Chapter VI: Part 6

There is an excellent route from Dartford to Rochester, avoiding the Dover road, known to comparatively few cyclists other than local—a road that, instead of passing through places so busy and populous as Northfleet and Gravesend, is rural through the whole of its course, from Dartford Brent to where it joins the better-known way at the top of Strood Hill. The Dover road between these two points is, as just remarked, the “better-known” route, but it is by no means the oldest. That distinction can be claimed most emphatically by this, for it follows the course of that old Roman military way, the Watling Street, and was a portion of the route along which went the pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury.

Coming uphill from where Dartford is seated in its deep hollow beside the Darenth, a high tableland is reached, and with it a parting of the ways. Our own route is plain to see—straight ahead—and is made additionally clear by the aid of a specially informative sign-post. For those, however, who would take the opportunity, when so near, of seeing one of the most interesting parish churches in the country, it may be hinted that two miles down the Dover road—the left-hand turning—is Stone. Let the stranger be careful when inquiring for Stone, and ask specifically for the church. Otherwise the gaping rustic is apt to smile significantly, Stone being famed for its lunatic asylums.

The interior of the Early English church at Stone is a Westminster Abbey in little, designed probably by the same architect, the stones from the same quarries, and carved by the same masons. It stands on a hilltop overlooking the busy estuary of the Thames, near Greenhithe, and its immediate neighbourhood is made sordid with cement works and chalk pits. A huge factory chimney, some six times the height of church and tower, immediately adjoins the churchyard. When in the fulness of time it falls, there will probably be little left of the church, even as a picturesque ruin.

It is not possible to ride round Stone Church to Greenhithe. The lane leading to it must be retraced, and the Dover road followed until turnings right and left appear. To the left lies the little port of Greenhithe, and on the right the road leads up again to our route for Rochester.

Hasting from the scarred, chalky hillsides and the industries of Stone and Greenhithe, one appreciates more fully the quiet of this fine road; and coming in two miles to Springhead, the Saturday or Sunday cyclist will find that there are others equally appreciative, for the watercress beds and the picnic inns and tea-gardens of Springhead have been famous in all Cockaigne during at least the last seventy years, and the watercresses have by no means lost their freshness nor the place its charm in that space of time. This week-end Arcadia, where the succulent prawn, the cooling cress, and the poetic periwinkle are partaken of in vast quantities, is still in great esteem. The manners and customs of its clients are frank, if unrefined, and their appetites robust, even though their methods be not particularly nice. To see ’Arriet extracting periwinkles from their shells with a hairpin is a lesson in resourcefulness not a little trying.

It is a long climb up to the village of Shinglewell, which rejoices in having an alias; for on all maps you will find the incertitude of cartographers as to what it really should be called proved by the legend “Shinglewell, or Ifield.” Still uphill, we come to a turning that will take us off to the right into Cobham village; the retreat of Tracy Tupman and his wounded love, where, in the “clean and commodious alehouse,” he was discovered by Mr. Pickwick, discussing with a great appetite and a mournful air a not very sentimental meal composed of “roast fowl, bacon, ale, and _et ceteras_.”

The Leather Bottle is the sign of the inn, and it is to-day, perhaps, the best known among Dickens landmarks. It is still the old-fashioned country inn it was when the great novelist knew and described it, but filled now with Dickens’ relics of every kind. A painted sign hangs out from the front proclaiming this to be “Dickens’ Old Pickwick Leather Bottle,” with a picture of that eminent personage in his “shorts” and gaiters in the inevitable attitude of declamation. In the low-ceiled parlour are many prints and portraits having reference to Dickens and his works. An old “grandfather” clock stands in one corner and a stuffed trout in his glass case (an object without which no country inn is completely furnished) occupies a place of honour.

It is worth while leaving the cycle at the inn and to explore the neighbourhood of Cobham village and park. The village church is well known to antiquaries as containing the largest collection of brasses in England. There are no fewer than twenty-four fine examples, principally to members of the ancient and knightly family of the Cobhams, who once were lords of this and many another manor in Kent, and lived at the Cobham Hall which preceded the Elizabethan and Jacobean building now standing, the seat of the Earl of Darnley. The Cobhams have been extinct for centuries, and Lennoxes, Cliftons, and Darnleys have owned the place since, but none of them have left anything like the impress upon it that the old family achieved. Here, in the village, is that now old almshouse, the New College, founded by a Cobham in place of the Old College, the dissolved religious house founded many years before by an ancestor; and there, on the floor of the chancel in the parish church, are their memorials.

Cobham Park is a lovely expanse of lawns and woods and grand avenues, open to the wayfarer freely to come and go. Deer roam about in great herds, and wild life abounds in the tangled glades. The Hall is shown only on Fridays. Tickets are to be purchased at Rochester and Gravesend. To see the Hall and its great collection of pictures is a quite separate undertaking from touring on a cycle, and so we will journey on towards Rochester, regaining the road and making for a landmark known in all this countryside as the “Three Crouches.” When we arrive at the place, we discover it to be an inn called the “Three Crutches,” displaying a shield of arms bearing a chevron between three aces of clubs. The three aces, distinctly resembling crosses, are the so-called “Three Crutches.” Compare with this the name of “Crutched Friars,” who were originally the “crossed friars,” from the cross they wore on their habits; and with that of the “Crouch Oak” at Addlestone in Surrey, an ancient boundary tree standing at the “cross” roads. The motto, _Sub umbra alarum Tuarum_—“under the shadow of thy wings”—is seen below.

