Chapter V: Part 5

Notice the curious fishing temple built into the park wall, overhanging the pond. On the left-hand road, leading to London, is the modern parish church, with the romantically ivied tower of the old building still standing beside it. There are many and puzzling roads at Ewell, but, fortunately, there are many people about of whom to ask the way, and sign-posts are not wanting. If it were a lonely place they would be sought in vain. Take the road to Cheam, resisting all temptations to turn to the right. This brings us to Nonsuch Park, bordering the road on the left hand, and then into the old-world village of Cheam, where the new order of things is only just beginning to make itself felt. There are still numerous old boarded cottages here. The old church, like that of Ewell, has been pulled down, but the chancel still remains, near the new one, and one can look through a grating in the door and get a glimpse at the interior and its monuments well enough.

A mile and a quarter brings us to Sutton, whose High Street we cross just where the historic “Cock” coaching inn stood until pulled down a few years ago. Sutton is, perhaps, although very populous, one of the prettiest suburbs we have. After crossing the High Street the road presently goes steeply down to Carshalton. It is not too steep to coast, only be sure that no tradesmen’s light carts are in the way. Carshalton, with its broad ponds, fed by the Wandle, beside the road, is altogether delightful. Swans majestically sail the broad, if shallow, waters; weeping willows dip their long branches in the stream, and picturesquely wooded islands are dotted here and there. The small boys of Carshalton (“K’shalton,” they call it) are never tired of fishing here from the railings beside the dusty road, and not a few children of a larger growth may be seen casting a line. Now and again they bring out an old umbrella or a worn-out boot discarded by a passing tramp, but the trout, angled for by the thousand fishermen of the place, are coy; and even the usually headstrong “tiddler,” generally caught by the infantile piece of cotton, declines to be caught and immured in the pickle-bottle brought forth for him.

A circular iron railing in the roadway, between the church and the water, encloses a well called “Anne Boleyn’s,” from the tradition that the water first burst forth when her horse’s hoof sank in the then marshy ground.

Having refreshed yourself with a sight of these pleasant waters, continue to Beddington, whose ancient church, on a by-road to the left, has a wonderful store of ancient brasses. Unhappily, the church is not open for prayer, or for antiquaries, and search must be made for the keys. The road now rises, with craggy banks of sand on either side, and then comes to a modern and most elaborate inn, the “Plough.” The road to the right, called Plough Lane, is our route. It leads by pleasant ways, free from houses, to Purley, crossing Russell Hill, whence, beside a field of waving oats, the eye ranges across to Croydon and on to Sydenham Hill, where the Crystal Palace glitters in the sunshine in a manner fully befitting its name.

Down goes the road in a long descent to Purley, where we cross the old Brighton road, and, passing beneath the railway, gently ascend the fine highway to Riddlesdown. Here we are amid the Surrey hills, which spread out in a lovely panorama of hills and valleys to the right. Riddlesdown is a place for picnickers and school treats. Continuing past it, we come to the hamlet of Whyteleafe, and under a railway bridge up a steep lane to the left, which speedily becomes too steep to ride. Half a mile’s walk, and you can mount again.

Inquiring the way to Upper Warlingham along the puzzling by-lanes, that remote village, on its elevated tableland, is reached in less than a mile. When there, carefully ascertain the way to Fickles Hole, situated three miles and a half away, past the tiny village of Chelsham, by rather intricate by-lanes. This, although not so far from London, is an exceedingly lonely country, whose solitary lanes run through thick woods. Very beautiful they are, too.

Coming downhill past Chelsham Church on the left, continue bearing round to the left, and the small hamlet of Fickles Hole, or Fairchild, as it is sometimes called, comes in view, with the “White Bear Inn,” in whose garden stands the great white wooden effigy that used once to adorn the “White Bear,” Piccadilly, a coaching inn standing where the Criterion Restaurant now towers aloft. For many years it stood in the shrubbery of Fairchild House, and frightened the tramps. It once more represents the bruin (or brewing) interest. When strange dogs catch sight of the effigy they generally run away terrified.

Leaving Fickles Hole for Croydon, turn to the left, and by a long downhill lane over Addington Downs to Coombe (not to be confounded with the Kingston Coombe), taking the second turning to the left at a point two and a half miles away, where a sign-post clearly directs to Croydon. Three miles more, by a beautiful road, and we are in the heart of Croydon, whence train home.

EWELL TO MERSTHAM, GODSTONE, AND LINGFIELD

This route is the way by which Surbiton, Kingston, and Richmond cyclists reach the Brighton road. We will pick up the route at Ewell, which may be made a starting-point.

It is a long, long ascent toward the ridge of the North Downs, all the way from Ewell to Banstead Heath; not necessarily a tiring one unless a south wind is blowing, but when it blows great guns from that quarter, then—why, then go home and wait until it comes from some other direction! Fortunately, the road-surface is excellent, and, coming in the reverse direction, there is not, probably, such another lengthy and uninterrupted a coast-down in the neighbourhood of London.

Three miles from Ewell, Nork Park, distinguished from far away by its dense hillside woods, is passed on the right, and we come to the beginnings of Burgh Heath. Here, at a turning to the left, there stands, at some distance from the road, an ancient tumulus surrounded by fir trees for the wonderment of those who care to go and seek it. Burgh Heath is a portion of the wild, unenclosed uplands including Banstead Downs, Walton Downs, Epsom Downs, and Walton Heath. The cyclist may notice in passing a number of ramshackle wooden shanties in the midst of the heath. These are the property of the descendants of those squatters who placed them here so long ago that they have obtained a prescriptive right, and cannot be evicted.

