Part 4
There will, doubtless, be those who, resting content with Ightham Mote, will decline to follow these wheelmarks farther, for such a place is worth lingering over. For the insatiable sight-seer who will proceed, the way lies as straight ahead as the winding lane will permit to Shipborne, where we turn to the left, passing through the village, and then, in little over a mile, to the right, at the cross-roads, going, with Frith Woods on the left and Dene Park on the right, for two miles farther, turning left where a sign-post points to Hadlow. Many hollows are descended into on the way, where tiny streams run across the wooded roads, and there are correspondingly sharp rises.
Mereworth village, on the borders of the wide-spreading Mereworth Woods, lies up a turning to the right, on the fine broad road leading to Maidstone. Mereworth is remarkable for its hideous church, resembling some of Wren’s City of London churches; with a classical colonnaded porch, windows like those of a factory, and great overhanging eaves, very like those of that “great barn,” St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. A tall steeple, with classic peristyle, completes the outward composition. Now turn to the interior; an even more pagan sight than the exterior prepares the stranger for. It is like a huge room, and is divided into nave and aisles by plaster pillars, painted and grained to resemble marble, with all the fittings in a correspondingly classic style. This objectionable building owed its origin in 1748 to the eighth Earl of Westmoreland, whose seat, Mereworth House, near by, is built somewhat in the same style. The only relic of the old church is the grand monument of his ancestor, the first earl. In the churchyard is the tomb of Evelyn Boscawen, Viscount Falmouth, who married (the epitaph tells us) Baroness Le Despenser.
Here we are come into the Vale of Medway, and two miles of a beautiful road bring us to Wateringbury, where little rills, trickling down to join the greater stream, nourish all these leafy hillsides into such dense growth. There is a curious relic in Wateringbury Church—an old wooden club or mace three feet and a half in length, known as the “Dumb Borsholder,” belonging to the hamlet of Pizein Well, in the Manor of Chart. This was the central figure in the court-leet of the manor, and on those occasions was carried into the court by the head tything-man, or borsholder, as a symbol of authority, much in the same way as the Lord Mayor of London takes the Mace with him on state occasions. But the “Dumb Borsholder” seems to have been regarded both as a symbol and as a person; and, carried into court with a handkerchief passed through a ring at one end, had naturally to be answered for when called upon to put in an appearance. The other end of this club is provided with an iron spike, like a bayonet, with which to break open the doors of refractory tenants. Retired from active service so long ago as 1748, this formidable weapon is now chained up in the vestry.
From here to Teston the way is bordered by hop gardens. Teston Bridge, crossing the Medway in seven Gothic arches, is a beautiful old structure, but Teston Church, although its shingled spire on the hillside looks picturesque, does not improve on closer acquaintance, having been classically re-cast, something in the manner of Mereworth.
Here we turn left, with a three-miles’ run to St. Leonard’s Street and West Malling, off to the right, where the ruins of Malling Abbey are to be seen. Straight ahead is Offham, where one must look out for the quintain on the green, a modern replica of the old English village jousting instrument, consisting of an upright post with a pivoted arm. One end of the arm is thick, and from the other was suspended a bag of flour, or some heavy object. The players in this old sport tilted on horseback at the thickened end. If their lance or staff struck it, and they were not nimble enough, the other end, swinging round, would hit them on the side of the head, unhorsing them. When the hop-pickers are let loose upon the country, with every recurrent autumn, the quintain is taken in until they have gone home again.
A mile or so beyond this point our way crosses the Sevenoaks to Maidstone road, and goes in very hilly fashion to Wrotham, called “Rootam” by the natives. Notice a stone built into the wall by an inn, recounting how a Lieutenant-Colonel Shadwell was shot dead by a deserter, over a hundred years ago. From Wrotham it is a mile distant to Borough Green and Wrotham Station, whence train to Sevenoaks and London.
