Chapter I: AM quite sure that if any old Thetfordian were permitted to return to (3)

The church of Blickling was restored in 1874, after the death of the eighth Marquis of Lothian, to whose memory a most ornate altar-tomb, with marble recumbent portrait effigy and marble angels at head and foot, has been erected. The guide-books tell with reverence how it cost £5,000, and how it was sculptured by G. F. Watts, R.A.; but we need not necessarily be impressed, save, indeed, by such senseless squandering of money and by the appalling marmoreal solidity of those angels, who do by no means aid and abet the imagination in its conception of angels as ethereal beings. In short, if we resolutely refuse to be snobbishly affected by the cost of this monument and by the Royal Academical initials of its sculptor, we shall have no difficulty in perceiving it to be a gross failure. The last grotesque touch is in the selection of a marble streaked with brown veins. One such streak discolours one side of the effigy’s face, and gives it the dreadful appearance of one suffering from a loathsome skin disease.

Within this church are many pretty and fanciful epitaphs. Here you may read the verses on various members of the Hargraves, citizens of London and members of the Companies of Joiners and “Shoomakers,” and those of their children, untimely dead. “Sleep, sweetly sleep,” says one:

Sleep, sweetly sleep, slumber this night away,
The world at last shall burn, and then it will be day;

and by the light of that conflagration the youthful Hargrave is doubtless expected to rise, Phœnix-like, and soar into the realms of eternal bliss!

Consalus Hargrave died in his second year, 1626:—

Had he lived to be a man,
This inch had growne but to a span.
Nowe he is past all feare and paine
’Twere sin to wish him here againe.
Veiwe but the way by which we come,
Thou’lt say his is best that’s first at home.

Here, too, are some Boleyn memorials, among them a brass to an Anna Boleyn, who died in childhood in 1476. She was aunt to the historical Anne.

A very striking feature in this church is the altar-tomb of the Cleres, whose armorial bearings, with those of the distinguished families with whom they claimed to be allied, are gorgeously repeated very many times around the four sides of the monument. It is a work of the Jacobean period, and retrospectively includes the old coats of alliances as far back as the eleventh century. Modern research proves most of these claims to be deliberately false.

Among the many Hobarts who lie in the vaults beneath Blickling church is one who met with a very tragical end. This is that Sir Henry Hobart, Bart., who was knighted by Charles II. in 1671, on that monarch’s progress through Norfolk, after having been entertained with princely magnificence at Blickling Hall. Sir Henry was no thick-and-thin supporter of the Stuarts, for he fought for King William against James II. at the Battle of the Boyne, and when Dutch William’s rule was established, settled down here at his Norfolk home, where he might have lived to a green old age, had it not been for his overbearing temper. It was in 1698, in a dispute over an election in which he had borne a losing part, that Sir Henry Hobart’s career was cut short. He resented some expressions of opinion used by a neighbouring gentleman, Mr. Oliver le Neve, and challenged him to a duel. Hobart had the reputation of being one of the most accomplished swordsmen of his day, and doubtless expected to do Le Neve’s business at that spot on Cawston Heath where the meeting was arranged to take place. Le Neve was notoriously a bad swordsman, and probably made his will and went forth to that encounter never hoping to return; but the conflict had an unexpected result. Hobart drew first blood, running his sword through his adversary’s arm, but immediately afterwards fell, mortally wounded, with a thrust in the stomach, of which he died the next day, Sunday, August 21st, 1698. He fell not so much from any unwonted skill on Le Neve’s part as from the circumstance that Le Neve was a left-handed man and his sword-play difficult to follow. Le Neve had to fly the country for a time; not in fear of the law, which then countenanced the duello, but from the threatened vengeance of the powerful Hobart clan. The spot where the duel was fought is some four miles from Blickling. Cawston Heath has long been enclosed and brought under cultivation, but the place is marked by a rude stone pillar surmounted by an urn and simply inscribed with the letters “H.H.” This monument stands within a dense strip of plantation beside the Norwich and Holt road, close to where it is crossed by the road between Aylsham and Cawston. Adjoining the place is an old coaching hostelry—the “Woodrow” inn—with a curious gallows sign spanning the highway

LI

FROM Aylsham to Cromer is little more than ten miles; downhill from Aylsham town to the levels at Ingworth, whose name, meaning the “meadow village,” illustrates that it is, in fact, set down beside the water-meads bordering the river Bure. Ingworth has a dilapidated church picturesquely overlooking the road from a little hillock, with only the lower part of its round tower left.

Erpingham church is presently seen, away to the left, standing lonely in the ploughlands, without any village, and on the right hand an avenue leads to Lord Suffield’s place, Gunton Park. Hanworth is out of sight, but the toll-house at Hanworth Corner, now converted into a post office, argues its near neighbourhood. To this succeeds Roughton, where a pond, a scrubby piece of common, another round-towered church, and a comfortable homely inn comprise the salient features of the place.