At the turning to Tadworth, at a point known locally as “Wilderness Bottom,” keep to the left, unless, indeed, you desire to explore the village, which was notable a little while since as being the country retreat of Lord Russell, the Lord Chief Justice, who resided at Tadworth Court.

Passing through Kingswood, we come up and down hill, and finally down, to Gatton, against the lodge gates of Gatton Park, once the seat of Lord Monson, but now the property of Mr. Colman, of the famous mustard firm. There is a public footpath through this very beautiful park, and the house is shown from 2 p.m. to 4. Cycles, however, must be left within the lodge gates. But although the pictures are very fine, and the Marble Hall worth seeing, the average visitor will doubtless be much more interested in the so-called “Town Hall” of Gatton, a kind of miniature summer-house in the shape of a classic temple, situated in midst of a lovely clump of scented limes in front of the house. It should be said that Gatton is not, and never was, a village. It is just a big park, with a manorial church adjoining the house. But Gatton was a parliamentary borough, and returned two members to Parliament, from the reign of Henry the Sixth, until it was disfranchised by the first Reform Act in 1832. With the sole exception of Old Sarum it was the rottenest of “rotten boroughs,” and contained not a single elector. It was a “pocket borough,” that went with the Park as a property. Cobbett, who was nothing if not downright and brutally frank, says, “You pass Gatton, which is a very rascally spot of earth.” So it was, for the political power wielded by its owner was almost always exercised in the interest of bribery and corruption, and Lord Monson, who purchased the property in 1830 for £100,000, did so with the idea of securing a splendid investment, to return him about a hundred per cent.; but in less than two years Reform had destroyed its value. So frankly corrupt were those times that we can only wonder why Lord Monson did not cynically prefer a claim for compensation. The “Town Hall,” therefore, is merely a satirical kind of freak, while the inscription of “Vox populi suprema lex,” among others inscribed on the pedestal of the urn that forms the sole ornament of the building, is an example of a former owner’s sardonic humour.

Rather than face the dangerous descent of Reigate Hill, we will, on returning to the Park gates, turn to the right, and make for Merstham, a pretty old-world village on the main Brighton road; bearing continually to the right until opposite the “Feathers,” after which, take the road that dips down to the left, to Nutfield. This goes in winding fashion for two miles, and then comes up a short, sharp rise to the church, standing prominently on a high bank above the left-hand side of the road, and containing a stained-glass window designed by Burne Jones. The apoplectic hue of the figures’ faces is exceedingly unpleasing.

Past the church, where a road runs right and left, turn left, and so through the few houses of Nutfield to Bletchingley, down whose hillside street we come with caution. The old church has an odd tower, and contains a tomb with some pretty Elizabethan verses to Sir Thomas Cadwallader. Note the huge and bombastical monument to a former Lord Mayor of London, occupying the whole of the east end of the south aisle. The effigies of the worthy knight and his lady seem to represent them singing an operatic duet, while attendant marble cherubs, with swollen faces suggestive of toothache, shed stony tears.

In less than two miles we reach Godstone, and, passing its green and village pond, and the “White Hart,” its famous old hostelry, turn sharply to the left, and then take the first broad road to the right. This is the Oxted road; but instead of proceeding quite so far as that village, we will, in a mile and a half, turn to the right for Tandridge, a hamlet with an ancient church, in whose churchyard notice the monument to the wife of Sir Gilbert Scott, the architect who restored (and helped to spoil) so many of our cathedrals. See, also, the ancient oak internal framing of the tower, and the tragical tombstone to Thomas Todman, 1781, aged thirty-one years, at the side of the south porch. Thomas Todman was a smuggler, who was shot dead by a Custom House officer. The inscription is curious. Here it is, oddities of spelling and punctuation preserved:—

“Thou Shall do no Murder, nor Shalt thou Steal
are the Commands Jehovah did Reveal
but thou O Wretch, Without fear or dread
of thy Tremendous Maker Shot me dead.
Amidst my strength my sins forgive
As I through Boundless Mercy hope to live.”

Downhill from Tandridge and into the Weald, turning to the left by the railway, and following it for a mile. Then bear to the right, and enter the pretty village of Crowhurst, with its interesting church showing to the right of the road. One of the curios it contains is an elaborate cast-iron tomb-“stone,” on the chancel floor, with figures and raised inscription, dated 1591—a relic of the days when iron was mined and smelted in this Wealden district. This is one of several memorials connected with the Gaynesford family, once Lords of the Manor here, and so remaining for over three hundred and sixty years. Their old manor-house, now a farmhouse, and a very picturesque and interesting one, called Crowhurst Place, is only a mile distant.