From this point it is chiefly downhill into Strood and Rochester; very steeply downhill at Strood, too. Through its mile-long street and on to Rochester Bridge, the rude ribs of the ancient castle rise boldly up from the other side of the Medway, with the Cathedral beside it, looking quite humble. Very maritime looks Rochester’s High Street, with the great gilded model of a line-of-battle ship, fully rigged and armed, that serves for vane, twirling over its Guildhall. Over all is the bustle, roar, and rattle of the trains, rolling in thunder over the railway bridge that cuts off the view downstream.

Rochester, adjoining as it does the busy dockyard town and seaport of Chatham, is not one of the slumberous examples among cathedral cities, for its narrow and, if truth be told, dirty streets are crowded with the waggons and carts going to and from railways and wharves. The “Bull Inn” still remains very much what it was when Jingle recommended it to the Pickwickians.

The “Bull” itself is exactly hit off in Dickens’ description of it, and in the hall the “illustrious larder with glass door, developing cold fowls and noble joints, and tarts wherein the raspberry jam coyly withdraws itself, as such a precious creature should, behind a lattice-wall of pastry,” still develops good things for a later generation. A latter-day stupidity had changed the name to the “Victoria and Bull,” but this has been remedied recently, and it is the “Bull” once more.

Other things noticed by Dickens in Rochester are much the same. He calls the projecting clock of the Corn Exchange the “moon-faced” clock. It still impends over the pavement, and its white dial does indeed suggest the moon. But exquisitely exact is that other description in the “Seven Poor Travellers,” where he speaks of the High Street “oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red building, as if Time carried on business there and hung out his sign.” Also, although restorations have since taken place in the darkling cathedral, no description of it, even now, matches that concise and breathless commentary the novelist puts into Jingle’s mouth: “Old Cathedral, too—earthy smell—pilgrims’ feet worn away the old steps—little Saxon doors—Confessionals like money-takers’ boxes at theatres—queer customers, those monks—Popes and Lord Treasurers, and all sorts of old fellows with great red faces and broken noses, turning up every day.”

You enter the Close directly from the High Street, beside or through what all readers of _Edwin Drood_ know as “Jasper’s Gatehouse,” although the real name of it is “Chertsey’s.” The old church of St. Nicholas, patron saint of fishermen and thieves, who (the thieves, not the fishermen) were from that circumstance known as “St Nicholas’ Clerks,” stands side by side with the cathedral, and opposite is the churchyard. It is well known that Dickens’ own wish was to be buried here, but a national desire that he should rest in Westminster Abbey prevailed. This was recalled to the present writer’s recollection by a stranger when recently at Rochester. “He wanted to be buried there,” said the stranger, pointing with his walking-stick. “’Twould have done Rochester a lot of good,” he added regretfully. “You see, he’s wasted where he is; but if he was here, thousands more visitors would come,” and he went away grumbling.

One of the chief Dickens landmarks here is, of course, the place he calls the “Seven Poor Travellers.” This is the charity founded by Richard Watts, in 1579, for the entertaining of “Six Poor Travellers, who, not being Rogues or Proctors, may receive, gratis, for one night, Lodging, Entertainment, and Fourpence each.”

But the old city of Rochester requires, at least, a day for its due exploration, and so we will not linger now by cathedral, castle, or waterside; but, turning sharply to the left, on returning towards Rochester Bridge, steer for Borstal; not by any means because Borstal is beautiful, because that is probably the very last thing anyone would think of saying about this place of mean streets that intercept with their dingy commonplace the beautiful views along the broad valley of the noble Medway. Then, as though this were not sufficient, there is a very grim prison at Borstal—or was, for it has now been converted into a reformatory; and then, again, a number of riverside cement works, to be succeeded at Wouldham by more of the same kind, and, finally, by brick-kilns at Burham. Why, therefore (asks the reader), do we come this way? For reasons of various sorts: because, despite all these disadvantages, the views, as we cycle along with the broad bosom of the Medway spread in front for miles and miles, bearing the rust-red sails of the floundering deliberate barges, are invisible elsewhere, and because the more rural road, by Kit’s Coty House, is an exceedingly hilly one. Notice in the churchyard of Wouldham the tombstone of Burke, the purser of the _Victory_, for “in his arms,” as the inscription states, “the immortal Nelson died.”

Passing through Burham, take the road to the right leading down into Aylesford, where the Medway narrows and is tamely conducted under the fine old bridge and through a lock, just as though it were a tiny river and unconnected with the imposing estuary just left behind. The grouping of river, bridge, square church tower among the trees, and the long row of gabled houses beneath is particularly charming. When you have taken your fill of this characteristic Kentish scene, proceed along the road leading from the bridge, and, taking the right-hand turning, come to the broad highway that leads to Wrotham Heath and Borough Green, a road that follows in part the valley of one of the Medway’s affluents. Interesting villages lie on either side, only slightly removed from the road, in particular that of Leybourne, half a mile on the right hand. It derives its name from the little stream just named, the Ley Bourne, originally the Lele or Little Bourne. It is curious to observe that your true Kentish man, among such odd enunciations as “d” for “th” (so that the definite article “the” becomes “de”) still says “lil” for “little,” as the tourist may discover. There are interesting remains of Leybourne Castle yet to be seen by turning off the road to the right, and so to the park in which they stand. But the long day closes, and we must not linger on the way; and so, speeding on to Wrotham Heath and turning there to the left, we make for the L. C. & D. R. station of Wrotham and Borough Green.

