EARLSWOOD
Earlswood Common is a welcome change after Redhill. It gives sensations of elbow-room, of freedom and vastness, not so much from its own size as from the expanse of that view across the Weald of Surrey and Sussex. The road across Earlswood Common is an almost perfect “switchback,” as the cyclist who is not met with a southerly wind will discover. You can see it from this view-point, going undulating away until in the dim woody perspective it seems to end in some tangled and trackless forest, so densely grown do the trees look from this distance.
It was here, at a wayside inn, that the present historian fell in with a Sussex peasant of the ancient and vanishing kind.
He was drinking from a tankard of the pea-soup which they call ale in these parts, sitting the while upon a bench whose like is usually found outside old country inns. Ruddy of face, with clean-shaven lips and chin, his grizzled beard kept rigidly upon his wrinkled dewlap, his hands gnarled and twisted withtoil and rheumatism, he sat there in smock-frock and gaiters, as typical a countryman as ever on London stage brought the scent of the hay across the footlights. That smock of his, the “round frock” of Sussex parlance, was worked about the yoke of it, fore and aft, with many and curious devices, whose patterns, though he, and she who worked them, knew it not, derived from centuries of tradition and precept, had been handed down from Saxon times, aye, and before them, to the present day, when, their significance lost, they excite merely a mild wonder at their oddity and complication.
THE SWITCHBACK ROAD, EARLSWOOD COMMON.
He was, it seemed, a “hedger and ditcher,” and his leathern gauntlets and billhook lay beside him on the ale-house bench.
“I’ve worked at this sort o’ thing,” said he, in conversation, “for the last twenty year. Hard work? yes, onaccountable hard, and small pay for’t too.Two and twopence a day I gets, an’ works from seven o’marnings to half-past five in the afternoon for that. You’ll be gettin’ more than two and twopence a day when you’re at work, I reckon.”
To evade that remark by an opinion that a country life was preferable to existence in a town was easy. The old man agreed with the proposition, for he had visited London, and “a dirty place it was, sure-ly.” Also he had been atop of the Monument, to the Tower, and to the resort he called “Madame Two Swords”: places that Londoners generally leave to provincials. Thus, the country cousin within our gates is more learned in the stock sights of town than townsfolk themselves.
From here the road slopes gently to the Weald past Petridge Wood and Salfords, where a tributary of the Mole crosses, and where the last turnpike-gate was abolished, with cheers and a hip-hip-hooray, at the midnight of October 31st, 1881.
At Horley, the left-hand road, forming an alternative way to Brighton by Worth, Balcombe, and Wivelsfield, touches the outskirts of Thunderfield Castle.
THUNDERFIELD CASTLE
Thunderfield Castle should—if tremendous names go for aught—be a stupendous keep of the Torquilstone type, but it is, sad to say, nothing of the kind, being merely a flat circular grassy space, approached over the Mole and doubly islanded by two concentric moats. It stands upon the estate of Harrowslea—“Harsley,” as the countryfolk call it—supposed to have once belonged to King Harold.
There seems to be no doubt whatever that the Anglo-Saxonsdidname the place after the god Thunor. It was known by that name in the time of Alfred the Great, but no one knows what it was like then; nor, for that matter, what the appearance of it was when the Norman de Clares owned it. It seems never to have been a castle built of stone, but an adaptation of the primitive savage idea of surrounding a position with water and palisading it. Thunderfield was a veritable stronghold of the woods and bogs, and the defenders of it were like Hereward the Wake, whocould often remain a “passive resister” and see the invaders struggling with the sloughs, the odds overwhelmingly in favour of the forces of nature.
THUNDERFIELD CASTLE.
The history of Thunderfield will never be written, but if a guess may be hazarded, the final catastrophe, which was the prime cause of the half-burnt timbers and the many human remains discovered here long ago, was a storming of the place by the forces of the neighbouring de Warennes, ancient and bitter enemies of the de Clares; probably in the wars of the twelfth century, between King Stephen and the Empress Maud.
THE “CHEQUERS,” HORLEY.
It is an eminently undesirable situation for a residence, however suitable it may have been for defence; and the Saxons who occupied it must have known what rheumatism is. Dark woods now enclose the place, and cluttering wildfowl form its garrison.