The last miles into Cromer from Roughton wear a wind-swept appearance. The hedgerow trees that have hitherto stood boldly erect now begin to cower and grow in contorted shapes, all with one general inclination away from the prevalent easterly gales of winter and bitter spring. The physical aspect of the country also changes. From the long levels and the gentle undulations we come to the exposed table-land of Roughton Common, the gorse and bracken-grown land around Crossdale Street, and the gravelly tumbled ups and downs of Felbrigg. We seem to have exchanged the suavities of Norfolk for the bold and picturesque ruggedness of the Scottish littoral.

Felbrigg, whose name seems to have been brought from Denmark by the early piratical settlers from that country, in fond remembrance of their own Felborg, lies on a slip road into Cromer, beside the main highway, and is worth notice, not merely on account of this heathy picturesqueness, like that of a sublimated Hampstead Heath, innocent of houses, Cockneys, and County Council notice-boards, but by reason of its ancient Hall and the Windhams who for centuries owned the property. The Windhams came originally from Wymondham in the fifteenth century, and at first spelled their name in precisely the same way as that of the town. They replaced the ancient knightly family of De Felbrigge, whose stately monuments in brass still remain on the pavements of the church. There is the brass to Simon de Felbrigge, 1351, and the particularly fine one to a Sir Simon, who died in 1443, and is represented here as a Knight of the Garter and Standard-Bearer to Richard II. The ancient home of the Felbrigges was rebuilt by Windhams in a mixed Jacobean and Dutch style, and is a stately residence deeply bowered in a densely wooded Park. The pierced parapet inscription, “Gloria Deo in Excelsis,” seen against the sky, is earnest of the piety of the Windhams of that time.

The Windhams—the real Windhams, for the later ones were merely Lukins, who assumed the name on inheriting the property—ended with William Windham, the statesman, who, having played an enlightened and patriotic part as Secretary for War under Pitt from 1794 to 1801, and as Secretary for War and the Colonies in Lord Grenville’s Administration of 1806, died in 1810. With him ended the high reputation of that family, and although romance of a kind speedily made the name better known all over England than ever it had been before, it was a romance that conferred notoriety rather than fame.

Felbrigg does not merely _look_ romantic: every circumstance of latter-day romance attaches to that noble Hall, those green o’er-arching glades. It is true that the story is of an ignoble and sordid type, but what it lacks in sweetness and good savour it fully makes up for in the matter of human interest. It is the way of latter-day romance to be unsavoury, and the story of Felbrigg Hall and “Mad Windham,” the talk of England in the early sixties, and still vividly recollected in Norfolk, reeked with foulness beyond the common run of public washings of dirty linen.

It was a tale of family degeneracy, in which the honoured name of Windham should, strictly speaking, have had no part. When the famous statesman died, the historic property went to his nephew, William Howe Lukin, who assumed the name of Windham, and married Lady Sophia Hervey, sister of the Marquis of Bristol. In November, 1854, the self-styled William Howe “Windham” died, leaving a widow and an only son, William Frederick, at that time fourteen years of age, and already, at Eton and elsewhere, an ill-disposed and uncontrollable buffoon and vicious idiot. Among the guardians of this promising heir to the name and lands of the Windhams were his mother and his uncle, General Windham, whose actions and motives were so severely and unjustly criticised by the Radical press and the lower orders in course of the notorious “Windham Trial.”

William Frederick Windham would, in the ordinary course, have come of age and succeeded to his inheritance, without question, in 1861; but his conduct as a boy and as a growing man was so extraordinary and outrageous that it was reluctantly decided by General Windham and others to petition for a judicial inquiry into the state of mind of this heir, who, they claimed—and after-events fully supported that claim—could not be safely entrusted with the management of his own affairs.

The Commission “_de Lunatico Inquirendo_,” popularly known as the “Windham Trial,” granted to the petitioners, began on December 16th, 1861, and lasted thirty-four days. Extraordinary interest was taken in the proceedings, and even now the pamphlets printed and sold by thousands, containing the dreadful evidence taken in those thirty-four days, may be occasionally met with in the cottage homes of Norfolk.