MIDDLESEX AND HERTFORDSHIRE BYWAYS

The borders of Middlesex and Hertfordshire are as yet unspoiled, and still keep their country lanes and old-world villages in very much their original condition. This is chiefly owing, of course, to the lack of good local railway accommodation; and since these uplands in the bracing marches of those two counties are thus left in the most rural and “unimproved” state, we may, from the tourist’s point of view, hope that railway enterprise may for long years yet to come lie dormant and keep the cheap builder away.

In the first instance, however, we must needs be beholden to the Great Eastern Railway for conveying self and cycle to our starting-point, Waltham Station, twelve miles from town. Arrived there, the near neighbourhood of Waltham Abbey tempts us three-quarters of a mile across the river Lea into Essex; for the great Abbey, now the parish church of the town of the same name that has sprung up around it in the lapse of centuries, is a place of pilgrimage. Harold’s body was translated here from Battle, and although all trace of his resting-place is lost, save the traditional spot in the meadow by “Harold’s Bridge,” the Abbey is peculiarly associated with him. The massive tower shows up singularly white above the many old and picturesque houses that converge in narrow streets upon it; and the brimming Lea, like Denham’s description of the Thames—

“Without o’erflowing, full,”

goes in the prettiest of perspectives across the fields, making, with the wayside alders, the old-fashioned canal-locks, and the many water-channels that everywhere abound, pictures for sketcher or photographer. As for colour, notice that remarkably old-world square of bowed and bent, nodding and decrepit houses called the “Cattle Market.” Rarely, indeed, does the painter find so exquisite a tone as that of these ancient red brick buildings.

But it will not do to linger at Waltham Abbey, however great the inclination may be to do so. So we retrace our course, and passing the station again, come to Waltham Cross, where the Eleanor Cross, tinkered by restorers, but still lovely, stands in midst of the road beside the old “Four Swans,” whose sign, straddling across the highway, bears the wooden effigies of those fowls. Turning to the right at this point, and wheeling through the village of Waltham Cross, a railway bridge spans the road, and the supremely ugly new station of “Theobalds Grove” appears. Just beyond this, on the left-hand side, is a turning which, leading off as it does through gates, looks like a private road into a park. A park, indeed, it is—that of Theobalds—but there is a right of way. And it is a most beautiful road, or rather lane, with the best of gravel surface to cycle along, and the most gracious of foliage overhead. Half a mile of this, and then comes the most delightful of surprises; nothing less, indeed, than that dear friend of olden days in London City—Temple Bar.

The story of Wren’s beautiful, but inconvenient, entrance to the City of London is a romantic one. Long used as a Golgotha on whose topmost cornice to display the heads of decapitated traitors, it remained at the Fleet Street entrance to London until the increasing traffic necessitated its removal in 1877. The stones were all numbered and stored away in the City stone-yard for some eight years, and meanwhile the City authorities offered them as a gift to several persons or public bodies, without finding anyone to accept the gift. The Benchers of the Temple, who had the opportunity of securing the relic for one of their quiet courts, incredible though it may seem, refused it; but at last the old Bar was accepted by Sir Henry Meux, and re-erected here as an entrance lodge. It is the old familiar Temple Bar, cleaner than of yore, and more easily studied in this quiet spot than of old, in the roaring traffic of Fleet Street; but that it should thus be banished from its native London and be in private ownership seems pitiful. Why not, in these days when it has been proposed to restore the Elgin marbles to Athens—why not agitate for its restitution and re-erection in some quiet City lane?

And now for Gough’s Oak. There are more ways than one of reaching Goff’s (or Gough’s) Oak from here. Let us take the turning to the left, and, avoiding a further turn in the same direction, go by Love Grove, along a series of country lanes. The original Gough was Sir Theodore Godfrey, who “came over with the Conqueror,” as the musty old phrase goes; and on what used to be Cheshunt Common he planted the still existing tree, which fully bears out Dryden’s lines—

“The Monarch Oak, the Patriarch of the Trees.
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees;
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state, and in three more decays.”

It may flourish for another hundred years if it is only left alone, although the giant trunk is quite hollow and full of holes, so that it is hooped and banded round like a barrel to keep it together. The hamlet that takes its name from this venerable relic is a thoroughly rural one of farms and dairies, and quite off the beaten tourist track.

Following the road indicated by the sign-post that stands prominently near the Oak, we make for Northaw, whose name means “Northwood.” The most exhilarating of coasts down through woodlands, with wide views, blue and beautiful, of woods and parks, leads to a cottage or two marked “Cuffleys” on the Ordnance map. Turn to the left here, and so, by a country lane, to the small village of Northaw, with a modern church standing on its pretty green. Thence it is as straight ahead as the winding but splendidly surfaced road will allow, to Potter’s Bar. Here the Great North Road is reached. Continue through the somewhat characterless village and turn off to the right where a sign-post points to Potter’s Bar Station and South Mimms, along what is called Mutton Lane. At a quarter of a mile from South Mimms turn to the left, and the old church tower presently comes in sight. Here we find the Holyhead road running right and left. Turn to the right, and then to the left off the highway, and up the rising gradient of the village street. At once the most concise and most readily understood direction to Shenley is this: “Follow the telegraph poles.”

