who consider they have worn the Brighton Road threadbare—that it was measured from “Westminster Bridge” before ever there was a bridge. No bridge existed across the Thames anywhere between London Bridge and Putney until November 10th, 1750, when Westminster Bridge, after being for many years under construction, was opened, superseding the ancient ferry which from time immemorial had plied between Horseferry Stairs, Westminster, and Stangate on the Surrey side, the site of the present Lambeth Bridge. The way to Brighton (and to all southern roads) lay across London Bridge.
The old stones dated 1743 and 1744, and giving the mileage from the bridge, were thus displaying that “intelligent anticipation of events” which is,perhaps, even more laudable in statesmen than in milestones—and as rarely found.
To this day no man knoweth the distance between London and Brighton. Convention fixes the distance as 51½ miles from the south side of Westminster Bridge to the Aquarium, by the classic route; but where is he who has chained it in proper surveyorly manner? The milestones themselves are a curious miscellany, and form an interesting study. They might profitably have been made a subject for the learned deliberations of the Pickwick Club, but the opportunity was unfortunately missed, and the world is doubtless the loser of much curious lore.
Where is he who can, offhand, describe the first milestone on the Brighton Road, and tell where it stands? It ought to be no difficult matter, for miles are not—or should not be—elastic.
It stands, in fact, on the kerb at the right-hand side of Kennington Road, between Nos. 230 and 232, just short of Lower Kennington Lane, and is a poor old battered relic, set anglewise and with the top broken away, bearing the legend, in what was once bold lettering:
. . . . . . . MILEHORSEGUARDSWHITEHALL
That is the first milestone on the Brighton Road. Sterne, were he here to-day, would shed salt tears of sentiment upon it, we may be sure. It says nothing whatever about Brighton, and is probably the one and only stone that takes the Horseguards as a datum.
About forty yards beyond this initial landmark is another “first” milestone: a tall, upstanding affair, certainly a century old, with three blank sides, and a fourth inscribed:
IMILEFROMWESTMINSTERBRIDGE
This is followed by a long series of stones of one pattern, probably dating from 1800, marking everyhalfmile. The series starts with the stone on the kerb close by the tramway office at the triangle, where the Brixton Road begins. It records on two sides “Royal Exchange 2½ miles,” and on a third “Whitehall 2 miles,” and is followed, opposite No. 158, Brixton Road, by a stone carrying on the tale by another half a mile. These silent witnesses may be traced nearly into Croydon, with sundry gaps where they have been removed. Those recording the 4th, 6th, 8½th, 9½th, and 10th miles from Whitehall are missing, the last of the series now extant being that at the corner of Broad Green Avenue, making “Whitehall 9 miles, Royal Exchange 9½ miles.” The 10th from Whitehall, ending the series, stood at the corner of the Whitgift Hospital.
These were succeeded by one of the old eighteenth-century series, marking eleven miles from Westminster Bridge and twelve from the “Standard,” but neither new nor old stone is there now, and the only one of the thirteen mentioned by theLondon Evening Postof 1743 is this near Purley Corner.
This, marking the 13th mile from the “Standard” and the 12th from Westminster Bridge is common to both routes, but is followed by the first of a new series some way along Smitham Bottom, on which Brighton is for the first time mentioned:
XIIIMILESFROMWESTMINSTERBRIDGE—38½MILESTOBRIGHTON
The character of the lettering and the general style of this series would lead to the supposition that they are dated about 1820. There are three stones in all of this kind, the third marking 15 miles from Westminster Bridge and 36½ to Brighton, followed by a series of triangular cast-iron marks, continued through Redhill, of which the first bears the legend, “Parish of Merstham.” On the north side is “16 from Westminster Bridge, 35 to Brighton,” and on the south “35 from Brighton, 16 to Westminster Bridge.” It will be observed that in this first one of a new series half a mile is dropped, and henceforward the mileage to Brighton becomes by authority 51 miles. Like the confectioner who “didn’t make ha’porths,” the turnpike trust which erected these mile-“stones” refused to deal in half miles.
The tramway terminus at Purley Corner is now a busy place. Those are only the “old crocks” who can remember the South Eastern railway-station of Caterham Junction and the surrounding lonely downs; and to them the change to “Purley” and the appearance in the wilderness of a mushroom town, with its parade of brilliantly lighted shops, its Queen Victoria memorial, its public garden and penny-squirt fountain, and—not least—its hideous waterworks, are things for wonderment. “How strange it seems, and new,” as Browning—not writing of Purley—remarks.Even the ghastly loneliness of the long straight road ascending the pass of Smitham Bottom is no more, for little villas, with dank little dungeons of gardens, line the way, and tradesmen’s carts calling for orders compete with the motorists who shall kill and maim most travellers along the highway.