THE DARENTH AND THE CRAYS
Within this circuit of just upon thirty miles much that is characteristic of Kent, the “Garden of England,” is to be found; much that is busily commercial, a goodly proportion of beautiful, unfrequented country, old-world villages on unspoiled stretches of river, and other villages with many mills polluting the Darenth on its way to the turbid Thames. Kent, in short, is a very varied county, growing fruit and hops, and, by reason of its waterways and its nearness to London, dotted over with factories; and this district here mapped out is a very good exemplar of the whole. Erith, which may be made the starting-point of this ride, is an interesting place, overlooking the Thames, here half a mile wide and crowded with all kinds of shipping; a tarry, longshore, semi-nautical village—or town, should it be called?—with a crazy little wooden pier boasting a picturesque summer-house kind of building at its end, and with a puffing engine of a miniature kind noisily playing at trains along it all day long, and performing mysterious shunting operations in collusion with a few lilliputian trucks. Engine and trucks to the contrary and notwithstanding, Erith is very delightfully behind the times, and is much more in accord with the days of Nelson and Dibdin and the era of tar and hemp than with our own period. Romantically decayed defences against the inroads of the Thames bristle along the foreshore, like so many black and broken teeth; over across the estuary is the Essex shore, and here, at the back, at Purfleet, are, actually, chalk cliffs, giving place along the course of the river to marshes. “R.T.Y.C.” is the legend one reads on the jerseys of many prosperous-looking sailormen lounging here, for Erith is the headquarters of the Royal Thames Yachting Club.
The two miles between Erith and Crayford need detain no one. Half the distance is an ascent, and the rest goes steeply down to the valley of the Cray, where Crayford, the first of the series of villages whose names derive from that little stream, is situated. With all the good-will in the world it is difficult, if not impossible, to say anything in favour of Crayford, which appears to afford congenial harbourage to all the tramps who pervade that peculiarly tramp-infested highway, the Dover road. “A townlet of slums” sums up the place. But note the long rhyming epitaph to Peter Isnell, parish clerk, on the south side of the hilltop church—
“The life of this clerk was just threescore and ten, Nearly half of which time he had sung out ‘Amen!’ In his youth he was married, like other young men, But his wife died one day, so he chanted ‘Amen!’”
and so forth.
The first turning out of the dusty high road to the right, and then to the left, for Bexley (not Bexley Heath, which is quite another and a very squalid place) leads to a pleasant road following the river. From it, on the left hand, within a mile, a glimpse is gained of Hall Place, a beautiful old Tudor mansion built in chequers of stone and flint. An excellent view of it may be had by dismounting and looking through the wrought-iron entrance gates. Then comes the long street of Bexley and its curious spire, and a brick bridge by which we cross the Cray, turning sharply to the left, and soon afterwards as sharply to the right. Very pretty is the river scenery just by Bexley Bridge; millhouse and weir and tall clustered trees making a rare picture. North Cray, the next village of The Crays, as the group is locally known, is one mile ahead. Before entering it notice the long avenue on the left leading to Mount Mascal, and then the lengthy, low white house on the right at the beginning of the village. This is the house where Lord Castlereagh committed suicide in 1822. At the interval of another mile is Foot’s Cray, where the road from Farningham to Sidcup, Eltham, and London crosses our route at right angles. The village chiefly lies at the side, along the London road, and the unpretending old church at the back.
A short interval of country road, and then the outlying houses of St. Paul’s Cray, which, with the adjoining town of St. Mary Cray, forms one long street for the length of over a mile and a half, or, including Orpington, which practically joins on, of more than two miles and a half. They make paper on a large scale at St. Paul’s and St. Mary Cray, and the mills are very prominent objects. Much too prominent at St. Mary Cray is a hideous Congregational temple with a verdigris-coloured dome, and just as prominent and as ugly is the railway viaduct that straddles at a great height over the absurdly narrow street.