In under three miles this village is gained—one of the quaintest and most old-world of places, with an old “round-house,” or village lock-up, standing between a horse-pond and the “Queen Adelaide Inn.” Local gossip tells how the last of the long line of petty offenders to be imprisoned here was the then landlord of that inn twenty-three years ago. He had, innocently enough, taken home for firewood a few pieces of wood he had found in a neighbouring park. So they locked him up, and the reeking dampness from the pond nearly killed him.

Shenley Church lies a mile away from the village and has lost its tower. The bells, save one, were removed to the more accessible Chapel-of-Ease in the village, and the one remains in the churchyard, hung in the most extraordinary manner on an iron bar.

Returning to the village, and having found the way to Radlett, we go by a winding lane downhill, and between the two parks of Porters and New Organ Hall. Radlett is a quite modern settlement, of no interest. The name, however, is ancient, and derives from the “Red Leat,” a tributary of the Colne, whose water runs of a reddish hue after rain has washed the red gravel soil through which its course lies. Here we cross the Edgware-St. Albans road and come to Gill’s Hill, a name of dread; for it was here, at Gill’s Hill Cottage, in 1823, that the notorious murder of Mr. William Weare was committed by John Thurtell. A lane on the right hand leads to the still existing house, and many morbid persons go and feast their eyes on it, as did Sir Walter Scott in 1828. This particularly sordid and stupid crime, committed by the gambler Thurtell, and connived at by his confederates, Hunt and Probert, for mere plunder, aroused the widest interest, and contemporary literature, not greatly to its credit, is full of references to the vulgar tragedy. Scott, as we have seen, actually paid a visit to the scene, and Carlyle alludes to it again and again. The thing that most held his imagination and exercised his sardonic humour was the evidence of one of the witnesses on behalf of Thurtell, to the effect that “he was a respectable man: he kept a gig.” To “gigmanity,” as a symbol and token of respectability, Carlyle often recurs.

High Cross, which now comes on our way to Aldenham, is, indeed, high. Higher still is Kemp Row, away to the left, the place where the mitred Abbots of St. Albans hanged criminals literally “high as Haman,” if not, indeed, considerably higher than that biblical personage. By “criminals” you are to understand a very wide interpretation—which, in fact, included such as stole the deer or netted game on the extensive manors of those dignified clergy. Those abbots had their gallow’s as a quite ordinary article of domestic furniture, and turned off many an unlucky poacher with the least possible compunction.

Aldenham is a place with a dignified air, derived from the many parks that surround it. Aldenham House is the seat of the recently ennobled Mr. Henry Hucks-Gibbs, who contended long and expensively in the Law Courts with that master of gall and wormwood, Lord Grimthorpe, as to which of them should have the right to spend a fortune on the restoration of the reredos of St. Albans Abbey.

From here it is a fine run, chiefly downhill, across the breezy heights past Patchett’s Green and Bushey Grove to the long village street of Bushey, well known nowadays for its artistic colony of the Herkomer School. The builder has been busy here, and Bushey and Watford are now practically linked together.

Watford is fast losing its old-time individuality in the amazing extension of Suburbia, but it is still remarkable to the stranger for its beeriness. Big bulks the name of Benskin at Watford, and every third house in the long High Street seems, from a casual inspection, to be an inn.

A curiosity in the shape of a fig tree growing out of a large stone altar-tomb in the parish churchyard is the local marvel at Watford, and if you do not see it, why, then, no Watfordian will consider his town properly explored. It may be seen, within a railed enclosure, outside one of the church windows, and is, of course, the subject of a legend. This is the last resting-place, they tell you, of a lady who on her deathbed exclaimed, “If there be a God, may a tree grow out of my heart!” This shocking and wicked tale is, of course, as absolutely baseless as the equally wicked and shocking story to the same effect told of Lady Anne Grimston at Tewin. The tree is a chance seedling. Anyone malicious or mischievous enough could create countless such miracles by inserting seeds in the crevices of such old tombs.

From Watford the way is bordered for nearly two miles on the left hand by the beautiful lawns and woods of Cassiobury Park, and here and there ancient elms form avenues along the road, and lend a grateful and cooling shade. Cassiobury is the seat of the Earl of Essex, whose notices, setting forth the dreadful things which will be done to trespassers, are plentifully displayed for the length of a mile and a half, and do not add to the sylvan beauties of the scene. Beyond and adjoining Cassiobury is Grove Park, the Earl of Clarendon’s seat, just glimpsed in passing. Now the Grand Junction Canal and the river Gade, flowing in one channel, are seen on the left, and presently we cross over them, turning slightly to the left at the hamlet of Hunton Bridge. A canal is not usually a beautiful object, being straight and formal, and generally with the commonplace surroundings of coal and other wharves; but the Grand Junction, which accompanies the road from this point to Boxmoor and onwards, provides interest and a series of charming pictures all the way. Beside it, at a decent distance, runs the main line of the L. & N.W.R. to King’s Langley.