The numerous railway-bridges, embankments, cuttings, and retaining-walls that disfigure the crest of Smitham Bottom are chiefly the results of latter-day activities. The first bridge is that of the Chipstead Valley Railway—now merged in the South Eastern and Chatham—from South Croydon to Chipstead and Epsom, 1897-1900, with its wayside station of “Smitham.” This is immediately followed by the London, Brighton, and South Coast’s station of Stoat’s Nest, a transformed and transported version of the old station of the same name some distance off, and beyond it are the bridges and embankments of the same company’s works of 1896-8; themselves almost inextricably confused, to the non-technical mind, with the adjoining South Eastern roadside station of Coulsdon.
The chapters of railway history which produced all this unlovely medley of engineering works are in themselves extremely interesting, and have an additional interest to those who trace the story of the Brighton Road, for they are concerned with the solution of the old problem which faced the coach proprietors—how best and quickest to reach Brighton.
RAILWAY POLITICS
Few outside those intimately concerned with railway politics know that although the Brighton line was opened throughout in 1842, it was not until 1898 that the company owned an uninterrupted route between London and Brighton. The explanation of that singular condition of affairs is found in the curious reluctance of Parliament, two generations ago, to give any one railway company the sole control of any particular route. Few in those times thought the increase of population, and still more the increase of travelling, would be so great that competitive railways would be established to many places;and thus to sanction the making of a railway to be owned by one company throughout seemed like the granting of a perpetual monopoly.
Following this reasoning, a break was made in the continuity of the Brighton Railway between Stoat’s Nest and Redhill, a distance of five miles, and that stretch of territory given to the South Eastern Railway, with running powers only over it granted to the Brighton Company. Similarly, between Croydon and Stoat’s Nest, the South Eastern had only running powers over that interval owned by the Brighton.
In 1892 and 1894, however, the Brighton Company approached Parliament and, proving the growing confusion, congestion, and loss of time at Redhill Junction, owing to this odd condition of things, obtained powers to complete that missing link by the construction of an entirely new railway between Stoat’s Nest and a point just within a quarter of a mile of Earlswood Station, beyond Redhill, and also to double the existing line between East and South Croydon and Purley. The works were completed and opened for traffic in 1898, when for the first time the Brighton Railway had a complete and uninterrupted route of its own to the sea.
The hamlet of Smitham Bottom, which paradoxically stands at the top of the pass of that name, in this ancient way across the North Downs, can never have been beautiful. It was lonely when Jackson and Fewterel fought their prize-fight here, before that distinguished patron of sport the Prince of Wales and a more or less distinguished company, on June 9th, 1788; when the only edifice of “Smith-in-the-Bottom,” as the sporting accounts of that time style it, appears to have been the ominous one of a gibbet. The Jackson who that day fought, and won, his first battle in the prize-ring was none other than that Bayard of the noble art, “Gentleman Jackson,” afterwards the friend of Byron and of the Prince Regent himself, and subsequently landlord of the “Cock” at Sutton. On this occasion Major Hanger rewardedthe victor with a bank-note from the enthusiastic Prince.
SMITHAM
Until 1898 Smitham Bottom remained a fortuitous concourse of some twenty mean houses on a windswept natural platform, ghastly with the chalky “spoil-banks” thrown up when the South Eastern Railway engineers excavated the great cuttings in 1840; but when the three railway-stations within one mile were established that serve Smitham Bottom—the stations of Coulsdon, Stoat’s Nest, and Smitham—the place, very naturally, began to grow with the magic quickness generally associated with Jonah’s Gourd and Jack’s Beanstalk, and now Smitham Bottom is a town. Most of the spoil-banks are gone, and those that remain are planted with quick-growing poplars; so that, if they can survive the hungry soil, there will presently be a leafy screen to the ugly railway sidings. Showy shops, all plate-glass and nightly glare of illumination, have arisen; the old “Red Lion” inn has got a new and very saucy front; and, altogether, “Smitham” has arrived. The second half of the name is now in process of being forgotten, and the only wonder is that the first part has not been changed into “Smytheham” at the very least, or that an entirely new name, something in the way of “ville” or “park,” suited to its prospects, has not been coined. For Smitham, one can clearly see, has a Future, with a capital F, and the historian confidently expects to see the incorporation of Smitham, with Mayor, Town Council, and Town Hall, all complete.