It will be noticed that many of the letters on the iron slab are either cast in reverse or upside down. Mrs. “Ane Forstr,” it can readily be seen, was exceedingly proud of her descent. A very odd fact is that exact replicas of this cast-iron slab are found distributed throughout Surrey, and even in some places in Sussex; not always in the most decorous positions. There is, for example, one used as a fire-back in the kitchen of a farm adjoining Crowhurst Church itself, and others have been noted at Ewhurst, Godstone, and Horley, where one formed part of the flooring of a baker’s oven, and occasionally produced breakfast-table terrors in the neighbourhood when the domestic loaf of bread was found to be impressed with “Her lieth,” “deceased,” and other portions of the design, including the shrouded body in the centre. The simple explanation of this odd distribution is that the iron-founding firm must have found the mould ready to their hands when cheap fire-backs were wanted, and so cast them in this guise. It mattered little when few people could read.

The great yew tree in Crowhurst churchyard is among the very largest in the land, measuring thirty-two feet nine inches round its immense trunk at a height of five feet from the ground. It is thought to be about twelve hundred years old, and although it was greatly mutilated over eighty years ago by some local vandals, who thought how fine a thing it would be to scoop out the interior and to fix table and benches inside, for the accommodation of some twenty persons, the tree still flourishes. When this wanton outrage was performed, an ancient cannon-ball was discovered in the very heart of the trunk.

Three miles more of country lanes, and our journey ends at Lingfield, a modern horse-racing centre. Here a train may be found for the return to town.

HEVER CASTLE, PENSHURST, AND TONBRIDGE

Here is a circular journey of the apparently modest total of thirty-three miles. If, however, we consider that a portion of it is hilly, and that the whole abounds with places to be seen, why, then, this is by no means a short route. Any portion of this irregularly shaped circle is within easy access of a railway station—Westerham, Edenbridge, Hever, Penshurst, Tonbridge of course—Hildenborough, Sevenoaks, and Brasted—all having stations of their own. It matters little from which point you begin the round. Let us, however, say Westerham, to which access is obtained on the railway by the branch line from Dunton Green. Westerham is a terminus, a large village or small town lying beneath the shadow of the immemorial hills, along whose steep sides, marked by a line of occasional ancient yews, goes the old Pilgrims’ Way between Winchester and Canterbury. The great historic figure connected with Westerham is General Wolfe, the victor of Quebec. There is a cenotaph to him in the parish church, and another in Squerryes Park, just outside the village. The vicarage, too, was his birthplace.

Westerham has nothing in common with modernity. It seems to have had a great era of building in the time of Queen Anne and of the early Georges, and to have exhausted itself in the effort; which is equal to saying that Westerham is delightfully old-world, with great red brick mansions and old gardens, and elbow-room everywhere. Here is the picturesque beginning of the river Darenth, crossing the road on its way down to Darenth and Dartford, to turn many mills, and to finally lose itself in the defiled waters of the lower Thames. The road descends from Westerham to Edenbridge, passing on the way the fork of the road where a guide-post directs by a short route to Chiddingstone, Hever, and Penshurst, _viâ_ Fair Elms. We will not turn here, but continue straight on to Crockham Hill, past the wild beauty of Crockham Hill Common, coming to the modern hamlet and church, set amid wide-spreading hop gardens. Two miles onward from this point we pass Edenbridge Station, and in another half-mile Edenbridge “Town” Station, and finally, in nearly another mile, come to Edenbridge itself, by no means a place of that metropolitan character the traveller would expect to find after all this heralding of railways.

Edenbridge is old-world and pretty, as surely it should be with such a name. It savours of Arcadian delights; and, indeed, when you have left Edenbridge Station behind you are come to a village that has little commerce with the outer world. True, folks hereabouts call Edenbridge “the town”; but there are towns and towns, and this is no centre of activity. The station is half a mile away, the railway conveniently out of sight of the village street, and life here flows as gently, and with as even a current, as that of the little river Eden, that gives the place its idyllic name.

Edenbridge—as surely is fitting—is set round about with apple-orchards, which render it as fragrant in spring as its neighbouring hop gardens do in the late summer months. The first thing, however, that attracts the Londoner’s attention is the quaintness of the one village street, with its tile-hung cottages and the sign of that comfortable old hostelry, the “Crown” Hotel, spanning the width of the road. Edenbridge also contains within its bounds quite a notable clock, of which the inhabitants are justly proud. No stranger can explore the recesses of the old church on the hillside without being presently buttonholed by a villager, who will take him round to where this timepiece shows its black face on the sturdy tower, and will point out to him the singular fact that all the V’s among the gilded numerals are turned the wrong way. But this is not all. The clock—like the heroine of the modern novel—has a “past.” It was made in 1738, and was the clock of St. George’s, Southwark, until 1808, when, on the old church being pulled down, it was sold to the vicar and churchwardens of Edenbridge. It should be a testimony to the health-giving properties of the Kentish air when it is said that since it came down from London it has never known a day’s illness, save only those slight ailments incidental to old age, that can be rectified by the application of a little oil.

When the cyclist has taken his survey of Edenbridge, his next place of pilgrimage should be Hever.

Though only three miles from Edenbridge, and but twenty-seven from Victoria, Hever is not so well known to the excursionist as it should be, when one considers how eminently beautiful and historical is its castle. Here, then, is the way to it. Coming to the bridge across the river Eden, we cross, and look out for a turning on the left hand by a boarded cottage. This leads across a railway and then along a pretty winding lane, bringing one easefully to the spot in two miles. The little Eden wanders erratically through the level lands, and all is quiet and rustic.