King’s Langley is a village pretty enough, but of no particular interest; but the church has a claim to inspection, containing as it does the altar-tomb of a former Duke of York; Edmund de Langley, fifth son of Edward the Third, born at the Royal Palace of Langley, 1341, died 1402. It stands in a chapel at the east end of the north aisle, lighted by a stained-glass window, presented by the Queen in 1878, in honour of her “ancestor.” Notice stones in the churchyard to various persons bearing the odd name of Evilthrift. A few fragments of Langley Palace yet remain on a hilltop a mile distant from the village.

It cannot be said that the hamlet of Frogmoor End, which succeeds King’s Langley, is beautiful, neither is Apsley End precisely a poet’s dream. They are quite modern settlements, helping to spoil this once wild and lonely district of Boxmoor. There is a Boxmoor village now, and a railway station beside the road, named after it, but of actual barren moor there is but little.

On the skirts of what was once the moor, we turn to the right, and in a mile and a half reach the little town of Hemel Hempstead, through its suburb, Marlowes. The town is mentioned in Domesday Book as “Hamelamestead,” and the country folk call it “Hampstead,” instead of “Hempstead,” to this day. Like many of these little Hertfordshire towns, it is somewhat scrubby and out at elbows, and is not sufficiently removed from London to be altogether provincial. Its streets are steep and run in perplexing and unlooked-for directions, and its church tower has the characteristic Hertfordshire leaden extinguisher spire developed to an altogether surprising height and tenuity.

But if Hemel Hempstead be not particularly inviting to the cyclist, at least the road that runs thence to Great Gaddesden has supreme charms. Hitherto we have been on high roads; here we are on byways bordered by parks and picturesque hamlets. It is but two miles from the town we have just left, through Piccott’s End and Water End, to Great Gaddesden. At the beginning of Water End there is an exquisitely beautiful bit that Corot himself would have loved to paint; where a group of tall, bushy Lombardy poplars hangs over the old bridge that carries the road over the river Gade, and gives a lovely foreground to a view of an ancient two-gabled, white-faced farmstead amid fertile water-meadows. To lead one’s cycle on to the grass beside the water and to lie here in the sunshine of a hot summer’s afternoon, lulled by the rippling of the stream and the purring of the wind among the poplars, is a delight.

The road now runs past the park of Gaddesden Place, with the river on the right, and crossing another bridge with more poplars, climbs a little rise by a few cottages, and thus, leaving Water End, comes in half a mile to the very, very small village of Great Gaddesden. How almost invariably it is the case that places called “Great” are really microscopically small! The church and village lie off to the left, in the level “dene” beside the Gade, whence the name derives; secluded, unspotted from the world. It is an interesting old church, full of monuments to Halseys and their relatives by marriage: all, to judge from their epitaphs, the salt of the earth, which must have lost its savour now they are gone. The large pieces of pudding-stone that crop up in the churchyard attract attention in this part of the country.

Leaving the village, make straight ahead across the road by which you have come, and charge up the hillside lane as far as you can. Then get off and walk for a quarter of a mile, looking back a moment to where Great Gaddesden nestles in the valley. The summit of this hill reached, the lane winds in pretty and shady fashion for a mile, and then descends to a lonely hollow whence lanes run in three directions. Fortunately, there is a sign-post here. Follow the lane to Markyate. It is not at first a very pleasing lane, being rather plentifully strewed with large, smooth, round flints, the “plums” detached from their native pudding-stone; really looking like big kidney potatoes—but harder. Happily, they soon grow fewer, and leave us free to enjoy the descent through the wooded dell leading to the lodge and gates of Beechwood Park. Do not take either of the roads to right or left, but the narrow lane ahead, which, although narrow, affords excellent riding.

Flamstead is a mile and a half away. One quarter of a mile walk uphill, and then the going is quite level on to the village, situated above a hollow where the little river Verlam or Ver runs, and therefrom originally named Verlamstead. It is quite a small place, with a large church, whose tower has the usual Hertfordshire extinguisher spirelet and is daubed with plaster and bolstered and tied up with red brick debased buttresses and iron tie-rods; and altogether, although old, is exactly like the kind of thing designed nowadays by the very latest school of unconventional, nightmare architects.

Leaving the church on the right, the road bends to the left, descends steeply, and then, turning to the right, joins that broad highway, the old Holyhead road. Friars’ Wash is the name of this junction with that old highway. It was a place where in days of old, when the river Ver ran strong, and roads were not so good as they are now, both friars and other wayfarers occasionally had an involuntary bath.

Turning here to the right hand, and then ascending the first lane branching off to the left from the main road, a steep way leads up to the queerly named Popnuts Green, and on to Kennesbourne Green, where the Harpenden-Luton road is struck. Speeding to the right along this, and taking a left-hand turn at Mutton End, we come steeply down into the valley of the Lea (and into the Lea itself if we are not careful) at Pickford Mill.

The quiet, park-like beauty of Hertfordshire scenery is in no district more lovely than that mapped out here. To follow the course of a river downwards is often a good cycling tip, and one well worth remembering when studying maps for the purpose of planning tours, for it gives, as a rule, a descending gradient. The next few miles of this ride fully bear out these remarks, and, moreover, afford some exquisite peeps of the Lea, bordered by picturesque mills. Pickford Mill and Batford Mill are among the most striking of these. At Batford the view is especially beautiful.