It is here, at Marrowfat, now “Marlpit,” Lane, that the new link of the Brighton line branches off from Stoat’s Nest.[8]One of the first trials of the engineers was the removal of three-quarters of a million cubic yards of the “spoil,” dumped down by the roadside over half a century earlier; and then followed the spanning of the Brighton Road by a girder-bridge. The line then entered the grounds of the Cane HillLunatic Asylum, through which it runs in a covered way, the London County Council, under whose control that institution is carried on, obtaining a clause in the Company’s Act, requiring the railway to be covered in at this point, in case the lunatics might find means of throwing themselves in front of passing trains.
Leaving the asylum grounds, the railway re-crosses the road by a hideous skew girder bridge of 180 feet span, supported by giant piers and retaining-walls, and then crosses the deep cutting of the South Eastern, to enter a cutting of its own leading into a tunnel a mile and a quarter in length—the new Merstham tunnel—running parallel with the old tunnel of the same name through which the South Eastern Railway passes. At the southern end of this gloomy tunnel is the pretty village of Merstham, where the hillside sinks down to the level lands between that point and Redhill.
At Merstham one of the odd problems of the new line was reached, for there it had to be constructed over a network of ancient tunnels made centuries ago in the hillside—quarry-tunnels whence came much of the limestone that went towards the building of Henry VII.’s Chapel at Westminster Abbey. The old workings are still accessible to the explorer who dares the accumulation of gas in them given off by the limestone rock.
The geology of these five miles of new railway is peculiarly varied, limestone and chalk giving place suddenly to the gault of the levels, and followed again by a hillside bed of Fuller’s earth, succeeded in turn by red sand. The Fuller’s earth, resting upon a slippery substratum of gault, only required a little rain and a little disturbance to slide down and overwhelm the railway works, and retaining-walls of the heaviest and most substantial kind were necessary in the cuttings where it occurred. Tunnelling for a quarter of a mile through the sand that gives Redhill its name, the railway crosses obliquely under the SouthEastern, and then joins the old Brighton line territory just before reaching Earlswood station.
CHIPSTEAD CHURCH.
All these engineering manifestations give the old grim neighbourhood of Smitham Bottom a new grimness. The trains of the Brighton line boom, rattle, and clank overhead into the covered way, whose ventilators spout steam like some infernal laundry, and from the 80-foot deep cuttings close beside the road, steamy billows arise very weirdly. Presiding over all are the beautiful grounds and vast ranges of buildings of the Cane Hill Lunatic Asylum, housing an ever-increasing population of lunatics, now numbering some three thousand. Sometimes the quieter members of that unfortunate community are seen, being given a walk along the road, outside their bounds, and the sight and the thoughts they engender are not cheering.
Along the road, where the walls of the cutting descend perpendicularly, is the severely common-place hamlet of Hooley, formerly Howleigh, consisting of the “Star” inn and some twenty square brick cottages. Just beyond it, where a modern Cyclists’ Rest and tea-rooms building stands to the left of the road, the first traces of the old Surrey Iron Railway, which crossed the highway here, are found, in the shallower cutting, still noticeable, although disused seventy years ago. Alders, hazels, and blackberry brambles grow on the side of it, and its bridges are ivy-grown: primroses and violets, too, grow there wondrously profuse.
CHIPSTEAD
And here we will, by way of interlude, turn aside, up a lane to the right hand, toward the village of Chipstead, in whose churchyard lies Sir Edward Banks, who began life in the humblest manner, working as a navvy upon this same forgotten railway, afterwards rising, as partner in the firm of Jolliffe & Banks, to be an employer of labour and contractor to the Government: in short, another Tom Brassey. All these things are recorded of him upon a memorial tablet in the church of Chipstead—a tablet whichlets nothing of his worth escape you, so prolix is it.[9]
It was while delving amid the chalk of this tramway cutting that Edward Banks first became acquainted with this village, and so charmed with it was he that he expressed a desire, when his time should come, to be laid at rest in its quiet graveyard. When he died, after a singularly successful career, his wish was carried out, and here, in this quiet spot overlooking the highway, you may see his handsome tomb, begirt with iron railings, and overshadowed with ancient trees.