According to the opening statement, the alleged lunatic would, on coming of age, have been entitled to Felbrigg Hall and rents of £3,100 per annum, subject to the deductions of an annuity of £1,500 for his mother and £350 for upkeep of property. In all, he would have enjoyed an income of about £1,300, to be increased by 1869 to between £4,000 and £5,000, on succession to the neighbouring Hanworth estates. The object of the petitioners seeking to have their ward adjudged incapable of managing his own affairs was not to deprive him of liberty, but merely to procure legal sanction of their proposal for themselves to be made guardians of the property during his lifetime, in the interests of the lunatic himself, who was not, and had never been, according to their contention, a sane and reasoning human being. To support that contention, they made, by the opening statement of counsel, and in the evidence of troops of witnesses, a long series of allegations, showing that he had exhibited simple imbecility in early childhood, and that with his physical growth his mental powers had continually decayed. The cold, dispassionate opening speech of counsel for the petitioners, recounting Windham’s idiotcies, still, even though the actors in that drama are now all dead, makes the reader shiver at its businesslike unfolding of a nature scarce removed from that of a beast. Sent to Eton, he was a buffoon there, and commonly known as “Mad Windham.” His indescribable habits led to his being early removed and placed under the care of a long succession of tutors, none of whom could make anything of him, and threw up the impossible task, or were relieved of it, one after another. Many testified in court that he was incapable of reasoning, addicted to low associates, filthy and profane language, and wanton and capricious cruelty to animals. He would gorge his food, feeding without the aid of knife and fork, and, eating until he was sick, would begin again, like a dog. This extraordinary conduct was not caused by drink, for, among all his failings, drunkenness was not one. His violent and capricious temper had led to extraordinary scenes. At an evening party he had rushed at a gentleman whom he had never before seen and to whom he had not spoken a word, and, shrieking like a wild Indian, had pinned him to the wall by his whiskers. He was exceptionally and consistently rude and offensive to ladies, and delighted to tear their clothes and make grimaces at them. He could not follow out any train of thought, and acted from one minute to another without reference to previous actions, becoming the laughing-stock of servants. He would throw money away in the streets, and laugh when saner people scrambled for it; would fondle a horse one moment and thrash it unmercifully the next. These actions, said counsel, could not be those of a person enjoying reasonable use of his faculties, but there was worse to come. It was only with reluctance General Windham was obliged to bring these painful affairs of his unhappy nephew into the light of publicity; but there was no other course, for his vile associates had persuaded him that all the efforts being made to prevent his moral, physical, and financial ruin were only part of a scheme by his uncle to deprive him of his liberty and property. That it was not so might be at once explained by the statement that, as a matter of fact, whichever way the inquiry resulted, or whatever happened to his nephew, in no case would General Windham be the heir.

Witnesses were then called who bore out the opening statement, and added a great deal more. Some told how Windham would at times pretend to be a fireman, and, dressing in character, go about in a devastating manner with an axe and chop down doors and smash windows. At other times the fancy took him to act the part of a railway guard. With uniform made for the character, he would frequent railway platforms, blow a whistle, and wave a flag. Once, performing these pranks, he nearly caused a railway disaster. At other times he would make off with passengers’ luggage. Altogether, it will be conceded, from the public, as well as from the family, point of view, he should have been put under restraint.

But the real compelling cause of the action was the connection he had recently formed with a woman whom he had picked up in London, during Ascot week. Agnes Willoughby, _alias_ Rogers, in the words of counsel, “was not the chastest of the chaste; her favours in love-affairs were not few; she was known to the police.” On August 30th, 1861, having come of age on the 9th, he married her and settled £800 a year on her, to be increased in 1869 to £1,500. She had been, up to that time, living with a man named Roberts, and after the marriage the three lived together.

The action was defended by Windham and his associates, who, in the event of his being declared a lunatic, would have lost the rich harvest of plunder they were reaping. A pitiful feature of the case, and one tending to prejudice the public against the petitioners, was that Windham’s mother, naturally unwilling to see her son branded as a madman, gave evidence for him.

“What,” asked Pilate, “what is truth?” Of the more than 150 witnesses called during the progress of the case, a number declared they had never noticed any peculiarity about Windham, save “perhaps he was exceedingly high-spirited. He always behaved like a gentleman.” Yet his career forbids us to believe anything of the kind.

It did not take the special jury of twenty-four “good men and true” very long to deliberate upon the concluding speeches of counsel. In half an hour they returned, with the astonishing verdict, “That Mr. Windham is of sound mind and capable of taking care of himself and his affairs.” This announcement was received with cheers.

Both the verdict and its public reception reflect the feeling of the time on questions of lunacy. The terrible scandals and revelations of sane persons having in the past been “put away” by relatives for sake of gain were fresh in the public mind, and no conceivable evidence short of that of homicidal mania would have sufficed for a jury at that period. Windham was left to his own devices. The costs of the action, coming out of his estate, amounted to £20,000, and with the extravagance and robbery that went on, unchecked, around him, speedily embarrassed the unhappy creature. The vile parasites of the woman he had married had sole control. They even appeared at Felbrigg, and gave orders for the valuable timber to be cut down and sold. His wife, who had never made a secret of the fact that she loathed him, went off with some one else; but Windham, who in a lucid moment had brought divorce proceedings against her, condoned the offence, and she returned for just as long as there was any plunder to be obtained from the wreck of his fortunes. Later, she was living with a man named Jack Abel, who then kept a public-house, the “Lord Camden” (still standing) in Charing Cross, Norwich. Abel was an unscrupulous, but successful horse-dealer, who had, in earlier years, been in league with a gang of smugglers trading between Wells and Thetford, and supplied the horses carrying their illicit merchandise.

Meanwhile, Windham was throwing away money and property with both hands. A passing mania for coaching led him to set up a Norwich and Cromer coach, which became the terror of the countryside. To travel in or on “Mad Windham’s” coach, or to be on the road when it came past, was equally hazardous, and a respected Norfolk cleric still recalls his solitary encounter with the maniac in a cloud of dust, with four rearing horses, and a stentorian voice, yelling, “Out of the way, d——n your eyes!”