Orpington was the scene of the publication of Ruskin’s works during a long series of years before they were published in the usual way in London. It is a pretty village, with an Early English church, a tree-shaded wayside pond with miniature waterfalls, and a general air of “something attempted, something done” to realise Ruskinian ideals. A mile and a half beyond Orpington we come down to the cross-roads leading, right to Farnborough, and left to Sevenoaks. In front, on its hillside, is a great red brick house. This is High Elms, Sir John Lubbock’s place. Turning to the left, we reach the hamlet of Green Street Green, and then, in another mile, Pratt’s Bottom. There is a continual four miles and a quarter ascent from here to the crown of Sepham Hill (or Polhill, as it is now generally called) to give the wheelman pause, and to make him wish he had come the other way round. From the Polhill Arms at the summit the average touring cyclist will observe that he has rather a nerve-shaking descent to make, judging from the elevated position he has reached and from the little world of landscape unfolded before him. Caution and a good rim-brake, to keep control over the machine, are, however, all that are necessary, even though the descent be winding. A tree-covered bank on the right hand, flanking the hill with a certain solemnity, would be more impressive still to the cyclist did he know that this is the site of one of the great circle of forts now building for the defence of London. But the stranger is not cognisant of the fact, and so, unhappily, misses a patriotic thrill in passing.
Continuing the wooded descent towards the Weald, look out for a road on the left leading to Otford, a steep and stony mile and a half. Here, intrepid adventurers that we are, we have crossed the watershed and achieved the valley of the Darenth. Otford was the site of one of the sixteen palaces of the Archbishops of Canterbury. It was built just before the Reformation, by Archbishop Warham, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, and resigned by Cranmer to that very masterful monarch. The ruins of it are still to be seen by the church.
Leaving Otford, turn to the left at the cross-roads, and so, beside the railway, to Shoreham Station. The village lies on a by-road to the left. They make paper there also. It was the birthplace of that not sufficiently appreciated African explorer, Commander Lovett-Cameron, untimely dead. In the church are the flags he carried with him on the Livingstone search expedition. Like “Bobs”—who, according to Mr. Kipling, “don’t advertise”—Lovett-Cameron cared nothing for the _réclame_ that makes reputations with the many-headed; unlike him, he missed his proper meed of recognition.
The valley of the Darenth here is very beautiful, and the river at Shoreham expands into the likeness of a great lake. Here is a choice of routes: direct, beside the railway, to Eynesford, or through Shoreham to Eynesford by way of Shoreham Castle and Lullingstone. There is little to choose either way, because the “castle” at Shoreham exists no longer, and Lullingstone Park is forbidden to cyclists. Let us reserve our enthusiasm for Eynesford, an old English village of truly Elizabethan spaciousness, set down in its valley beside the Darenth, with an ancient, eminently sketchable and paintable old bridge spanning the ford that originally conferred the termination of the place-name; with a highly interesting Norman and Early English church, with lofty spire dominating the scene; and with a ruined castle tucked away in a builder’s yard. Little stress need be laid upon Eynesford Castle, because it is now, in short, only a little piece of rubble wall, and therefore to be taken very largely on trust. But the village—to recur to it—is a very beautiful and æsthetically satisfying fact.
Farningham, to which we come after Eynesford, is only moderately interesting. Also, for the benefit of those who may follow in these tracks, it may be noted that it is in a hop-growing district, and when the hop-pickers are let loose upon it the society is not of the choicest. The village lies on the left-hand road; we pursue our way to Horton Kirby, where are more mills and crooked streets, and thence to South Darenth, where there are many factories and curving roads. Turn acutely (and warily) to the left, and, crossing the river, make for Sutton-at-Hone. Darenth lies off to the right. The church is Norman and Early English, and the walls have a plentiful admixture of Roman tiles. See the church, by all means, but do not take that way to Dartford. Return to the point where the road was left, and go by way of the hamlet of Hawley.