A lane leads from here to the left, towards Mackery End, a Charles Lamb landmark. By this very road that we have come he and his cousin Bridget revisited the scenes of their childhood some forty years later; for it was at the farmhouse of Mackery End that some early days had been passed with the Gladmans, relatives of theirs. “Hail! Mackery End,” exclaims Lamb, writing of this visit, and adding, “this is a fragment of a blank verse poem which I once meditated, but got no farther.” Just as well, perhaps, because the name and subject would scarcely seem to lend themselves to the blank-verse method. The first line, for example, does not compare favourably with “Hail! smiling morn,” does it?

The farmhouse of Mackery End can still be seen, but it is greatly altered. Perhaps the barns and outhouses at the back are contemporary with Elia. A very interesting old house is this Jacobean mansion to which the name of Mackery End is generally given, although the title belongs to the hamlet in general, this being the “End” in the direction of the wide-spreading parish of Wheathampstead. It stands solitary in a meadow, and is dignified and imposing.

Regaining the road from this literary landmark, we pass watercress farms and watery meadows, and, running through a little hamlet, come uphill to Wheathampstead by the railway station. Here turn to the right, and through the village, taking the left-hand turn just beyond the church. It is a long, straggling village, whose downhill or uphill perspectives are alike pleasing. The church—one of the largest in Hertfordshire—has an odd spire; a whimsical elaboration upon the usual Herts method which must surely have been of strictly local design.

Having turned to the left beyond this church, we are upon the Hatfield road, and on high ground, overlooking the Lea. Down below, on the other side of the river, the clustered chimneys and romantic-looking gables of an old house are seen, surrounded by the picturesque litter of a farmyard. This is another Water End, the fine old mansion where Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that clever and beautiful shrew, who by turns bullied and coaxed both her husband and Queen Anne, is said to have been born; but the best authorities do not seem to be very sure of this. Beyond, as we continue along the road, the towers and spires of Brocket Hall are seen over the tree-tops. After passing by this park, we desert the Hatfield road by turning off to the left; crossing the Lea again at Lemsford Mills, where we take a turning to the right. This leads presently to a fine broad highway, running right and left; none other, indeed, than the Great North Road. The right hand leads to Hatfield, the left to Welwyn, in which direction we now proceed, uphill, coming in full view of the more than Roman solidity of the great Welwyn Viaduct that carries the Great Northern Railway across the valley of the Mimram stream. It is a steep and dangerous descent into Welwyn; dangerous, that is to say, for the inexpert, for the rash, or the brakeless cyclist. For the rest it simply needs caution—plenty of it!

Welwyn is an old coaching village, and still keeps evidences of its past prosperity. These decayed old coaching towns and villages must needs be a great deal more interesting now than they ever were when in the full flush of their success. In the same way, doubtless, when railways are superseded, the romance of them will become suddenly apparent. Welwyn Church is a queer jumble of ancient and modern. The scorching cyclists who are the curse of the Great North Road are of the opinion that it is a nuisance, projecting as it does into the highway at the bend of the road. So much for the point of view! Dr. Young, the author of that doleful book the _Night Thoughts_, was rector here, and died in 1765. A constant companion of the high-living, punch-drinking, literary patrons of his age, it seems odd that he should have written such depressing thoughts over the midnight oil.

Being quiet tourists, we leave the Great North Road and its crowds of cyclists without a regret, and, turning to the right by the “White Hart,” come immediately along pleasant byways beside the Mimram. Here we pass under the great viaduct that for some time past has been blotting out the surrounding landscape, and providentially lose sight of it altogether. Crossing the stream just beyond, the park of Tewin Water is skirted, and a left-hand turning in the lane where the park ends brings us across the stream once more, and so to Tewin village, if one can call that a village whose chief characteristic is a plentiful lack of houses. There are legends at Tewin. In a meadow by the church may yet be seen the foundations of old Tewin House, demolished many years ago; and here, it is said, lived that old Lady Cathcart who was four times married, and four times left a widow. The first she wed to please her parents, the second for money, the third because of his title, and the fourth was put in her way “because the devil owed her a grudge and wanted to punish her for her sins.” This last venture of hers was disastrous, and probably prevented her attempting a fifth. It was in 1745 that she married Number Four—a Colonel Hugh Maguire, who took her to Ireland and kept her shut up for nearly twenty years; until, in fact, his death released her. Perhaps he had seen the posy ring she wore, which bore the pleasing sentiment—

“If I survive I will have five,”

and tried to spoil her chances. It was about 1765 that Colonel Maguire died; and the old lady lived until 1789, dying at the age of ninety-seven. Her ill-treatment would not appear to have crushed her, for she danced with the utmost spirit at the Welwyn Assembly Ball in her eightieth year.

Tewin churchyard contains the tomb of another remarkable lady, that of Lady Anne Grimston, who died in 1710. This is a substantial altar-tomb, whence have sprung seven ash trees. The story has it that Lady Anne Grimston was a sceptic, and on her deathbed wished that trees might grow out of her last resting-place if there was any truth in Christianity. Accordingly, here are the trees, sure enough; and they have broken the stonework and interweaved themselves with the iron railings in such a manner that they form a quite homogeneous mass. Many marvel-hunters come to see these champions of revealed religion; but it may shrewdly be suspected that this story, to the discredit of the lady, has been invented to account for the trees.