There was every element of uncertainty about “Mad Windham’s” coach. It was uncertain as to whether he would not suddenly decide to go to Yarmouth instead, and equally uncertain whether, wherever it was, you would get there safely; but, once there, certitude of a sort was reached, in your unalterable determination not to return by him, and, if needs were, to _walk_ back.

The story of his financial expedients is a long one, but it ended in July, 1864, with final and irrevocable bankruptcy. He had completely dissipated the residue of his extensive property, and was dependent upon an allowance made by his uncle, whose efforts to save him from himself had met with such misrepresentation. To keep him employed and out of mischief, he was induced to accept a situation at £1 a week, to drive the “Express,” Norwich and Cromer coach; and when that enterprise failed—chiefly, we may suppose, because _he_ drove it, and because of an absurd prejudice the passengers cherished against acquiring broken necks—it was kept on the road solely for the same purpose; until, indeed, he fell in love for the hundredth time. On this occasion it was a Norwich barmaid who had caught his fancy. She thought coaching “low,” and he gave it up, to please her.

The poor fool was drawing to his end. A few weeks longer of a miserable existence at the “Norfolk Hotel,” where he had one solitary room, and it was all over. He died there, after a few hours’ illness, February 2nd, 1866. A clot of blood on the lung cut his career short, in his twenty-sixth year. His body was removed to Cromer, and thence to the family vault at Felbrigg, where it lies among the real Windhams and the sham. Tom Saul, an old coachman, together with a few cronies of the Norfolk Tap, were the mourners.

Felbrigg had already passed out of the family, and had been purchased by a man whose career was itself a romance.

John Kitton, who bought the estate and the Hall as they stood, including the furniture, library, and the entire appointments of the house, had been a grocer in a small way of business—one may almost say he had owned a small chandler’s shop—in Norwich. His rise dated from a small speculation in wheat shipped from Russia on the eve of the Crimean War. By the time it had reached these shores the price of grain had become enormously enhanced, and he netted a very handsome profit. His next venture, of sending out a heavy shipment of oil-cake to the Crimea, was equally successful, and laid a solid basis for the great fortune this clever man of business rapidly acquired. The sum he is stated to have given, in one cheque, for Felbrigg, “lock, stock, and barrel,” when the estate was sold under “Mad Windham’s” bankruptcy, was £137,000. He then changed his name to Ketton, and set up as a country squire. He died, aged sixty-one, in 1872.

When Augustus Hare visited Felbrigg in 1885, he found Ketton’s daughters had adopted the Windhams and all their heirlooms and traditions, as though they were their very own. Nothing whatever had been removed at the sale, and, as a matter of fact, the ancient family portraits and the statesman’s library are here, even now. Said Miss Ketton: “Mr. Windham comes every night to look after his favourite books in the library. He goes straight to the shelves where they are: we hear him moving the tables and the chairs about; we never disturb him, though, for we intend to be ghosts ourselves some day, and to come about the old place, just as he does”—so that Felbrigg Hall bids fair to become a congested area, in the spookish sort

LII

THERE can be few more delightful woodlands than those of Felbrigg, and no more romantic approach to a seaside than that of the woodland road which goes, as though tunnelled through the trees, steeply down from Felbrigg’s height to Cromer’s level. In the distance, down there, you see the illimitable sea, Cromer’s great church tower standing up against it, and the houses of the town clustered around—a little group set in a vast expanse of salt water and green fields. This is the most delightful way into Cromer, but we may not take it. Like Moses, permitted merely to look upon the Promised Land, we must only gaze upon that road and retrace our route to Roughton, there to pick up the coach-road, by no means so delightful and prepossessing an entrance to Cromer.

It is, however, only comparatively that this entrance is to be despised. It is true it leads past the railway station and a lengthy line of suburbs, down a long gradient, with houses instead of seascape in front of you; but if, indeed, everything be newly created and baldly uninteresting, at least there in nothing sordidly unprosperous in view, and everything is spick-and-span, even to the road-paving, which in every street in Cromer is composed of asphalte. Almost every one of those smart red-brick villas is of the boarding-house order, and only when the very centre of the town is reached, by the church, do the shops commence.

Cromer, until modern times a small fishing village, but now grown to the proud estate of a fashionable, expensive, and exclusive seaside resort, was once a portion of the town of Shipden, and lay quite half a mile distant from the sea. “Shipedana” and “Seepedene,” the names by which Shipden is referred to in the “Domesday Book,” remind us that Shipden was not necessarily merely a place of ships, but that the name perhaps came originally from Anglo-Saxon words meaning a sheep pasture. Vague accounts still tell how Shipden was suddenly destroyed by a violent storm and eruption of the sea in the reign of Henry IV., and half a mile out to sea is still visible, at exceptionally low tides, the mass of flint walling called the “Church Rock,” said to be the remains of Shipden church. A Yarmouth excursion steamer was wrecked on it in the summer of 1888.

Cromer was spoken of in 1374, and again in 1382, as “Crowmere.” Although it thus, by the disappearance of Shipden, was thrust into the foremost place, it never attained the size of that unfortunate town. The sea was advancing too surely for a repetition of Shipden’s fate to be dared. In 1551, if we may judge from the petition then presented to the Privy Council, Cromer was in sore case:—

“It is situate and adjoining so near the sees that of late in our memorye, by the rages and surges of the same sees, the number of a grete sort of houses knowen by us have been swallowed uppe and drownded. The inhabitants hathe to their grete and importunate charges defended the same by making of grete peers, and dayle put to insatiable charges scharse and onetheable to be borne of the same inhabitants.”