Look out for Hever, lest you miss it, for beside its grey old church, with the shingled spire, there is little else. Just a farm, a cottage or so, and an inn—the “Henry the Eighth,” formerly the “Bull and Butcher,” or, as legends would have it, the “Boleyn Butchered.” For this was the Kentish home of the beautiful and unfortunate Anne. They still tell you how Henry, ardent lover, used to come riding through the lanes to see his “dearest pet,” the fair chatelaine of Hever Castle, down yonder, amid the oozy water-meadows, and how, bogged in those miry ways, the rustics would pull the Defender of the Faith out of the sloughs. Here, too, in Hever Church may still be seen the altar-tomb and the magnificent brass of Sir Thomas Boleyn, my Lord of Wiltshire and Ormonde, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the ennobled and decorated father of that charmer. Another exquisite brass is that in the chancel to Margaret Cheyne, 1419.

Downhill from Hever Church, surrounded still by its ancient moat, is the unspoiled castle, a small but perfect example of the fortified manor-house of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The greater part of the present building was erected in the later years of Henry the Sixth, and was added to in Elizabeth’s time. The Boleyns first became connected with it about 1460, when Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, mercer and Lord Mayor of London, purchased the ruined place and commenced to build anew; but before he could complete this reconstruction he was gathered to his fathers, and it remained for his son Sir Thomas—father of the ill-fated Anne—to complete the work Sir Geoffrey had begun.

It is a private residence, and the interior is very charily shown to strangers—on Wednesdays only. The exterior and the moat, however, are always readily accessible, and are very well worth seeing. The lichened castle walls, with their time-stained masonry and vivid patches of red brick, are extraordinarily picturesque, and the windows, occurring at irregular intervals, with the clustered chimneys and mantling ivy, give the place a romantic quaintness all its own. To complete the picture, apple-orchards face two sides of the moat.

The lanes wind greatly, but are merely undulating, on the route to Chiddingstone, two and a half miles distant. Chiddingstone is generally found to be a dream of beauty by enthusiastic visitors; and the visitor to this lovely hamlet cannot help being enthusiastic.

No less beautiful than Hever, but with a beauty of quite a different character, it stands in a hollow at the gates of Chiddingstone Park, whose magnificent elms and chestnuts overhang in summer a row of old timbered houses, sketched many hundreds of times on paper or canvas by enthusiastic artists. The quaint house next the park gates, in the accompanying sketch, is the ideally placed “Castle Inn,” that might, both as regards its situation and its cosy, old-fashioned interior, have inspired a Washington Irving to transports of eloquence. Everyone who has been to the Royal Academy any year knows Chiddingstone, although he may never have visited it; for artists are continually painting this loveliest of Kentish villages, as it is called, and its embowering trees and quaint timbered houses. Behind these houses, in a field, is the “chiding stone,” a large boulder of red sandstone, outcropped from the underlying geological formation, and said to have been a Druidical seat of judgment or place of exhortation.

The roads grow lonely and degenerate (this expression purely from the cyclist’s point of view), into wooded lanes and tracts between Chiddingstone and Penshurst. If, however, you have that which many cyclists have not—that is to say, a real love of natural woodland and copse, where the hazels grow and the bracken and undergrowth are dense—then the walk of two miles by footpaths through the coppices will be not the least enjoyable part of this trip. This brings one to the scattered and very beautiful old village of Penshurst surrounding the ancient baronial home of the Sidneys, Penshurst Place. On three days in the week—Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays—the house is shown at an admission fee of one shilling. It is said that these fees amount in the year to over £300, which gives the annual number of visitors at more than six thousand. The Barons’ Hall is the chief point of interest, and is the oldest part of the historic building, dating back to the fourteenth century.

Most famous of all the warlike and polite Sidneys who owned Penshurst was Sir Philip Sidney, who fell at the siege of Zutphen, and is the hero of that chivalric action, the giving up, when wounded to death, the cup of water for which he thirsted, so that a wounded soldier might quench his thirst. “He has more need of it than I,” said this chivalric soul.

Among the historic pictures here is the remarkable portrait of Algernon Sidney, executed in 1683 on Tower Hill. He met death in characteristic Sidney fashion:—

“Are you ready, sir?” asked the headsman, when he had laid his head on the block; “will you rise again?”

“Not till the general resurrection. Strike on;” and his head was severed from his body.

In the background of the portrait you see the Tower of London and the headsman’s block and axe.

But to complete the round; on good roads, again from Penshurst to Pounds Bridge, through secluded country, and thence to Speldhurst. At Pounds Bridge there is a quite astonishingly quaint and old-world inn, gabled and timbered, and with a sixteenth-century device and monogram on it. From Speldhurst we go through more forest country, and then turn left for Southborough, where we are within hail of Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells and the great settlements of modern country residences created by the healthy air and fine scenery. Coming down Quarry Hill into the town, the tourist finds Tonbridge more interesting than “the Wells,” because it is quainter and not so fashionable. There are some impressive remains of Tonbridge Castle yet to be seen in the grounds of a park near the end of the High Street, and in that street is the old “Chequers,” a house that no artist nor any amateur photographer can resist.