The “Chequers” at Horley is not quite half way to Brighton, but in default of another it is the halfway house. Its name derives from the old chequy, or chessboard, arms of the Earls of Warren, chequered in gold and blue. They were not only great personages in this vale, but enjoyed in mediæval times the right of licensing ale-houses: hence the many “Chequers” throughout the country. The newer portions of the house are typically suburban, but the old-world front, with its quaint portico, the whole shaded by a group of ancient oaks, remains untouched.
Horley—the “Hurle” of old maps—is very scattered: a piece here, another there, and the parish church standing isolated at the extreme southern end of the wide parish. It is situated on an extensive flat, reeking like a sponge with the waters of the Mole, but, although so entirely undesirable a place, is under exploitation for building purposes. A stranger first arriving at Horley late at night, and seeing its long lines of lighted streets radiating in several directions, would think he had come to a town; but morning would show him that long perspectives of gas-lamps do not necessarily mean houses to correspond. Evidently those responsible for the lamps expect a coming expansion of Horley; but that expectation is not very likely to be realised.
Much of Horley belongs to Christ’s Hospital, which is said to be under obligation to educate two children of poor widows, in return for the great tithes long since bequeathed to it, and is additionally accused of having consistently betrayed that trust.
THE “SIX BELLS,” HORLEY.
The parish church, chiefly of the Early English and Decorated periods of Gothic architecture, contains some brasses and a poor old stone effigy of a bygone lord of the manor, broken-nosed and chipped, but not without its interest. The double-headed eagle on his shield is still prominent, and the crowded detail of his mailed armour and the lacings of his surcoat are as distinct as when sculptured six centuries ago. He wears the little misericorde, or dagger, at his belt, the “merciful” instrument with which gentle knights finished off their wounded enemies in the chivalric days of old.
Many years ago some person unknown stole the old churchwardens’ account-book, dating from the sixteenth century. After many wanderings in the land, it was at length purchased at a second-hand bookseller’s and presented to the British Museum, in which mausoleum of literature, in the Department of Manuscripts, it is now to be found. It contains a curious item, showing that even in the rigid times that produced the great Puritan upheaval, congregations were not unapt for irreverence. Thus in 1632 “John Ansty is chosen by the consent of yeminister and parishioners to see ytyeyounge men and boyes behave themselves decently in yechurch in time of divine service and sermon, and he is to have for his paines ijs.”
The nearest neighbour to the church is the almost equally ancient “Six Bells” inn, which took its title from the ring of bells in the church tower. Since 1839, however, when two bells were added, there have been eight in the belfry.
The stranger, foregathering with the rustics at the “Six Bells,” and missing the old houses that once stood near the church and have been replaced by new, very quickly has his regrets for them cut short by those matter-of-fact villagers, who declare that “ye wooden tark so ef ye had to live in un.” A typical rustic had “comic brown-titus” acquired in one of those damp old cottages, and has “felt funny” ever since. One with difficulty resisted the suggestion that, if he could be asfunny as he felt, he should set up for a humorist, and oust some of the dull dogs who pose as jesters.
Opposite Horley church is Gatwick Park, since 1892 converted into a racecourse, with a railway station of its own. Less than a mile below it, at Povey Cross, the Sutton and Reigate route to Brighton joins the main road.
The Sutton and Reigate route to Brighton, instead of branching off along the Brixton Road, pursues a straight undeviating course down the Clapham Road, through Balham and Upper and Lower Tooting, where it turns sharply to the left at the Broadway, and in half a mile right again, at Amen Corner. Thence it goes, by Figg’s Marsh and Mitcham, to Sutton.
MITCHAM COMMON
It is not before Mitcham is reached that, in these latter days, the pilgrim is conscious of travelling the road to anywhere at all. It is all modern “street”—and streets, to this commentator at least, have a strong resemblance to rows of dog-kennels. They are places where citizens live on the chain. They lack the charm of obviously leading elsewhere: and even although electric tramcars speed multitudinously along them, to some near or distant terminus, they do but arrive there at other streets.
Mitcham is at present beyond these brick and mortar tentacles, and is grouped not unpicturesquely about a village green and along the road to the Wandle. Pleasant, ruddy-faced seventeenth and eighteenth-century mansions look upon that green, notable in the early days of Surrey cricket; and away at the further end of it is the vast flat of Mitcham Common, that dreary, long-drawn expanse which is at once the best illustration of eternity and of a Shakespearian “blasted heath” that can readily be thought of.