This anxiety seems to have made havoc with their literary composition. A direct result of this petition was the grant, thirty years later, of a licence to levy dues upon wheat, barley, and malt, the revenue from them to be applied in defending the town from the sea; but when Taylor, the “Water Poet,” visited Cromer on his “Very Merry—Wherry—Ferry Voyage” round the coast in 1623, the sea was still encroaching, and he describes the place in doleful strain:—

It is an ancient market-town that stands
Upon a lofty cliff of mould’ring sands;
The sea against the cliffs doth daily beat,
And every tide into the land doth eat.
The town is poor, unable by expense,
Against the raging seas to make defence,
And every day it eateth further in,
Still waiting, washing down the sand doth run.
A goodly church stands on these brittle grounds,
Not many fairer in Great Britain’s bounds;
And if the sea shall swallow it, as some fear,
’Tis not ten thousand pounds the like could rear.

Very true; but the encroaching ocean has not made such great headway since then as might have been expected from past history, and from the soft nature of the cliffs on whose crest the town stands. Those cliffs, 100 feet high, are composed of sand, gravel, and clay, made rotten by landsprings, and only saved from further decay in front of the town by heavy concrete walls.

The church, of whose grandeur Taylor speaks so highly, is the only building in Cromer of any age, and is the town’s one land and sea mark. There is no view of Cromer which does not include its great tower, rising to a height of 159 feet, and the very inevitableness of it is apt at last to change the admiration of a first glimpse into the intolerable boredom created by photographic views from every conceivable and inconceivable point. This great and beautiful building, in the lofty and airy Perpendicular style, built shortly after Shipden was destroyed, owes its present perfect state of repair to the restoration, begun in 1863. Before that work was undertaken, the chancel was a roofless ruin, and had been in that condition ever since 1681, when it was purposely destroyed with gun-powder. The discredit of this act of vandalism, given by popular legend to Cromwell, is an injustice to the Lord Protector. The real vandal was the Rev. Thomas Gill, Rector of Ingworth, lessee of the great tithes under the Bishop of Ely. As lessee, an obligation was laid upon him to keep the chancel in repair, and to save himself expense he obtained permission to destroy it.

The church and its well-kept churchyard, in the very centre of the little town, give the place all the dignity of a cathedral city. Modern commercial buildings, many-storeyed and lofty, are, however, detracting something from the apparent height and great bulk of the church. The old rustic stones in the churchyard still remain, and look strange in the unwonted urban modernity of their surroundings: doubtless some “improving” hand will shortly away with them. Among these simple memorials one may see, prominently displayed, that of five mariners, part of the crew of the _Trent_, of North Shields, who were drowned on Cromer beach in the great storm of February, 1836; while a memorial to one John Nurse, who left the world without regret, says:—

Farewell, Vain World,
I’ve seen enough of the,
& careless I am what you
Can say or do to me.
I fear no threats from
An infernal crew;
My day is past, and I bid
The world “Adieu.”

LIII

IT was somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century, contemporaneously with the general rise of seaside resorts, that the invigorating air of Cromer first began to attract attention, and so early as 1806 an anonymous visitor, seeking health here, published _Cromer: a Descriptive Poem_, a wearisome production of several hundred lines, in blank—very blank—verse. The reader shall be spared his rhapsodies on the sea, but his circuitous description of a taxed cart, typical of his literary method, is not without its unconscious humour:—

Quiet the steady _Sociable_ proceeds,
No danger in its course, and in the rear
The humbler vehicle, that bears displayed,
In letters legible to ev’ry eye,
The stamp of fiscal avarice.

If brevity be, indeed, the soul of wit, how witless this laboured effort!

If our poet could but return and his poem were to do again, he would have to wrestle with very changed conditions, and would probably give us something like this:—

Noisy, th’ effluvious motor-car appears,
Throbbing and shaking like a jelly:
Smelling to Heaven in pestiferous clouds
Of ill-combusted petrol, blue and beastly.
Danger in its course of twenty miles
An hour, and in the rear a frightened horse
And battered trap. Wrecking the shops,
Frightening the old ladies, upsetting the Bath chairs,
Crumpling up the casual cyclist,
And, generally, playing the very deuce
With everything, it goes. Its licence plates
Boldly inscribed, designed by law to be
Legible to ev’ry eye, artfully obscured
With wraps and rugs. Give me my gun.

And so forth. There is room for lengthy eloquence on the subject.

Cromer has in these later years become the Motor Cad’s Paradise. Here are the gorgeous “hotels” beloved of his little soul, and here the good roads he can render dangerous to others with little risk to himself.