Crossing the Medway, there now comes a long five and a half miles to Sevenoaks, with only one village; a very little village with the very long name of Hildenborough. Thence it is a climb up the very steep River Hill to Knole Park, bordering the right hand of the road into Sevenoaks. Park and house, the property of Lord Sackville, are open to the public; the park always, the house on Thursday and Saturday afternoons, from 2 to 5 o’clock; on Fridays and Bank Holidays 10 to 5. Single visitors, 2s.; parties of four, 6s.; of seven, 10s. There are Reynolds and Gainsborough pictures among the great art collections, and there are as many rooms in the house as there are days in the year; but only seventeen of them are shown.

From the town to Sevenoaks there is a very long and steep run down to the station and to Riverhead. The station is convenient for a return to town, but if it is desired to complete the circle, there are the interesting villages of Sundridge and Brasted to see, on the excellent road to Westerham, with the long array of the North Downs continually in sight.

TO STOKE POGES AND BURNHAM BEECHES

A glance at the accompanying chart might give the impression of this being a somewhat complicated route; but as a matter of fact, although the outward journey is almost wholly off the high roads, there should be no difficulty in finding the way to Burnham Beeches along this itinerary. The distance to be covered between Egham and Hounslow is, allowing for all possible deviations for exploring, thirty-five miles. Egham is selected solely as a convenient starting-point whence to reach the riverside road to Old Windsor, and by no means for its own sake; for the half-mile or so of high road between the railway station and the point where we turn sharply to the left for Old Windsor is probably the vilest piece of macadam in the Home Counties; if, indeed, the mile-long continuation of it on to Staines is not even worse. The river road is fortunately altogether different, being a long sandy stretch passing through the level of Runnymede, and after the first half-mile affording delightful views of the Thames. To the left hand rises the wooded height of Cooper’s Hill from the water meadows, and over to the right is Magna Charta Island. Where the sandy road dips down to the water just before reaching the village of Old Windsor, notice that old-world inn, the “Bells of Ouseley,” with its sign, displaying five bells, picturesquely swinging from an ancient elm. This sign is a puzzle to the wayfarer. It derives from the once-famous bells in the tower of the long-vanished Osney Abbey at Oxford, celebrated for their sweet tones.

A choice of roads here confronts the tourist. The pleasantest way to Old Windsor is by the easily rideable towing-path for three-quarters of a mile, bringing one to a narrow lane, looking like a private road, leading to past the little church of that village. Old Windsor Church is a prettily situated building, itself of little interest, although there may be those who will find food for reflection in a sight of the last resting-place of “Perdita” Robinson, the discarded early favourite of the “First Gentleman in Europe.” Her career can at least serve to point a moral, if it cannot adorn a tale. “Perdita” died December 26th, 1800; Florizel lived and flourished for close upon thirty years longer. Grown old, wheezy, and corpulent, drawn about Windsor Great Park in a pony-carriage in his last days, and morosely shunning the sight of his fellow-creatures, the once gay Florizel died in 1830, as George the Fourth. _He_ lies in the Royal Vault, but his pretty wanton’s bones moulder, all but forgotten, near the Thames-side towing-path.

Leaving Old Windsor Church behind, the second turning to the right leads into Windsor town. But instead of making for the Royal Borough, we will take the right-hand fork, duly sign-posted, and crossing the Thames by the Albert Bridge, enter Buckinghamshire. In half a mile’s run by the river bank, Datchet is reached by turning to the right and so over the level crossing by Datchet railway station. This is a very much rebuilt village, which in another hundred years (when its modern Elizabethan villas have weathered a little) will begin to be picturesque.

We now take the left-hand road for the old-fashioned hamlet of Upton, the mother parish of Slough, that modern suburban town, the “Sloughforwindsor,” familiar to travellers on the Great Western Railway. It may, perhaps, be remembered that the Slough people, anxious at one and the same time to show their loyalty and to suppress the unlovely name of their town, proposed a few years since to change its title to “Upton Royal,” but nothing came of the project.

Upton, so near that populous place, is singularly retired. It has an ancient and highly interesting Norman and Early English village church, which shares with that of Stoke Poges the honour of being the scene of Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”; but the tourist who follows the wheelmarks of the present writer will doubtless, like him and the vast majority of visitors to both places, prefer to think Stoke Poges churchyard the original. In any case, and however well its “ivied tower” answers to the description in the poem, it would be impossible nowadays to deprive Stoke of its fame.

Let not the cyclist by any means omit to look for a singularly puzzling epitaph on a broken flat stone on the north side of the church, whose meaning has been utterly obscured by lapse of time. It runs thus:—

Here Lies the Body of
SARAH BRAMSTONE,
of Eton, Spinster; a person who dared
to be just in the Reign of
George the Second.

* * * * *

Obijt Jan. ye 30th, 1765. Ætat 77.

This is, indeed, strange, for it is impossible to believe that law and order were so hard to preserve in the days of the second George that for a person to “dare to be just” should be so notable a thing. A popular hymn urges us to “dare to be a Daniel,” but what lions lurked in the narrow path that Sarah Bramstone trod? It must be confessed that this sorely piques the curiosity. We know what befell Solomon, Julius Cæsar, William the Conqueror, and hundreds of other highly important historical characters, and know also that even they did not always dare so much; but we shall never know the secret of this tombstone.

Notice, also, on the north side of the church the white marble tomb of George Fordham, the jockey, who died, aged fifty, in 1887, with the odd and significant quotation, “’Tis the pace that kills.” Those who did not know the amiable George might well take that as an aspersion upon his character; but Fordham was the gentlest of jocks and a model husband and father, and this is but a singularly unhappy phrase in such a connection.