From Tewin the way to Hertingfordbury and Hertford lies through the lovely park of Panshanger, the seat of Earl Cowper. Hertingfordbury’s name is about the same size as the village. There are fifteen letters in the name and as many houses and cottages. Hertford town, where this run ends, has its picturesque corners, but the taint of Suburbia has long since leavened its old-time provincial air.

THE BACK WAY TO BRIGHTON

There is no lack of ways to Brighton. Every cyclist knows _the_ way. _The_ way is, of course, that by Croydon, Merstham, Horley, Crawley, Hand Cross, Albourne, and Bolney; but there are several ways of reaching London-on-Sea along good roads. The classic route already named measures 51½ miles, and, like every other way, is measured from the south side of Westminster Bridge. Let us, by way of a healthy change,—for change is the spice of life,—elect to go down by East Grinstead, Uckfield, and Lewes; a route not within the ken of the scorcher, and for that reason the more attractive. This “back way” is but six miles longer than the orthodox route, and has the advantage of being the most picturesque of all. It is identical with the other as far as Croydon and Purley. At that last-mentioned place, rural but a few years since, but no longer so, the route forks to the left, going past a compendious sign-post, large enough for an advertisement hoarding, whereon we may read as we run the notice: “To Riddlesdown, the prettiest spot in Surrey.” If we think that to be something quite apart from the County Council business of properly sign-posting the roads, and due rather to private enterprise, we shall be correct; for it points the way, as a matter of fact, to a paradise of bean-feasters, and was doubtless placed here by some enterprising caterer.

The days when local bodies shall be found charged with the æsthetic mission of guiding to pretty or historic scenes are not yet.

For five miles the road climbs up and up, on its way to the crest of the North Downs and Marden Park, past aforementioned Riddlesdown, where we joyfully leave the swings and the cocoa-nut shies behind, past Kenley and Warlingham stations, with the Downs on the left and a lovely valley on the right, and through Caterham, where there is a military depôt, and where at the ranges the “recruity” is taught the business of shooting. There are many Tommies in the making at Caterham, inchoate guardsmen who have not yet quite lost the shamble of the civilian or acquired the carriage of the soldier and the nice conduct of a swagger-stick.

On the height above Caterham we are on the crest of the North Downs, 777 feet above sea-level, and after admiring the widespread view southward, may reap the reward of the long climb in a breathless coast down two miles of road, past Marden Park, into Godstone, an old-world village rejoicing in the possession of a village green, a pond, and an ancient and picturesque hostelry, recently renamed the “Clayton Arms,” but really the “White Hart,” established in the reign of Richard the Second, whose badge it was.

Bane and antidote succeed on this route with unfailing regularity, and the hamlet of Godstone left behind, the frowning and tremendous ascent of Tilburstow Hill confronts the explorer, who may indeed find a slightly more circuitous and very much less hilly route for the next three miles by taking the left-hand road past Godstone Station, so called perhaps because it is three miles from Godstone and only one and three-quarters from Blindley Heath. This easier way falls into the treadmill route half a mile short of Blindley Heath, which is a modern hamlet arisen on a scene once famous, in Regency days, together with the adjoining Copthorne Common, for prize-fighting contests; notable among them, that famous battle in 1819 between the “Nonpareil” and the “Out-and-Outer,” for whose details the curious reader must be referred to the classic pages of _Boxiana_.

New Chapel, a hamlet beyond Blindley Heath, is succeeded in four miles by the imposing old town of East Grinstead, a stone-built town of Tudor architecture where assizes were formerly held. Interest is divided between the old “judge’s lodgings,” the noble quadrangular group of almshouses known as “Sackville College,” founded in 1609 by the then Earl of Dorset, and that ancient hostelry, the “Dorset Arms,” over whose doorway there has for some years past appeared a quotation from the present Poet Laureate’s “Fortunatus the Pessimist,” placed there by some landlord more appreciative of the poetry of Mr. Alfred Austin than is commonly the case. It reads—

“There is no office in this needful world,
But dignifies the doer if well done.”

The bearing of this “lies in the application on it,” as Captain Cuttle remarks. Whether it is intended to convey to the stranger that those of the “Dorset Arms” are all little emperors, from the landlord down to “boots,” or whether it be a hint that they do you well in the matter of accommodation, does not appear.

The explorer who elects to stay the night at East Grinstead, and so continue quietly down the road on the morrow, will find the town and neighbourhood delightful, and—what is more to the point for the jaded Londoner—restful as well. Should he, however, desire to push a little more forward, the smaller and still more quiet townlet of Uckfield, some fourteen miles onward, will fit his whim. From half a mile on the other side of East Grinstead we have been in Sussex, and now the scenery grows even bolder and the roads more lonely. At a mile and a half beyond the old assize town, in a hollow of the hills and beside a stream on the skirts of Ashdown Forest, the little settlement of Forest Row—a Bret Harte-ish, Californian-looking place—is gained. A path to the right, however, by the post-office, leads across meadows to something that California does not, but would be only too proud to, possess—the picturesque ruins of an ancient mansion. Brambletye House, which has sheltered no inmate since the close of the seventeenth century, when a Compton, the last of its owners, married a Spanish heiress and left his country for ever, to reside in the land of the Dons, is the subject of many legends and has given a title and a motive to a romance by one of the Smiths, authors of the _Rejected Addresses_.