A wide gulf separates the Cromer of that poet’s time and ours, but the change that has taken place is quite recent, and astonishingly sudden. At the close of Georgian days a certain vogue had been established, and a Bath House was built under the cliff. This was washed away during the storm and high tide in 1836, but the “Bath Hotel” of that period, stuccoed, white-painted, midway between cliff-top and sea, remains, together with a few of the early Victorian bay-windowed seaside lodging-houses, small but comfortable, that line the narrow streets near the cliffs’ edge. It was following this great storm of 1836 that the first of Cromer’s defensive sea-walls was built; but the greater storm of 1845 wrecked it and washed away the timber jetty, built in 1822, at a cost of £1,400. What Cromer was like at this period may be judged from the illustration, which clearly shows how, from the picturesque point of view, it has been spoiled.

In those days before railways, sea-borne goods came cheapest to Cromer, on whose sands the cargo-boats of small burden were beached and unloaded between tides. The few houses for the accommodation of summer visitors had not overshadowed the fisher-village, and the narrow streets remained paved, as from time immemorial they had been, with cobble-stones. The great people, locally, of that period were the allied families of Gurneys, Buxtons, and Hoares, of whom the few petty shopkeepers stood so greatly in awe that no visitors could count upon being able to purchase anything until those tradesfolk had made quite certain those grand seigneurs were not likely to require the articles in demand. The railway, which altered all this, was long kept away by the exclusives, but it came at last, and, backed by the sentimental gush of Mr. Clement Scott’s writings on what he was pleased to call “Poppyland,” spoiled Cromer. The public read the articles on “Poppyland,” and fell all over the place. There are those—and among them the present writer—who are sick of the name of “Poppyland,” and for whom Overstrand is spoiled by that much-quoted poem, the “Garden of Sleep,” on which the Great Eastern Railway guide-book writers, and the manufacturers of pictorial post-cards have traded, in and out of season.

The evolution of Cromer from fisher-village to fashionable resort was well on the way in 1892, when Sir Evelyn Baring, who in 1841 was born at the early nineteenth century mansion called Cromer Hall, took the title of Cromer on his being created a Viscount; and the process was completed in the summer of 1901, when the pleasure Pier, constructed at a cost of £43,000, was opened. It replaced the wooden Jetty built at a cost of £6,000, after the storm of 1845, and battered to pieces in 1897. The new Pier, ornamental, and rather alien in appearance, is evidence of Cromer’s determination to be select and to stand aloof from popular vulgarities. Here those who seek the automatic machine shall not find, and no stalls, and no advertisements are permitted. At Cromer, in fact, the higher vulgarity is cultivated, just as at Yarmouth you plumb the depths of the lower variety. The tripper, holiday-making at Yarmouth, who comes over to see what Cromer is like, and finds no whelk and oyster stalls, and no popular entertainments on the sands, thinks it dull; and the average man, wandering along the Lighthouse cliffs in danger of having an eye knocked out by the wealthy and selfish vulgarians who practise golf there, is prone to consider Cromer a fine place, except for the people who frequent it, and for whose benefit the giant hotels facing the sea have been built, and still are building.

Looking upwards from the Pier, you see a long line of these great caravanserai, skirting the cliff-top. The Hôtel de Paris, the Hôtel Métropole, and others with titles equally English, astonish the beholder, not only with their appearance on what was until recently the rural Norfolk coast, but also with the rashness that reared such heavy loads of bricks on a seaboard so notoriously storm-swept and on the crest of crumbling cliffs. It does not need a prophet of very great prescience to declare that either disaster must overtake them or the cliffs must, from time to time, be strengthened at enormous cost, to bear the weight. Cromer has been fortunate not to have suffered so much as thought inevitable three hundred years ago, but the cliffs on either side have been eaten away, and have lately suffered, to such an extent, that the land it stands upon will soon be a promontory, in advance of the general coast-line, and must accordingly be more exposed.

Meanwhile, the many-towered steep, whose sky-line is so picturesquely serrated with cupolas and spires, is wonderfully effective when viewed from the beach on some kindly day of hazy effects, when the raw edges of those fire-new hotels are softened down, and imagination is given a chance. _Then_ the sea-front of Cromer is even more charming than it was in Creswick’s time, and has something of the Arabian Nights order of lordliness.

Such is Cromer, whose population is mounting up to 4,000 souls. The beauty of its situation is unquestionable, the purity and bracing qualities of its air proverbial, and the hardiness of its fishermen well known. But (to the great joy of the Great Eastern Railway) it is no longer unspotted from the world, and has become modish and sophisticated. It is a very pretty mode and a coquettish sophistication, and if indeed you do very speedily exhaust Cromer itself—why, then the magnificent _hinterland_ of wild tumbled hills and dark fir-woods is well-nigh inexhaustible. But the solitude and the natural life of the seaboard villages are extinct, even as are those features of Cromer. Summer existence there is like that of the midges and butterflies; gay, without care.