Leaving Upton Church, we take a road that leads from opposite it to George Green, crossing the old Bath road, and over the Great Western Railway. A direct road runs thence to Langley Park, through whose recesses there is an entirely unhindered right of way for self and cycle. Black Park is alone worth the ride; a vast stretch of solemn pine-woods, where the breezes die away in hollow murmurs, or sink to absolute silences amid the clustered giant trunks. The sunlight filters down in scanty patches to the carpeting of pine needles, on whose yielding bed you walk with silent footsteps, save for the occasional breaking of a dry twig, whose destruction sounds with startling distinctness in this solitude. Few ever come to these woodlands, and it is likely enough that you will have them all to yourself, excepting, indeed, the wood-pigeons, breaking now and again into a weird chorus of cooing.

But its great lake of about thirty acres is, perhaps, the chief feature of Black Park. Seated by its shore, with the close ranks of the great solemn pines overhanging the sullen water, you see with what appropriateness the park is named. It is a kind of place where you can readily imagine yourself a Robinson Crusoe. Little sandy beaches run out into the water; the inky recesses of the woods look as though they awaited the explorer to come and discover the savages and the big game that doubtless lie hidden there; and, in fact, all you want, to be completely happy, is a raft, a rifle, a suit of goat-skins, a Man Friday, and some enemies to shoot at. It is certainly a spot R. L. Stevenson would have revelled in.

If it were not that Burnham Beeches have to be reached, nothing could be more delightful than to stay here the afternoon, taking tea, perhaps, at the “Plough” at Wexham Street (which must not be confounded with Wexham village). Leaving the lake at the end where it borders the road, turn to the right. In half a mile you reach the pretty hamlet and turn left, then right, then left again. This brings one into the broad road leading from Wexham village to Farnham Royal and Burnham. On reaching this road (which runs right and left), instead of crossing it, turn to the right, and then to the left once more. This brings us into a tree-shaded lane, which dips downwards. On the right, on the edge of the meadow overlooking this lane, a momentary glimpse of a solemn, mausoleum-like monument is caught. This sufficiently notifies the fact that we are at Stoke Poges, for it is the memorial erected to the poet Gray by a descendant of William Penn, who once resided at Stoke Park. The park, of which the great, odd-looking mansion may be seen from Stoke Poges churchyard, has belonged to men of light and leading. It is now the residence of Mr. Bryant, of Bryant & May, who purchased it of Mr. Jeremiah Colman, of Colman’s Mustard.

The melancholy looking monument, looking like a tea-caddy or biscuit-box on a pedestal, bears verses from Gray’s mournful muse—from the “Elegy,” and from the “Lines on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.” Having inspected this, walk a few yards down the lane. Here a white gate on the right, with an old lodge absolutely covered from the ground to the topmost bricks of the chimneys with ivy, appears to lead into the park. This is, however, the entrance to Stoke Poges churchyard. Leaving the cycle here, by the cottage fence, we walk to this place of pilgrimage through a very beautiful modern lych-gate in carved oak. The spire and “ivy-covered tower” of the church appear beyond; the whole, strange to say, quite as beautiful as one expects it to be; with the sole exception that the churchyard is now too large and too crowded with staring white marble monuments to fully realise the rural note of the famous poem. But that is a detail. Under the east window, in the churchyard he has immortalised, Gray is appropriately laid to rest, in a quiet, unpretending tomb, with his mother and his aunt.

Thomas Gray, who has come down to us chiefly as the author of the “Elegy wrote in a Country Churchyard,” as he himself entitles that famous poem, was born at the close of 1716, the son of Philip and Dorothy Gray. Philip appears to have been a “law-scrivener,” and would seem to have always been on the verge of madness. He died when his son was twenty-five years of age. The poet, educated at Eton and at Cambridge, weakly all his life, and cursed with a melancholy that was partly real and partly affected, was the only one of his mother’s twelve children who survived their infancy. Never more than slenderly provided with the means of living, he dallied through his fifty-four years of life with the classics, projecting many things but completing few. His English poems are very few in number, and like the small total of his writings, few even of these are more than fragmentary. His morbid nature may perhaps be guessed from the fact that it was almost only the death of a relative or friend that would inspire him to write. Thus the famous Elegy, begun in 1742 and only completed in 1750, owes its conception and its several slow stages to successive bereavements; and the “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” originated in the same doleful manner. Save to scholars, Gray’s whole career and repute as a poet are comprised within those two poems, both in the very front rank of English song.

Gray’s muse is unhealthy and ill-assorted with the thought of modern times. Nor was it much better matched with that of his own. His physique influenced his temperament; his narrow and inactive life rendered him morbid, and finally shortened his days. He died in 1771. It is credibly said that he never in his life received more than one single payment of forty guineas for literary work. For the “Elegy,” on which his deathless fame rests, he never received, nor would accept, any pecuniary remuneration. He allowed Dodsley and the other publishers to print it, which they did, reaping fortunes thereby. It is, perhaps, scarce necessary to add that this kind of poet is quite extinct. Gray, who refused the offer of Poet Laureate on the death of Colley Cibber in 1757, was of opinion that it was beneath the dignity of a gentleman to accept payment for his “inventions.” How he would have despised Tennyson, who could drive a very shrewd bargain with his publishers, built up a fortune on his writings, and went into the milk trade!