“Mitcham lavender” brings fragrant memories, and indeed the only thing that serves to render theweary length of Mitcham Common at all endurable is the scent of it, borne on the breeze from the distillery, midway across: the distillery that no one would remember to be Jakson’s, except for the eccentricity of spelling the name.
This by the way; for one does not cross Mitcham Common to reach Sutton. But there is, altogether, a sweet savour pervading Mitcham, a scent of flowers that will not be spoiled even by the linoleum works, which are apt to be offensive; for Mitcham is still a place where those sweet-smelling and other “economic” plants, lavender, mint, chamomile, aniseed, peppermint, rosemary, and liquorice, are grown for distillation. The place owes this distinction to no mere chance, but to its peculiar black mould, found to be exceptionally suited to this culture.
Folk-rhymes are often uncomplimentary, and that which praises Sutton for its mutton and Cheam for juicy beef, is more severe than one cares to quote on Epsom; and, altogether ignoring the mingled fragrances of Mitcham, declares it the place “for a thief.” We need not, however, take the matter seriously: the rhymester was only at his wit’s end for a rhyme to “beef.”
Mitcham station, beside the road, is a curious example of what a railway company can do in its rare moments of economy; for it is an early nineteenth-century villa converted to railway purposes by the process of cutting a hole through the centre. It is a sore puzzle to a stranger in a hurry.
SUTTON
From Mitcham one ascends a hill past the woodland estate of Ravensbury, crossing the abundantly-exploited Wandle; and then, along a still rural road, to the modern town of Sutton.
On the fringe of that town, at the discreet “residential” suburb of Benhilton, is a scenic surprise in the way of a deep cutting in the hilly road. Spanned by a footbridge, graced with trees, and neighboured by the old “Angel” inn, “Angel Bridge,” as it is called, is a pretty spot. The rise thus cut through was once known as Been Hill, and on that basis was fantastically reared the name of Benhilton. One cannot but admire the ingenuity of it.
THE “COCK,” SUTTON 1789.From an aquatint after Rowlandson.
“Sutton for mutton”: so ran the old-time rhyme. The reason of that ancient repute is found in the downs in whose lap the place is situated; those thymy downs that afforded such splendid pasturage for sheep. Sutton Common is gone, enclosed in 1810, but the downs remain; and yet that rhyme has lost its reason, and Sutton is no longer celebrated for anything above its fellow towns. Even the famous “Cock” is gone—that old coaching-inn kept by the ex-pugilist, “Gentleman Jackson.” Long threatened, it was at last demolished in 1898, and with the old house went the equally famous sign that straddled across the road. The similar sign of the “Greyhound” still remains; the last relic of narrower streets and times more spacious.
Leaving Sutton “town,” as we call it nowadays, the road proceeds to climb steadily uphill to the modern suburb of “Belmont,” where stands an old, but very well cared-for, milestone setting forth that it is distant “XIII. miles from the Standard in Cornhill, London, 1745,” from the Royal Exchange the same distance, and from Whitehall twelve miles and a half. The neighbourhood is now particularly respectable, but I grieve to say that the spot is marked on the maps of 1796 as “Little Hell,” which seems to indicate that the character of the people living in the three houses apparently then standing here would not bear close inspection. With the “Angel” placed at one end, and this vestibule into Inferno situated at the other, Sutton seems to have been accorded exceptional privileges.
“Cold Blow,” which succeeds to Little Hell, is a tremendous transition, and well deserves its name, perched as it is on the shivery, bare, and windy heights that lead to Burgh Heath and Banstead Downs “famous,” says an annotated map of 1716, “for its wholesome Air, once prescribed by Physicians as thePatients’ last refuge.” The feudal-looking wrought-iron gates newly built beside the road here, surmounted by a gorgeous shield of arms crested with a helmet and enveloped in mantling, form the entrance to Nork Park, the seat of one of the Colman family, who have mustered very strongly in Surrey of late years.
At the right-hand turning, in midst of a group of fir-trees, stands the prehistoric tumulus known to the rustics as “Tumble Beacon.” “Tumble” is probably the rural version of “tumulus.”