In winter, however, when the holiday folk are gone, its modern status lies heavy, like a shadow, on one: for then the whole place, given over, body and soul, to providing for visitors, is in doleful dumps. This is the dark reverse of that bright summer picture, and the fact that Cromer’s season is only of eight or ten weeks’ duration means many little domestic miseries. To stand in the empty October streets and meet the last bathing machine being drawn up from the deserted beach to winter quarters; to see the restaurants and tea-shops without customers, and cards offering rooms to let in most of the houses, is to realise that a fisher-village on an open coast, without river or harbour, and consequently no trade, cannot suddenly become a resort without a tragical side to its comedy. I stand on the cliff-top as night shuts down over the North Sea, and I have the place wholly to myself. The hotels have switched on their electric lights, but those rooms, so gay and crowded in August, are now for the most part empty. I am sorry for the Cromer that was, and much more sorry for the Cromer that is.

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INDEX

Albemarle, 6th Earl of, 201, 220-224

Ambresbury Banks, 55

Archer, Fred, 142-144, 165

Attleborough, 256-61, 264, 265-266

—— Mere, 263

Audley End, 92, 96-102

Aylsham, 315, 316, 326

Balsham Ditch, 116, 123

Barnham, 187-189

Barton Mills, 1, 11, 190, 193, 194, 197, 204

Bishop’s Stortford, 13, 14, 15, 17, 20, 57-66

Blickling, 315, 317-324

—— Hall, 317-322

Bourn Bridge, 121

Boy’s Grave, The, 168

Brent Ditch, 116, 121

Bridgeham, 245

—— High Tree, 245

Bure, River, 326

Bury St. Edmunds, 1, 11, 12, 167, 174-186, 264

Cam, River, 8, 102, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118

Cambridge Heath, 27, 28

Cawston Heath, 325

Chunk Harvey’s Grave, 215

Clapton, Lower, 32, 34

—— Upper, 35, 37

Coaches:—
Diligence (Norwich), 3
Expedition (Norwich), 4-9, 297
Express (Norwich and Cromer), 337
Flying Machine (Norwich), 3
Machine (Norwich), 3
Magnet (Norwich), 7-11, 206, 297
Norwich Mail (by Bury and Thetford), 11, 12, 43, 183, 294
Old Stortford (Bishop’s Stortford and London), 13, 65
Phenomenon, or Phenomena (Norwich), 12
Post Coach (Norwich), 3, 297
Safety (Norwich), 12
Stortford (Bishop’s Stortford and London), 66
Telegraph (Norwich), 11, 12
—— (Saffron Walden and London), 13
Unicorn (Norwich and Cromer), 294

Coaching, 12-14, 34, 53, 138, 183, 206, 220-223, 288, 294-297, 336

Coaching Notabilities:—
Gilbey, Henry, 65
Horne, Benjamin Worthy, 12
Low, William, 65
Nelson, Robert, 12