Dartford is a town of flour-mills, paper-mills, powder-mills, and factories where they make chemicals and compound drugs. They do not smoke, these great commercial structures, for the most part, but are cleanly, white-painted, boarded structures that find their motive power in the waters of the Darenth. Here is the traditional home of paper-making in England, for it was at Dartford, in the reign of Elizabeth, that John Spielman, a settler on these shores from Lindau, in Germany, introduced the process. Not only that, but he was granted the sole licence for a period of ten years of collecting rags for the making of his paper withal. If you step into the quaint old church of Dartford, you will see, so soon as your eyes become accustomed to the gloom of that crepuscular interior, his tomb with the effigies of himself and his wife, together with shields of arms bearing the fool’s cap, said to have been his crest, and certainly the original watermark of the particular size of paper which from that circumstance has acquired the name. There are many things for the stranger to see at Dartford; among them the Bull Inn, one of the very few remaining of the old galleried coaching inns, with its sign, the great black effigy of a bull, aloft among the chimney-stalks, a most whimsical position. It was on Dartford Green, opposite this old house, that Wat Tyler dashed out the brains of the tax-gatherer who had insulted his daughter. There is no Green now—only a narrow, dingy street; and there are those who would have you believe that Wat Tyler is a myth; that there never was such a man, and that consequently there was no daughter, and no tax-collector whose brains were so summarily scattered. But let us keep our illusions, O scientific historians!
From Dartford to Crayford Station is two miles. Let those who will, cycle the dusty high road to complete the circle; but Dartford Station will serve as well, or better, for returning to town.
CROYDON TO KNOCKHOLT BEECHES AND THE KENTISH COMMONS
Croydon, where this trip is begun, is fortunate among towns, for it is set amidst, or within reach of, great stretches of wild and open common lands, for the most part beautifully wooded and entirely free for the rambler to come and go as he will. Besides these far-spreading open spaces, which, extensive as they are even now, are but the remains of the commons enclosed by the iniquitous Enclosure Act of 1797, good, if hilly, roads lead in almost every direction to quaint and interesting places. Croydon itself, prosperous, handsomely rebuilt of late years, and largely residential, is an example of sudden growth; for its population of less than 6000 persons in 1801 is now reaching nearly to 130,000. These facts, which speak of crowds, and the additional feature of tram-lines running from end to end of the main street, are perhaps not altogether admirable from the point of view of the passing cyclist; but for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear withal, the story of modern Croydon, its enlightened and up-to-date Corporation, and the sight of its palatial Town Hall, the altogether adequate centre of a vigorous municipal life, speak of romance. It is largely owing to this Corporation, composed chiefly of residents and professional men, instead of the gang of local tradesmen who usually bedevil the councils of a town, that the surroundings of Croydon are so pleasant and well kept.
From East Croydon Station in the centre of the town, a ride or walk to South Croydon and the turning to the left where a sign-post marks the way to Sanderstead and Warlingham, among a number of other places, will show the inquiring stranger what manner of town this is, and will astonish those who, having known the shabby Croydon of the past, have not been here of late years. Such an one, however well acquainted with the place of old, must needs ask his way through Croydon’s streets to-day, so changed are they, and so utterly vanished the most of the old landmarks. When Mr. Jabez Balfour comes out of prison, he, the one-time Mayor, will need a guide.
Once past the turning, and Sanderstead reached, along a gently rising gradient, we are in comparatively rustic surroundings. Near the road is the typically countryside church, with blunted shingled spire and sombre yews. In the churchyard lies Sir Francis Head, who died in 1875, whose book, _Bubbles from the Brunnen_, created a vogue for the German spas and ruined the older Continental resorts. Gradually ascending, the road goes straight ahead to Warlingham, a somewhat bleak and shivery-looking small village, ranged round a more or less ragged and threadbare green at the intersection of several roads. Here we are on a high tableland. The small church, chiefly of Early English date, is seen standing lonely in a flat field, to the left. A modern stained-glass window records the fact that the Book of Common Prayer was first used here in the short reign of Edward the Sixth.