Beyond this point, on a site now occupied by a cottage, stood the once-famed “Tangier” inn. Originally a private residence, the seat of Admiral Buckle,[10]who named it “Tangier,” in memory of his cruises on the north coast of Africa, it became a house of call for coaches, and especially for post-chaises. Here, we are told, George the Fourth invariably halted for a glass of Miss Jeal’s celebrated “alderbury”—that is to say elderberry-wine—“roking hot,” to keep out the piercing cold, and Miss Jeal brought it forth with her own fair hands. Other travellers, who were merely persons, and not personages, had to be content with the less fair hands of the waiter.
The “Tangier” was burnt down about 1874. For some years after its destruction a platform that led from the house to the roadside, on a level with the floors of the coaches and post-chaises, survived; but only the cellars now remain. The woods at the back are, however, still locally known as “Tangier Woods.”
Burgh Heath, at the summit of these downs, is a curious place called usually “Borough” Heath: it is in Domesday “Berge.” As its name not obscurely hints, and the half-obliterated barrows show, it is a place of ancient habitation and sepulture; but nowadays it is chiefly remarkable for the descendants of the original squatters of about a century ago, who, braving the cold of these heights, settled on what was then an exceedingly lonely heath and stole whateverland they pleased. That was the origin of the hamlet of Burgh Heath. The descendants of those filibusters have in most cases rebuilt the original hovels, but it is still a somewhat forlorn place, made sordid by the tumbledown pigsties and sheds on the heath in which they have acquired a prescriptive freehold.
RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN
Passing Lion Bottom, or Wilderness Bottom, we come to Tadworth Corner, past the grounds of Tadworth Court, late the seat of Lord Russell of Killowen, better known as Sir Charles Russell. He was created a Baron in 1894, on his becoming Lord Chief Justice: but the title was—at his own desire—limited to a life-peerage, and consequently at his death in 1900 became extinct. At Tadworth, in the horsey neighbourhood of Epsom, he was as much at home as in the Law Courts, and neither so judicial nor restrained, as those who remember his peppery temper and the objurgatory language of his “Here, you, where the —— — are you —— — coming to, you —— ——, you!” will admit. There seems, in fact, an especial fitness in his residence on this Regency Road, for his speech was the speech rather of that, than of the more mealy mouthed Victorian, period.
At Tadworth Court, where the ways divide, and a most picturesque view of long roads, dark fir trees, and a weird-looking windmill unfolds itself, formerly stood a toll-gate. A signpost directs on the right to Headley and Walton, and on the left to Reigate and Redhill, and a battered milestone which no one can read stands at the foot of it. The church spire on the left is that of Kingswood.
From London to Reigate, through Sutton, is, according to Cobbett, “about as villainous a tract as England contains. The soil is a mixture of gravel and clay, with big yellow stones in it, sure sign of really bad land.” The greater part of this is, of course, now covered by the suburbs of “the Wen,” as Cobbett delighted to style London; and it is both unknown to and immaterial to most people what manner of soil their houses are built on; but the truth of Cobbett’sobservations is seen readily enough here, on these warrens, which owe their preservation as open spaces to that mixture, worthless to the farmer, and not worth the stealing in those times when land could be stolen with impunity.
KINGSWOOD WARREN.
REIGATE HILL
Past the modern village of Kingswood, almost lost in, and certainly entirely overshadowed by, the wild heaths of Walton and Kingswood Warren the road comes at last to Reigate Hill, where, immediately past the suspension bridge that overhangs the cutting, it tilts very suddenly and alarmingly over the edge of the Downs. The suddenness of it makes the stranger gasp with astonishment; the beauty of that wonderful view from this very rim and edge of the hills compels his admiration. It is the climax up to which he has been toiling all these long, ascending gradients from Sutton; and it is worth the toil.
The old writers of road-books do more justice to this view than any modern writer dare. To them it was “a remarkably bold elevation, from whence is a delightful prospect of the South Downs in Sussex. But near the road, which is scooped out of the hill,the declivity is so steep and abrupt that the spectator cannot help being struck with terror, though softened by admiration. The Sublime and the Beautiful are here perfectly united; imagination is fully exercised, and the mind delighted.”
How would this person have described the Alps?
A milestone just short of this drop—one of a series starting at Sutton Downs and dealing in fractions of miles—says, very curtly: “London 19, Sutton 8, Brighton 32⅝, Reigate 1⅜.”
THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE, REIGATE HILL.