The little church of Chipstead is of Norman origin, and still shows some interesting features of that period, with some unusual Early English additions that have presented architectural puzzles even to the minds of experts. Many years ago the late Mr. G. E. Street, the architect of the present Royal Courts of Justice in London, read a paper upon this building, advancing the theory that the curious pedimental windows of the chancel and the transept door were not the Saxon work they appeared to be, but were the creation of an architect of the Early English period who had a fancy for reviving Saxon features, and who was the builder and designer of a series of Surrey churches, among which is included that of Merstham.
Within the belfry here is a ring of fine bells, some of them of a respectable age, and three bearing the inscription, with variations:
“OUR HOPE IS IN THE LORD, 1595.”RE
From here a bye-lane leads steeply once more into the high road, which winds along the valley, sloping always towards the Weald. Down the long descent into Merstham village tall and close battalions of fir-trees lend a sombre colouring to the foreground, while “southward o’er Surrey’s pleasant hills” the evening sunlight streams in parting radiance. On the left hand as we descend are the eerie-looking blow-holes of the Merstham tunnel, which here succeeds the cutting. Great heaps of chalk, by this time partly overgrown with grass, also mark its course, and in the distance, crowned as many of them are with telegraph poles, they look by twilight curiously and awfully like so many Calvarys.
Beside the descent into Merstham was situated the terminus of the old Iron Railway, in the great excavated hollow of the Greystone lime-works, where the lime-burners still quarry the limestone and the smoke of their burning ascends day and night. The old “Hylton Arms,” down below, that served the turn of the lime-burners when they wanted to slake their thirst, has been ornately rebuilt in the modern-Elizabethan Public House Style, alongside the road, to catch the custom of the world at large, and is named the “Jolliffe Arms.” Both signs reflect the ownership of Merstham, for Jolliffe has long been the family name of the holders of the modern Barony of Hylton. Formerly “Jolly,” it was presumably too bacchanalian and not sufficiently aristocratic, and so it was changed, just as your “Smythe” was once Smith, and “Johnes” Jones.
MERSTHAM
Merstham is as pretty a village as Surrey affords, and typically English. Railways have not abated, nor these turbid times altered in any great measure, its fine air of aristocratic and old-time rusticity. At one end of its one clearly-defined street, set at an angle to the high-road, are the great ornamental gates of Merstham Park, setting their stamp of landed aristocracy upon the place. To their right is a tiny gate leading to the public right-of-way through the park, which presently crosses over the pond where rise fitfully the springs of Merstham Brook, a congener of the Kentish “Nailbournes,” and one of the many sources of the River Mole. To the marshy ground by this brook, and to its stone-quarries, the place owesits name. It was in Domesday Book “Merstán” = Mere-stan, the stone (house) by the lake.
MERSTHAM.
Beyond the brook, above the tall trees, is seen the shingled spire of the church, an Early English building dedicated to St. Catherine, not yet spoiled, despite restorations and the scraping which its original lancet windows have undergone, in misguided efforts to endue them with an air of modernity.
The church is built of that limestone or “firestone” found so freely in the neighbourhood—a famed speciality which entered largely into the building and ornamentation of Henry the Seventh’s Chapel at Westminster. Those wondrously intricate and involved carvings and traceries, whose decadent Gothic delicacy is the despair of present-day architects and stone-carvers, were possible only in this stone, which, when quarried, is of exceeding softness, but afterwards, on exposure to the air, assumes a hardness equalling that of any ordinary building-stone, and has, in addition, the merit of resisting fire, whence its name. From the softer layers comes that article of domestic use, the “hearthstone,” used to whiten London hearths and doorsteps.
Merstham Church is even yet of considerable interest. It contains brasses to the Newdegate. Best, and Elmebrygge families, one recording in black letter:
“Hic iacet Johēsi Elmebrygge, armiger, qui obiit biij dieffebruarij; Aº Dn̅i Mºccccºlxxij, et Isabella uxor eiusquae fuit filia Nichī Jamys quondā Maioris etAlderman̅ London: quae obiit bijº die SeptembrisAº Dn̅i Mºccccºlxxijº et Annae uxor ei: quaefuit filia Johēs Prophete Gentilman quae obiit ...Aº Dn̅i Mºcccº ... quorū animabusppicietur Deus.”
The date of the second wife’s death has never been inserted, showing that the brass was engraved and set during her lifetime, as in so many other examples of monumental brasses throughout the country. Thefigure of John Elmebrygge is wanting, it having been at some time torn from its matrix, but above his figure’s indent remains a label inscribedSancta Trinitas, and from the mouths of the remaining figures issue labels inscribedUnus Deus—Miserere nobis. Beneath is a group of seven daughters; the group of four sons is long since lost.