By the way, it is interesting to read a contemporary “review” of the “Elegy.” Here it is: “An Elegy wrote in a country churchyard, 4to, Dodsley 6d., seven pages. The excellency of this little piece more than compensates for its lack of quantity.” Who wrote that “review”? Was it some draper or grocer, whose objections to short measure were overcome by the excellence of the goods?

Here, at Stoke, Gray spent his vacations with his mother and his aunt. His mother died in 1753. She, good soul, thought this rickety son of hers—as infirm of purpose as he was of body—engaged in reading for the Law, and went to her grave unconscious of his odes. He loved his mother, and on the lichened slab that covers the unpretending red brick altar-tomb in the churchyard you may yet read the epitaph he wrote—“ ... beside her friend and sister, here sleep the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful tender mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her.”

The “yew tree’s shade” is cast over the south porch from a very ancient tree of that species, and the scene generally accords well with the poem. In this connection, as an additional proof that Gray referred to Stoke Poges, it may be noted that the spire, surmounting “yonder ivy-mantled tower,” is an addition since his time, being little over a century old. This would appear to finally dispose of the claims put forward for Upton Royal by the sticklers for absolute accuracy of description, who have held that if Gray were writing of Stoke, he would have written “spire” instead of “tower.”

The church is very picturesque, and the interior worth seeing for the sake of the ancient architecture and for the curious little fragments of stained glass set in one of the windows, among them one representing a nude angel, or wingless cherub, with a monastic tonsure, blowing a trumpet and bestriding a veritable “hobby-horse,” or primitive bicycle. There is no questioning the antiquity of the fragment, for the date, 1642, appears on another portion of the glass, and so the mystery of the bicycle is unexplained. Every visitor to Stoke Poges visits Gray’s tomb, and no less a matter for pilgrimage has the so-called “Bicycle Window” become of late years. Indeed, to those who have no literary sympathies, this undoubtedly takes the first rank as an object of interest.

Having seen everything, we retrace our steps to the road, and, turning to the left, make for Farnham Royal, where there is a very beautiful modern church, and in the churchyard an extraordinary monument to a Mr. Henry Dodd, who died in 1861, “brickmaker and contractor. Began life as a ploughboy within a mile of St. Paul’s.” On the south side of the churchyard is the grave of Sarah Hart, victim of George Tawell, who administered prussic acid to her, in 1845, at Salt Hill. He had been carrying on an intrigue with the woman and made her an allowance; but fearing that his wife would hear of the connection, determined to put her out of the way. Tawell himself lived at Berkhamsted, in Hertfordshire. His was an evil career. Living in his youth a secret dissolute life, he had been sent to penal servitude in Australia for forgery. Released after a time, he amassed a fortune out there in business, and retired. Dark rumours, however, were current that he acquired a great part of his fortune by poisoning his partner.

The unhappy woman’s grave is unmarked by any stone, but is the nearest mound to the door in the churchyard wall. Tawell was the first criminal arrested through the agency of that then novelty, the electric telegraph. He rushed off to Slough Station after committing the crime, and just succeeded in catching the train to Paddington. He was clad in Quaker dress, and the telegraphist sent a message up to detain “a man in the garb of a Kwaker,” the original code not containing the letter Q. He was duly arrested and hanged.

From the church we retrace our steps to the village, and taking the middle one of three roads, past the ornamental well-house in the centre of the street, make for that famous woodland, Burnham Beeches, along a very winding lane, taking every left-hand turning. Along a strip of common land, bordered by refreshment houses, we come downhill to the first glade, where the giant beeches crowd together in a dim light. The purchase of Burnham Beeches, unquestionably the finest piece of natural woodland in England,—finer than anything in the New Forest or in Savernake Forest,—was a noble work of the City of London Corporation, which has thus preserved the spot for ever.

The peculiarly sturdy, stunted, and fantastically gnarled character of Burnham Beeches is due to their having been pollarded at some unknown period. Legends have it that this was done by Cromwell’s soldiers. The inner recesses are weird enough to suggest warlocks and wizards, or Puck at the very least, and Queen Mab herself could find no fitter place wherein to hold her Court than in the crepuscular glades where, amid that purple shade which is the especial glory of Burnham Beeches, a chance patch of sunlight falls, more golden by contrast, on the more than emerald green of the moss, or where the moonbeams filter through on cloudless nights to light Her Majesty’s midnight masques. I would not, being no courtier and unequipped with fairy passwords, adventure alone in the depths of these woodlands at midnight for anything you could promise me. At midday it is another matter.

It is difficult to decide at what period of the year this spot is most beautiful. It has one peculiar glory of the summer and another of the winter, when in the short November and December days the brown leaves that carpet these alleys give out a mist that mingles strangely with the coppery glow of the sinking sun. Amid this impressive coloration the contorted ashen-coloured trunks stand forth strangely ghostlike.

Gray, of course, knew Burnham Beeches very thoroughly. His uncle lived at Burnham when the poet was a youth, and we find Gray writing to Walpole in 1737, in a lively manner quite unexpected of him who was already, in his twenty-first year, the affected prey of melancholy.