The suspension bridge, carried overhead, spanning the cutting made through the crest of the hill, is known to the rustics—who will always invent simple English words of one syllable, whenever possible, to take the place of difficult three-syllabled words of Latin extraction—as the “Chain Pier.” It does not, as almost invariably is the case with these bridges, connect two portions of an estate severed by the cutting,but forms part of a public path which was cut through. It is very well worth the traveller’s attention, for it joins the severed ends of no less a road than the ancient Pilgrims’ Way, and is a very curious instance of modernity helping to preserve antiquity. The Way is clearly seen above, coming from Box Hill as a hollow road, crossing the bridge and going in the direction of Gatton Park, through a wood of beech trees.
The roadway of Reigate Hill is made to wind circuitously, in an attempt to mitigate the severity of the gradient; but for all the care taken, it remains one of the steepest hills in England, and is one of the very few provided with granite kerbs intended to ease the pull-up for horses. None but a very special fool among cyclists in the old days attempted to ride down the hill; and many, even in these times of more efficient brakes, prefer to walk down. Only motor-cars, like the Gadarene swine of the Scriptures, “rushing violently down a steep place,” attempt it; and those who are best acquainted with the hill live in daily expectation of a recklessly driven car spilling over the rim.
Reigate town lies at the foot, sheltered under this great shoulder of the downs: a little town of considerable antiquity and inconsiderable story. It is mentioned in Domesday Book, but under the now forgotten name of “Cherchefelle,” and did not begin to assume the name of Reigate until nearly two hundred years later.
Churchfield was at the time of the Norman conquest a manor in the possession of the widowed Queen, and was probably little more than an enclosed farm and manor-house situated in a clearing of the Holmesdale woods; but it had not long passed into the hands of William de Varennes, who had married Gundrada theConqueror’s daughter and was one of his most intimate henchmen at the Battle of Hastings, before it became the site of the formidable Reigate, or Holm, Castle. The manors granted to William de Varennes comprehended nearly the whole of Surrey, and included others in Sussex, Yorkshire, and Norfolk. Such were the splendours that fell to the son-in-law and the companion-in-arms of a successful invader. He became somewhat Anglicised under the title of Earl of Warenne, and the ancestor of a line of seven Earls, of whom the last died in 1347, when the family became firstly merged in that of the Fitzalans, then of the Mowbrays, and finally in that of the alternately absorbent and fissiparous Howards.
Holm, or Reigate Castle, had little history of the warlike sort. It frowned terribly upon its sandstone ridge, but tamely submitted in 1216 when the foreign allies of the discontented subjects of King John approached: and when the seventh Earl, who had murdered Baron de la Zouche at Westminster, was attacked here by Prince Edward, he promptly made a grovelling surrender and paid the fine of 12,000 marks (equal to £24,000) demanded. In 1550, when Lambarde wrote, only “the ruyns and rubbishe of an old castle which some call Homesdale” were left, and even those were cleared away by order of the Parliament in 1648. Now, after many centuries of change in ownership, the hill on which that fortress stood is contemptuously tunnelled, to give a more direct road through the town.
REIGATE HILL
In this connection, Cobbett, coming to Reigate through Sutton in 1823, is highly entertaining. The tunnel was then being made, and it did not please him. “They are,” he vociferates, “in order to save a few hundred yards’ length of road, cutting through a hill. They have lowered a little hill on the London side of Sutton. Thus is the money of the country actually thrown away: the produce of labour is taken from the industrious and given to the idlers. Mark the process; the town of Brighton, in Sussex, fiftymiles from the Wen, is on the seaside, and is thought by the stockjobbers to afford asalubrious air. It is so situated that a coach which leaves it not very early in the morning reaches London by noon; and, starting to go back in two hours and a half afterwards, reaches Brighton not very late at night. Great parcels of stockjobbers stay at Brighton with the women and children. They skip backward and forward on the coaches, and actually carry on stock-jobbing in Change Alley, though they reside at Brighton. The place is, besides, a great resort with thewhiskeredgentry. There are not less than about twenty coaches that leave the Wen every day for this place; and, there being three or four different roads, there is a great rivalship for the custom. This sets the people to work to shorten and to level the roads; and here you see hundreds of men and horses constantly at work to make pleasant and quick travelling for the Jews and jobbers. The Jews and jobbers pay the turnpikes, to be sure; but they get the money from the land and labourers. They drain these, from John o’ Groat’s House to the Land’s End, and they lay out some of the money on the Brighton roads.”