The road, leaving Forest Row, makes its winding way up to Wych Cross and the high tableland of Ashdown Forest, and gives some occasion for the use of the cyclist’s muscles. For “forest,” let long, long plantations of oaks and firs, with gorsy and heathery stretches between, be understood, the whole very solitary. The ironstone of the district renders the road-surface hard and excellent for cycling along. This desirable district is left behind at Nutley, which we leave rapidly behind on the down grade, and so come to Maresfield, standing at a parting of the ways. The left-hand road leads to Uckfield’s long, descending street, whose chief feature is that quaint, old-fashioned coaching inn, the “Maid’s Head,” with an immensely long old ballroom provided with an odd minstrels’ gallery at one end. Uckfield was once a thriving place, and its handsome seventeenth and eighteenth century mansions along the one street proclaim that it possessed a cultured society of its own, quite distinct from its bucolic population. London on the one side and Brighton on the other, together with the swiftness and cheapness of modern travel, have filched away the social circle of Uckfield, alike with that of many another townlet.

Onward to Lewes, the county-town of Sussex, the distance is eight miles; the road beautiful and lonely, with but one village—that of Little Horsted—on the way, until quite close to Lewes itself, when the suburb village of Cliffe is passed. Lewes, with its castle, its memories of the great battle in the long ago, its quaint old churches and quainter old houses, piled up against one another along the steep streets, is a place not to be hurried through or properly seen in an hour. There is plenty to see in Lewes, which is a town of closely huddled together old brick houses, several churches, and a grim old castle keep, under which a railway tunnel is now pierced. There is a monument to that doughty seaman, Sir Nicholas Pelham, who died in 1559, to be seen in St. Michael’s Church. He successfully defended Seaford against the French, and the fact is recorded on his tomb, together with a horrible pun on his name—

“What time the French sought to have sack’t Sea-Foord,
This Pelham did repel ’em back aboord.”

The cautious cyclist does not put on too much pace in these precipitous ways. Rather, being well-advised, and with the promise of exertion to come, in the great wall of the South Downs that rises before him and seems to forbid farther progress in the direction of Brighton, does he halt and refresh awhile.

Only one village stands along the eight miles on to Brighton. Falmer is the name of it, and it is reached half-way from Lewes. Brighton itself is entered from the north-east, past the cavalry barracks and by its least attractive outskirts.

BARKING TO SOUTHEND AND SHEPPEY

Southend is a place that labours under many disadvantages. In certain circles, to acknowledge an intimate acquaintance with that salubrious and healthful resort is to be suspect of things unutterable in the Bank Holiday there and back for half a crown way; and the name of Southend—the “Sarfend” or “Soufend” of Cockney speech—certainly brings visions to the mind’s eye of crowded excursion trains or steamboats, where the holiday-making concertina is much in evidence, and the mingled odours of shrimps and water-cresses weight the air as heavily as the scent of the roses in the rose-garden of Omar Khayyam. I am self-condemned by these intimate touches, and indeed I know Southend, and know it in holiday-time and out. I have gone down by cycle and have come up with the concertina; have voyaged from the Port of London to the Port of Southend, and listened the while (however unwillingly) to the music of the band on board playing a once popular ditty called “Three pots a shilling,” or some such romantic title, until, overcome with the exertion, the rolling of the waves, or the effect of the beer they had imbibed—or by all three—they ceased, and a holy calm reigned where the strident cornet and the excruciating violins had but a moment before cast an added melancholy upon the sad sea waves.

Southend, however, is a very fine and a very picturesque place, and extraordinarily bracing; even though the sea of “Southend-on-Sea”—as it prefers to be styled—be indeed half composed of the filthy dregs of London. To it we will make our way by road.

It is the chief disability of this nearest of London’s seaside resorts that one must needs traverse the whole of the unlovely East End in order to reach it, and the cyclist who, like another Strafford, takes for his motto the proud word “thorough,” has no enviable journey before him in his effort to wheel all the way from town. From Whitechapel Church lies his way, down the Commercial and East India Dock roads, and on to Canning Town, where, having crossed the huge iron bridge that spans the Lea and certain of the docks, he finds himself in Essex and within eyeshot of such unpoetic landmarks as Plaistow Marsh, the Northern Outfall Sewer, and the distant pot-bellied gasometers of Beckton. Plaistow and East Ham now lie before him, and, passing these, he comes, across the little river Roding, into the old town of Barking, seven miles from Whitechapel Church and on the edge of the country.

There is a mingled agricultural and maritime air about the distant view of Barking that is not a little alluring; and foreground windmills and fields, and distant views of rust-red sails of barges, peering over ancient roofs, ill prepare the exploratory cyclist for the raw newness and meanness that many of its streets display on a closer acquaintance. Enshrined amid all these modern excrescences are the old Market House and the still older Abbey Gatehouse; this last the sole relic of the once rich and powerful Abbey of Barking, whose Abbess in far-off Saxon days owned a seat in the Witenagemote, the Parliament of that age. It is a mouldering old gateway, this of the old Abbesses of Barking, and oddly at variance with its surroundings; as indeed is the Elizabethan Market House, now the Town Hall. New and old at Barking jostle one another very curiously; the curfew bell still ringing, as a sentimental survival, during six months of every year, as it did in the bad old Norman days, eight hundred years ago.