Cringleford, 272, 287-291

Cromer, 1, 2, 339-254

Crossdale Street, 328

Culford Park, 186

Deadman’s Slade, 44

“Deserted Railway,” The, 119-121, 123

Devil’s Ditch, 49, 116, 120, 124-129, 130, 133, 156, 258

Devil’s Punch Bowl, 247

Duleep Singh, Maharajah of Lahore, 201, 204, 206

East Wretham, 250

Eaton, 291

Edmund, Saint, 175, 176, 178, 211, 234, 256

Elveden, 11, 187, 188, 189, 190, 198-206

—— Gap, 206, 207

Epping, 14, 15, 18, 54

—— Forest, 14, 34, 38, 39, 43-48, 52-55

Erpingham, 321, 327

Euston, 187

Exning, 116, 130

Felbrigg, 328-339

Fleam Dyke, 116, 123

Folly Hill, 169-171

Fornham St. Geneviève, 185, 186

—— —— Martin, 185

Frampton, Tregonwell, 151

Gibbs, Capt. John, 133, 258

Gilbey, Sir Walter, Bart., 65, 66

Great Chesterford, 2, 8, 14, 15, 17, 113, 116, 117-119

Gwynne, Nell, 18, 91, 131

Hackney, 28-33

—— Road, 27-29

Hanworth, 327

Hargham, 206, 255

Harlow, 55

Hethersett, 272, 283-287

Hevingham, 315

High Beech, 44, 52

“Highflyer,” the Racehorse, 138

Highway Act of 1555, 16

Highway-men, 14, 28, 47-54, 139, 207, 244, 250, 260

Hockerill, 12, 57, 66-69

Horsham St. Faith, 309-311

Iceni, The, 114, 123, 127-129, 130

_Iciani_, Great Chesterford, 117

Icknield Way, The, 114-118, 187-189, 215, 231

Ingham, 186

Ingworth, 326

Inns (mentioned at length):—
Angel, Bury St. Edmunds, 180-183
Bell, Thetford, 208, 220-224
Belle Sauvage, Ludgate Hill, 12
Black Boys, Aylsham, 316
Blue Boar, Whitechapel, 11
Boar and Castle, Oxford Street, 12
Bull, Bishopsgate Street, 2, 4, 7, 8, 11
—— Whitechapel, 12, 66
Bull and Mouth, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, 12
Cock, Attleborough, 259
Cross Keys, Wood Street, 11
Crown, Great Chesterford, 118
—— Hockerill, 66
Eagle, Snaresbrook, 43
Flower Pot, Bishopsgate Street, 11
Golden Cross, Charing Cross, 11, 12
Green Dragon, Wymondham, 278
Horns, Newport, 18, 91
King’s Arms, Bourn Bridge, 121
King’s Head, Norwich, 11, 294
Maid’s Head, Norwich, 294
Norfolk Hotel, Norwich, 337
Rampant Horse, Norwich, 8, 294
Red Lion, Eaton, 292
Rutland Arms, Newmarket, 152-155
Sun, Saffron Walden, 104
Swan-with-two-Necks, Lad Lane, 3
Waggon and Horses, Great Chesterford, 118
Wake Arms, Epping Forest, 38, 54
White Bear, Stansted Street, 66, 71, 74
—— Hart, Newmarket, 146-149
—— Horse, Fetter Lane, 3, 4, 11
—— —— Little Saxham, 172
—— Swan, Norwich, 8, 11, 12, 297-299
Woodrow Inn, Cawston Heath, 325

Jockey Club, 136, 139

Kennett, River, 171, 191

Kentford, 116, 171

Kett’s Rebellion, 271-278, 284

King’s Gate, Holborn, 16

Knott’s Green, 38

Lark, River, 116, 185, 193, 197

Larlingford, 252, 262

Lea, River, 19, 32, 38

—— Bridge Road, 32-38

Leyton, 33, 36, 39

Leytonstone, 34

Littlebury, 112

Little Chesterford, 113

Little Saxham, 172-174

“London Lane,” 18, 84, 85

Loughton, 44

Lower Clapton, 32, 34

“Mad Windham,” 329-339

“Mag’s Mount,” 122, 123

Marman’s Grave, 188

Marsham, 315

Mildenhall, 107, 193-197

Morley St. Peter, 272

Newmarket, 1, 2, 13, 14, 15, 17, 23, 49, 98, 115, 116, 119, 120,
124-166

—— Heath, 50, 98, 107, 122, 124-137, 140, 144, 157-161, 190, 191

Newport, 16, 18, 69, 81-94

Newton St. Faith, 310

Norton, Thomas (“Waymaker” to James I.), 15

—— Folgate, 26

Norwich, 1, 2, 3, 8, 11, 12, 14, 116, 167, 266, 273-278, 292-309

Old-time Travellers:—
Charles II., 16, 18-25, 83
Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany, 17
Evelyn, John, 17, 131
John, King, 179
Kemp, Will, 264-266, 293
Pepys, Samuel, 16, 101
Winwood, Mr. Secretary, 15

Ouse, River, “Lesser,” “Little,” or “Upper,” 189, 208, 209, 215, 233

Paine, Tom, 236-243

Pampisford, 116, 121

—— Ditch, 116, 121

Peddar’s Way, 246, 248-250

Pedestrians:—
Barclay, Captain Robert, of Ury, 133-135
Bartley, Robert, 235
Digby, Lord, 133
Wood, Abraham, 135

Potter Street, 55

Quendon, 80

Railways, 13, 66, 191, 192, 284

—— Great Eastern, 14, 66, 348

—— Newmarket and Chesterford, 119-121

—— Northern and Eastern, 13

Red Lodge, 191

Rhodes, Cecil, 58-61, 65

Rich, Sir Edwin, 261, 263, 266

Ringmere, 247

Risby, 172

Road-repairing, 15, 261

Rockland, 250, 265, 266

Roudham, 250, 252

—— Heath, 245-247, 252

Rye House, 18-25

—— —— Plot, 18-26

Saffron, 105, 109-112

—— Walden, 13, 65, 81, 91, 103-112

Sawbridgeworth, 56

Scoulton, Gulls of, 263

“Seven Hills,” 187

Shipden, 340

Shoreditch, 1, 26

Six Mile Bottom, 119, 120, 123

Snaresbrook, 43

Spelbrook, 57

Stamford Hill, 35, 36, 37

Stansted Mountfitchet, 69-74

—— Street, 69, 74-77

Stratton Strawless, 251, 313

Stump Cross, 118

Tattersall, Richard, 137-139

Theobald’s Road, 17

Thet, River, 208, 209, 215, 252, 262

Thetford, 116, 167, 186, 189, 193, 204, 208-245

—— Heath, 206, 251, 261, 262

Thieves’ Lane, 260

—— Pitt, 246

Thorley Street, 57

Thornwood Common, 55

Turnpike Acts, 16, 34, 267

—— Gates and Toll-houses, 27, 32, 88-90, 185, 206, 244, 288, 291, 316,
327

“Two Captains,” The, 129

Ugley, 77-80

Upper Clapton, 35, 37

—— Hellesdon, 309

_Via Devana_, 132

Walthamstow, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39

Wendens Ambo, 95

Whip’s Cross, 38

Whitechapel, 1, 11, 13

Wilby Old Hall, 254-256

Windham Family, The, 268, 328-339

Woodford, 38, 44

“World’s End,” The, 34

Worstead Street, 122

Wretham Heath, 246-250

Wymondham, 260, 267-272, 278-283, 284-328

Yare, River, 289-292

_Printed and bound by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and
Aylesbury._

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● Transcriber’s Notes:
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