Cobbett is dead, and the Reform Act is an old story, but the Jews and the jobbers swarm more than ever.
THE CASTLE CAVES
The tunnel through the castle hill was made by consent of the then owner, Earl Somers, as a tablet informs all who care to know. The entrance towards the town is faced with white brick, in a style supposed to be Norman. Above are the grounds, now public, where a would-be mediæval gateway, erected in 1777, quite illegitimately impresses many innocents, and below is the so-called Barons’ Cave, an ancient excavation in the soft sandstone where the Barons are (quite falsely) said to have assembled in conclave before forcing their will upon King John at Runnymede. Unhappily for that tradition, the then Earl Warenne was a supporter of the tyrant king, and any reforming barons he might possibly have entertained at ReigateCastle would have been kept on the chain as enemies, and treated to the cold comfort of bread and water.
THE TUNNEL, REIGATE.
There are deeper depths than these castle caves, for dungeon-like excavations exist beside and underneath the tunnel; but they are not so very terrible, exuding as they do strong vinous and spirituous odours, proving that the only prisoners languishing there are hogsheads and kilderkins.
Reigate, dropping its intermediate name of Cherchefelle on Ridgegate, became variously Reigate, Riggate, and Reygate in the thirteenth century. The name obviously indicates a gate—that is to say, a road—over the ridge of the downs; presumably that road upon which Gatton, the “gate-town,” stood. Strongly supporting this theory, Wray Common and Park are found on the line of road between Reigate and Gatton. If we select “Reygate” from the many variants of the place-name, and place it beside that of Wray Common, we get at once the phonetic link.
When Reigate lost the two members it sent to Parliament, it lost much more than the mere distinction of being represented. It lost free drinks and money to jingle in its pockets, for it was openly corrupt—in fact, neither better nor worse than most other constituencies. What else, when you consider it, could be expected when the franchise was so limited that the electors were a mere handful, and votes by consequence were individually valuable. In short, the best safeguard against bribery is to so increase the electorate that the purchase of votes is beyond the capacity of a candidate’s pockets.
Modern circumstances have, indeed, so wrought with country towns of the Reigate type that they are merely the devitalised spooks of their former selves, and Reigate would long ere this have been on the verge of extinction, had it not been within the revivifying influence of the suburban area. It is due to the Wen, as Cobbett would call it, that Reigate is still at once so old-world and so prosperous. It is surrounded by semi-suburban estates, but is in its centre still the Reigate of that time when the coaches came through, when royalty and nobility lunched at the still-existing “White Hart,” and when fifty miles made a long day’s journey.
Reigate town was the property, almost exclusively, of the late Lady Henry Somerset. By direction of her heir, Somers Somerset, it was, in October, 1921, sold at auction in several lots.
There are some in Reigate who dwell in imagination upon old times. Not by any means the obvious people, the clergy and the usual kidney; they find existence there a vast yawn. The antiquarian taste revealed itself by chance to the present inquirer in the person of a policeman on duty by the tunnel, who knew all about Reigate’s one industry of digging silver-sand, who could speak of the “Swan” inn having once possessed a gallows sign that spanned the road, and knew all about the red brick market-house or town hall being built in 1708 on the site of a pilgrims’ chapel dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket. He could tell, too, that wonderful man, of a bygone militant parson of Reigate, who, warming to some dispute, took off his coat in the street and saying, “Lie there, divinity,” handsomely thrashed his antagonist. “I like them old antidotes,” said my constable; and so do I.
REIGATE CHURCH
Reigate Church has been many times restored, and every time its monuments have suffered a general post; so that scarce an one remains where it was originally placed, and very few are complete.
The most remarkable monument of all, after having been removed from its original place in the chancel to the belfry, has now utterly vanished. It is no excuse that its ever having been placed in the church at all was a scandal and an outrage, for, being there, it should have been preserved, as in some sort an illustration of bygone social conditions. But the usual obliterators of history and of records made their usual clean sweep, and it has disappeared.
It was a heart-shaped monument, inscribed, “Near this place lieth Edward Bird, Esq., Gent. Dyed the 23rd of February, 1718/9. His age 26,” and was surmounted by a half-length portrait effigy of him in armour, with a full flowing wig; a truncheon in his righthand, and in the background a number of military trophies.