A welcome down gradient now leads along a good road for a mile, and then we turn to the right for Woldingham, to come immediately to a steep descent, followed by an equally steep rise. After a mile and a half of these experiences Woldingham is reached, and with it a high plateau whence there are magnificent views down to the dense woods of Mardon Park and the Caterham valley.
Woldingham has a big and impressive name, a name perhaps descriptive of its geographical position—“the home on the wolds”—but it is a very small and particularly mean and scrubby hamlet. A number of stalwarts live here who do not mind the weary, continuously steep ascent from the station, a mile and a half away. The air is of the freshest and strongest, and healthful in the extreme; but when winter comes and it blows great guns——! When the stormy winds do blow this is, in short, no place for those likely to be nervously apprehensive of their roofs. For this is at the summit of the North Downs, whose steep southern scarp is reached a mile away, along the road marked by a sign-post to Titsey. This is a flat stretch, passing near the modernised tiny church, one of the many claiming to be the “smallest” churches in England. In the little churchyard is the tomb of a suicide, with what seems to be the very uncharitable quotation—“Charity covereth a multitude of sins.” The rugged lane beside the church is a part of the old Pilgrims’ road from Winchester to Canterbury, and the building itself is the mean and unworthy successor of a Pilgrims’ Chapel.
The first turning to the left, past this church, along the road we have been following, almost immediately opens up a wide-spreading view down to the level Weald, lying outstretched with very much the look of a great map. Here, on this plateau overlooking half a county, the Woldingham settlers aforesaid have built their villas, and are with infinite pains and touching pathos trying to induce gardens to grow amid the flints and the thirsty chalk soil. No one can doubt that they will, with constant care and great expenditure, be delightful gardens—a hundred years hence.
There is an uninterrupted view beyond the last of these villas, at Botley Hill, where we are at a height of 868 feet above sea-level. Down below, the railway is seen, like a toy line, and the villages of Oxted and Limpsfield on either side of it, with yellow and green chequers of fields and white ribbons of winding roads gradually losing themselves in the indeterminate distance, where earth meets sky in a vague haze. Here, looking right and left, one sees at its best the characteristic sheer drop of the chalky North Downs into the levels of the Weald, and notices the care with which the villages are ranged under the shelter of these mighty shoulders.
The road between this point and Tatsfield is excellent, following the crest of the hills, and giving a good switchback course.
In less than a mile from this view-point we reach a junction of roads: one on the left to Croydon; our own, ahead to Tatsfield; the road to Limpsfield, down beautiful, but steep and doubly danger-boarded, Titsey Hill; and a lane leading by a back-way to Limpsfield. Titsey Hill’s woods and coppices, open to the road, make a fairy-like halting-place. Tatsfield Church, a mile onwards, beside the road, is a supremely uninteresting building commanding the finest prospects. The village not worth seeing, lies half a mile off the road, to the left, along breakneck lanes of the most homicidal character.
Passing Tatsfield Church, a down gradient leads to several branching roads. The one that goes ahead to the right is our route, and is the Pilgrims’ road. At this point we descend into a pebbly and curving hollow, and climbing up out of it cross the Surrey border and enter Kent. At the next junction of roads to Westerham, Bromley, and Knockholt Beeches keep straight on along the Pilgrims’ road beneath the shoulders of the hills, until brought up against a “No Thoroughfare” gate into Chevening Park.
The rustics here are of the most dunderheaded kind. If you inquire the way to Chevening they don’t know it, whether you try it with a long “Che” or a short; or else gaze, tongue-tied, at you. The proper way, however, is to turn to the right, and, on reaching another barred road marked “No Thoroughfare,” at the end of a half-mile’s run, to turn left along a flat, splendidly surfaced road for another half-mile. Turning then to the left, the grey church tower of Chevening is seen in front.