But the prig in this precocious young gentleman is distastefully evident in this otherwise very excellent description. The description is in fact delightful; only one could wish the writer of it forty-one, instead of twenty years younger: “My uncle is a great hunter in imagination; his dogs take up every chair in the house, so I am forced to stand at the present writing; and though the gout forbids him galloping after them in the field, yet he continues still to regale his ears and nose with their comfortable noise and stink. He holds me mighty cheap, I perceive, for walking when I should ride, and reading when I should hunt. My comfort amidst all this is, that I have, at the distance of half a mile through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar call it a common) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human thing in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices; mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the clouds, nor are the declivities so amazing as Dover Cliff; but just such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as if they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables, that, like most other ancient people, are always dreaming out their old stories to the winds. At the foot of one of these squats ME (_il penseroso_), and there I grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and sportive squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise before he had an Eve; but I think he did not use to read Virgil, as I commonly do.”

The “reverend vegetables” phrase has a strangely modern flavour, and so indeed has this appreciation of the picturesque. Before Gray’s time scenery was not only unappreciated; it was detested. Dr. Johnson, who hated hills, was at one with his generation in this respect. Even Horace Walpole, who ought surely to have known better, calls hills “mountains,” and shudders at the sight of them. Gray has this additional title to fame, that he was the first to tour in search of the picturesque, and, in a sense, invented the taste for it. Wordsworth, who was but little later than Gray, says, “When I was young, there were no lakes or mountains.”

But it is quite impossible within these limits to fully describe the Beeches, or to indicate the route through them. The Corporation has made a magnificent series of broad drives in every direction, with splendid surface for cycling; and if the gradients are severe, there is nothing that cannot, with due care, be coasted. Many picnic parties come to the Beeches, but they rarely penetrate far into these lovely woodland glades; leaving the solitudes to the painters, who are always at work here, producing Academy pictures. Find the Plain, the Ponds, and Hardicanute’s Moat, away in the recesses of the woods. See “Beauty and the Beast”; the one being a graceful silver birch, with a gaunt, knotty, blasted oak standing beside it. For the rest, given a fine day, be content to lose yourself here, amid the fairyland of immemorial moss and lusty bracken, and then, when you are tired of it (or, more likely, when evening is drawing on), inquire of one of the artists who are painting the sunset the way for Farnham Common and Slough. This is a fine down-grade road of three and a half miles leading through Farnham Royal down to Salt Hill, where, turning sharply to the left, we are on the Bath road, twelve miles from Hounslow. Slough adjoins Salt Hill. A mile beyond it, up a lane to the left, is Langley. Langley is a wayside station on the Great Western Railway, set down in a beautiful and secluded neighbourhood, the name clipped and mutilated in modern railway fashion, for its full style is “Langley Marish”—“Marshy Langley,”—or, as some would have it, “Langley Maries,” the church being dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Near the station notice the old-fashioned inn, the “North Star,” nestling under the embankment; a house which obtained its present sign from the first locomotive ever used on the Great Western. The engine of that name was originally built for a Russian broad-gauge railway, but never delivered.

While yet some way from the village, the mellowed red brick tower of Langley Church is seen across the flat meadows. The church owns the very singular feature of an old parish library, contained in a room within the building; not a library consisting merely of a few chained books, but a collection of some five or six hundred volumes, given by Sir John Kederminster, under his will of 1631, to “the town” of Langley Marish. No one ever borrows any of these mighty tomes for home reading, for they are chiefly black-letter works of the Greek and Latin fathers, and dry-as-dust treatises on the Reformation controversy. The room containing all this bygone learning is curiously painted with Renaissance designs, and very interesting.

The Kederminsters, of whom this bookworm Sir John was one, were the old lords of the manor. They built the beautiful almshouses looking upon the churchyard. It may be noted that the grouping of church and almshouses is strikingly picturesque, and that the low-toned brick is eminently paintable. Langley, in short, is one of the very few really beautiful and retired villages so near town.

The curious, who roam the churchyard and read the epitaphs on the simple memorials of the villagers, will notice on one of the many wood-rail tomb-“stones” an inscription to a certain “Mrs. Sarah Wall, the old and faithful, but ill-requited Servant of Lord Carrington, who departed this life June 1832, aged 70 years.”

The story goes that she was grievously affronted by being consigned by Lord Carrington to one of the neighbouring almshouses in her old age, when she had expected more consideration at his hands. She it was who directed the expression “ill-requited” to be painted on the board. A former vicar, disapproving of it, had the words painted out, but in the lapse of years the paint of the rest of the lettering decaying, the offending words have been preserved and stand out with an extraordinary prominence, attracting immediate attention.

Pretty hamlets, still wonderfully rural, considering the short distance from London, line the way home, along the old Bath road, or lie a little way from it. Among them is Cranford; but it is probably too late now to see that pretty place, and so we will continue, through the gathering darkness, along the high road home. Every cyclist knows this road, but it is not everyone who knows it when night has fallen; when the little inns and cottages take on a romantic interest they do not possess by daylight; when red blinds in villagers’ windows shed a comfortable ray, and wayside trees and fields wear an unaccustomed and portentous significance. In short, it is a delightful lamp-lit journey along these closing miles, and a pleasantly cool conclusion to the heat of the day.

DARTFORD TO ROCHESTER, AYLESFORD, AND BOROUGH GREEN