The especial scandal attaching to the fact of this monument ever having been placed in the church arises from the fact that Edward Bird was hanged for murder. Some particulars are gleaned from one of the many catchpenny leaflets issued at the time by the Ordinary—that is to say, the Chaplain—of Newgate, who was never averse from adding to his official salary by writing the “last dying words” of interesting criminals; but his flaring front pages were, at the best—like the contents bills of modern sensational evening newspapers—indifferent honest, and his account of Bird is meagre.
It seems, collating this and other authorities, that this interesting young man had been given the advantages of “a Christian and Gentlemanlike Education,” which in this case means that he had been a Westminster boy under the renowned Dr. Busby, and afterwards a scholar at Eton. This finished Christian then became a lieutenant in the Marquis of Winchester’s Horse. He married when twenty years of age, and his wife died a year later, when he plunged into a dissolute life in London.
One evening in September, 1718, he was driven “with a woman in a coach and a bottle of Champain wine” to a “bagnio” in Silver Street, Golden Square, and there “had the misfortune” to run a waiter, one Samuel Loxton, through the body with his sword. “G—d d—n you, I will murder you all,” he is reported to have threatened, and a farrier of Putney, called at the subsequent trial, deposed to having once been run through the body by this martial spirit.
Greatly to the surprise of himself and friends, Lieutenant Bird was not only arrested and tried, but found guilty and sentenced to death. The historian of these things is surprised, too; for gentlemen of fashion were in those times very much what German officers became—privilegedmurderers—and waiters were earthworms. I cannot understand it at all.
AN EXIT AT TYBURN
At any rate, Edward Bird took it ill and declined the ministrations of the Ordinary, saying “He was very busy, was to write Letters, expected Company, and such-like frivolous Excuses.” The Ordinary does not tell us in so many words, but we may suspect that the condemned man told him to go to the Devil. He was, indeed, an altogether hardened sinner, and would not even go to chapel, and was so poor a sportsman that he tried to do the rabble of Tyburn out of the entertaining spectacle of his execution, taking poison and stabbing himself in several places on the eve of that interesting event.
He seems to have been afraid of hurting himself, for he died neither of poison nor of wounds, and was duly taken to Tyburn in a handsome mourning coach, accompanied by his mother, by other Christians and gentlemen, by the Ordinary, and three other clergymen, to see him duly across the threshold into the other world. He stood an hour under the fatal tree, talking with his mother, and no hour of his life could have sped so swiftly. Then the chaplain sang a penitential psalm and the other divines prayed, and the candidate for the rope was made to repeat the Apostles’ Creed, after which he called for a glass of wine. No wine being available, he took a pinch of snuff, bowed, and said, “Gentlemen, I wish your health,” and then “was ty’d up, turned off, and bled very much at the Mouth or Nose, or both.”
The mystery of his being accorded a monument in Reigate Church is explained when we learn that his uncle, the Rev. John Bird, was both patron and vicar. A further inscription beyond that already quoted was once in existence, censuring the judge and jury who condemned him. Traditions long survived of his mother, on every anniversary of his execution, passing the whole day in the church, sorrowing.
The date of the monument’s disappearance is not clearly established, but old inhabitants of Reigatehave recollections of the laughing workmen, during the rebuilding of the tower in 1874, throwing marble figures out of the windows, and speak of the fragments being buried in the churchyard.
For the rest, Reigate Church is only of mild interest; excepting, indeed, the parish library, housed over the vestry, containing among its seventeen hundred books many of great interest and variety. The collection was begun in 1701 by the then vicar.
A little-known fact about Reigate is that the notorious Eugene Aram for a year lived here, in a cottage oddly named “Upper Repentance.”
TABLET: BATSWING COTTAGES.
The road leaving Reigate, by Parkgate and the Priory, passes a couple of cottages not in themselves remarkable but bearing a curious device intended to represent bats’ wings, and inscribed “J. T. 1815.” They are known as “Batswing Cottages,” but what induced “J. T.” to call them so, and even who he was, seems to be unknown.
Over the rise of Cockshut Hill and through a wooded cutting the road comes to Woodhatch and the “Old Angel” inn, where the turnpike-gate stood, and where a much earlier gate, indicated in the place-name, existed.