A transitional Norman font of grey Sussex marble remains at the western end of the church, and on an altar-tomb in the southern chapel are the poor remains of an ancient stone figure of the fifteenth century, presumably the effigy of a merchant civilian, as he is represented wearing thegypcière. It is hacked out of almost all significance at the hands of some iconoclasts; their chisel-marks are even now distinct and bear witness against the Puritan rage that defaced and buried it face downwards, the reverse side of the stone forming part of the chapel pavement until 1861, when it was discovered during the restoration of the church.
Before that restoration this was an interior of Georgian high pews. Among them the “squire’s parlour” was pre-eminent, with its fireplace, its well-carpeted floor, its chairs and tables: a snuggery wherein that good man snored unobserved, or partook critically of his snuff during the parson’s discreet discourse. But now the parlour is gone, and the squire must slumber, if he can, with the other sinners.
GATTON
In Merstham village, just beyond the “Feathers” inn, stood Merstham toll-gate, followed by that of Gatton, at Gatton Point, a mile distant, where the old route through Reigate goes off to the right, and the new—the seven miles between Gatton Point and Povey Cross, through Redhill—continues, straight as an arrow, ahead. The way is bordered on the right hand by Gatton Park, a spot the country folk rightly describe as an “old arnshunt place.” The history of Gatton, in truth, goes back to immemorial times, and has no beginning: for where history thins out and becomes a mere scatter of disjointed scraps purportingto be facts, tradition carries back the tale into a very fog of legend and conjecture. It was “Gatone” when the Domesday survey was made: the Saxon “Geat-ton,” the town in the “gate,” passage, or road through the North Downs, just as Reigate is the Saxon “Rige-geat,” the road over the ridge. The “ton” or town in the place-name does not necessarily mean what we moderns would understand by the word, and here doubtless indicated an enclosed, hedged, or walled-in tract of land redeemed and cultivated out of the then encompassing wilderness of the Downs.
Who first broke the land of Gatton to the plough? History and tradition are silent. No voice speaks out of the grave of the centuries. But both Reigate and Gatton are older than Anglo-Saxon times, for a Roman way, itself following the course of an even earlier savage trail, came up out of the stodgy clay of Holmesdale, over the chalky hills, to Streatham and London. It was a branch of the road leading fromPortus Adurni—the present Old Shoreham, on the river Adur—and doubtless, in the long centuries of Romano-British civilisation, it was bordered here and there by settlements and villas. Prominent among them was Gatton. There can scarcely be a doubt of it, for, although Roman relics are not found here now, Camden, writing in the time of Henry the Eighth, tells of “Roman Coynes digged forth of the Ground.” It was ever a desirable site, for here unfailing springs well out of the chalk and give an abounding fertility, while another road—the ancient Pilgrims’ Way—running west and east, crossed the other highway, and thus gave ready communication on every side.
Gatton has, within the historic period, never been more than a manorial park, but an unexplained something, like the echo of a vanished greatness, has caused strangely unmerited honours to be granted it. Who shall say what induced Henry the Sixth in 1451 to make this mere country park a Parliamentary borough, returning two members? There must have been some adequate reason or excuse, even if onlythe one of its ancient renown; for theremustalways be an apology of sorts for corruption; no job is jobbed without at least some shadowy semblance of legality. But no one will ever pluck out the heart of its mystery.
THE ROTTEN BOROUGH
A Parliamentary borough Gatton remained until 1832, when the first Reform Act swept away the representation of it, together with that of many another “rotten borough.” Rightly had Cobbett termed it “a very rascally spot of earth,” for certainly from 1541, when Sir Roger Copley owned the property and was the sole elector of the place, the election was a scandalous farce, and never at any time did the “burgesses” exceed twenty. They were always tenants of the lord of the manor and the mere marionettes that danced to his will.
Gatton, returning its two members to Parliament, as of old, was early in the nineteenth century purchased by Mark Wood, Esq., who was soon after created a Baronet. It was then recorded that in this borough there were six houses and only one freeholder: Sir Mark Wood himself. The other five houses he let by the week; and thus, paying the taxes, he was the only elector of the two representatives. At the election, he and his son Mark were the candidates, and the father duly elected himself and his son! Scandalous, no doubt; but those members must have represented the constituency better than could those of a larger electorate.