Woodhatch, the gate into the woods, illustrates the ancient times when the De Warennes held the great Reigate, or Holm, Castle and much of the woodlands of Holmesdale. The name of Earlswood, significant to modern ears only of the great idiot asylum there, derives from them. Place-names downin these levels ending in “wood” recall the dense forests that once overspread Holmesdale: Ewood, Norwood, Charlwood, Hartswood, Hookwood—vast glades of oak and beech, where the hogs roamed and the prototypes of Gyrth, the swineherd, tended them, in the consideration of the Norman lords of little more value than the pigs they herded. The scattered “leys”—Horley, Crawley, Kennersley, and the like—allude to the clearings or pastures amid the forest. Many other entrances into those old bosquets may be traced on the map—Tilgate, Fay Gate, Monk’s Gate and Newdigate among them; but the woodlands have long been nothing but memories, and fields and meadows, flatness itself, stretch away on either side of the level road to, and beyond, Horley, with the river Mole sluggishly winding through them—a scene not unbeautiful in its placid way.
The little hamlet of Sidlow Bridge, with its modern church, built in 1862, marks the point where the road, instead of continuing straight, along the flat, went winding off away to the right, seeking a route secure from the Mole floods, up Black Horse Hill. When the route was changed, and the “Black Horse” inn, by consequence, lost its custom, a newer inn of the same name was built at the cross-roads in the levels; and there it stands to-day, just before one reaches Povey Cross and the junction of routes.
LOWFIELD HEATH
Povey Cross, of whose name no man knows the derivation, leads direct past the tiny Kimberham, or Timberham, Bridge over the Mole, to Lowfield Heath, referred to in what, for some inscrutable reason, are styled the “Statutes at Large,” as “Lovell” Heath. The place is in these days a modern hamlet, and the heath, in a strict sense, is to seek. It has been improved away by enclosure and cultivation, utterly and without remorse; but the flat, low-lying land remains eloquent of the past, and accounts for the humorous error of some old maps which style it “Level Heath.”
The whole district, from Salfords, through Horley, to near Crawley, is at times little more than an inlandsea, for here ooze and crawl the many tributaries of the Mole. The memorable floods of October, 1891, following upon a wet summer and autumnal weeks of rain, swelled the countless arteries of the Mole, and the highways became rushing torrents. Along the nut-brown flood floated the remaining apples from drowned orchards, with trees, bushes, and hurdles. Postmen on their rounds were reduced to wading, and thence to horseback and wheeled conveyances; and Horley churchyard was flooded.
The Floods at Horley.
A repetition of this state of things occurred in February, 1897, when the dedication of the new organ in the church of Lowfield Heath could not be performed, the roads being four feet under water.
CHARLWOOD
The traveller does not see the true inwardness of the Weald from the hard high road. Turn we, then at Povey Cross for a rustic interlude into the byways, making for Charlwood and Ifield.
Few are those who find themselves in these lonely spots. Hundreds, nay, thousands are continually passing almost within hail of their slumberous sites, and have been passing for hundreds of years, yet they and their inhabitants doze on, and ever and again some cyclist or pedestrian blunders upon them by a fortunate accident, as, one may say, some unconscious Livingstone or Speke, discovering an unknown Happy Valley, and disturbs with a little ripple of modernity their uneventful calm.
The emptiness of the three miles or so of main road between Povey Cross and Crawley is well exchanged for these devious ways leading along the valley of the Mole. A prettier picture than that of Charlwood Church, seen from the village street through a framing of two severely-cropped elms forming an archway across the road, can rarely be seen in these home counties, and the church itself is an ancient building of the eleventh century, with later windows, inserted when the Norman gloom of its interior assorted less admirably with a more enlightened time. In plan cruciform, with central tower and double nave, it is of an unusual type of village church, and presents many features of interest to the archæologist, whose attention will immediately be arrested by the fragments of an immense and hideous fresco seen on the south wall. A late brass, now mural, in the chancel,dated 1553, is for Nicholas Sander and Alys his wife. These Sanders, or, as they spelled their name variously, Saunder, held for many years the manor of Charlwood, and from an early period those of Purley and Sandersted—Sander’s-stead, or dwelling. Sir Thomas Saunder, Remembrancer of the Exchequer in Queen Elizabeth’s time, bequeathed his estates to his son, who sold the reversion of Purley in 1580. Members of the family, now farmers, still live in the parish where, in happier times, they ruled.