The landowner who possessed such a pocket-borough as this, and could send whomsoever he liked to Parliament, to vote as he wished, was, of course, a very important personage. His opposition was a serious matter to Governments; his support of the highest value, both politically and in a pecuniary sense; and thus place, honours, riches, could be, and were, secured. The manor of Gatton actually, in the cynical recognition of these things, was valued at twice its worth without that Parliamentary representation, and Lord Monson, who purchased the property in 1830, gave as much as £100,000 for it, solely as aninvestment in jobbery and corruption, by which he hoped, in the course of shrewd political wire-pulling, to obtain a cent per cent return.
GATTON HALL AND “TOWN HALL.”
He was a humorist of a cynical turn who built in front of the great mansion in midst of the park a “Town Hall” for the non-existent town, and inscribed on the urn which stands by this freakish, temple-like structure the motto, satirical in this setting, “Salus populi suprema lex esto,” together with other sardonic Latin, to the effect that no votes sullied by bribery should be given.
Less than two years after Lord Monson’s purchase of the estate, Reform had destroyed the value of Gatton Park, for it was disfranchised. We can only wonder that he did not claim compensation for the abolition of his “vested interests.”
MUSTARD
There is a remarkable appropriateness in Gatton Hall being designed in the classic style, for its marble hall and Corinthian hexastyle colonnade no doubt revive the glories of the Roman villa of sixteen hundred years ago. It is magnificence itself, being indeed designed something after the manner of the Vatican at Rome, and decorated with rare and costly marbles and frescoes; but perhaps, to any one less than an emperor or a pope, a little unhomely and uncomfortable to live in. Since 1888 it has been the seat of Sir Jeremiah Colman, of Colman’s Mustard, created a Baronet, 1907:
Mother, get it if you’re able,See the trade mark on the label,Colman’s Mustard is the Best——[Advt.],
as some unlaurelled bard of the grocery trade once sang, in deathless verse.
Half a mile short of what is now Redhill town, there once stood yet another toll-gate. “Frenches” Gate took its title from the old manor on which it stood, and the manor itself probably derived its name from the unenclosed or free (franche) land of which it was wholly or largely composed.
Redhill town has not existed long enough to have accumulated any history. When the more direct route was made this way, avoiding Reigate, in 1816, Redhill was—a hill. The hill is still here, as the cyclist well enough knows, and we will take on trust that red gravel whence its name comes; but sincethat time the town of Redhill, now numbering some 16,000 persons, has come into existence, and when we speak of Redhill we mean—not the height up which the coaches laboured, but a certain commonplace town lying at the foot of it, with a busy railway junction where there are always plenty of trains, but never the one you want, and quite a number of public institutions of the asylum and reformatory type.
The railway junction has, of course, created Redhill town, which is really in the parish of Reigate. When the land began to be built upon, in the ’40’s, it was called “Warwick Town,” after the then Countess of Warwick, the landowner, and the names of a road and a public-house still bear witness to that somewhat lickspittle method of nomenclature. But there is, and can be, only one possible Warwick in England, and “Redhill” this “Warwick Town,” by natural selection, became.
There could have been no more certain method of inviting the most odious of comparisons than that of naming Redhill after the fine old feudal town of Warwick, which first arose beneath the protecting walls of its ancient castle. Either town has an origin typical of its era, and bothlooktheir history and circumstances. Redhill, within the memory of those still living, sprang up around a railway platform, and the only object that may be said to frown in it is the great gas-holder, built on absolutely the most prominent and desirable site in the whole town; and that not only frowns, but stinks as well, and is therefore not a desirable substitute for a castle keep. Here, at any rate, “Mrs. Partington’s” remark that “comparisons is odorous” would be altogether in order.
Prominent above all other buildings in the town, in the backward view from that godfatherly hill, is the huge St. Anne’s Asylum, housing between four and five hundred children of the poor.
“The Cutting” through the brow of the hill, enclosed on either side by high brick walls, leads presently upon Redhill and Earlswood Commons,where movement is unrestrained and free as air, and the vision is bounded only by Leith Hill in one direction and the blue haze of distance in another.
It is Holmesdale—the vale of holms, or oak woods—upon which you gaze from here; that
Vale of HolmesdallNever wonne, ne never shall,
as the braggart old couplet has it, in allusion to the defeat and slaughter of the invading Danes at OckleyA.D.851.
In one of its periodic funks, the War Office, terrified for the safety of London more than for that of Holmesdale, purchased land on this hill-top for the erection of a fort, and—in a burst of confidence—sold it again. The time is probably near when the War Office, like another “Sister Anne,” will “see somebody coming,” when this or another site will be re-purchased at a much enhanced, or scare, price.