Part 9

As for Biggleswade itself, it is a town with an extraordinarily broad and empty market-place, a church with a spire of the Hertfordshire type, and two old coaching inns—the “White Swan” and the “Crown”—facing one another in an aggressive rivalry at a narrow outlet of the market-place. The “White Swan” was the inn at which the up “Regent” coach dined. It was kept at that time by a man named Crouch, “that long, sour old beggar,” in the words of Tom Hennesy. Here “the process of dining on a really cold day in winter,” to quote Colonel Birch Reynardson, “was carried on under no small amount of difficulty. Your hands were frozen, your feet were frozen, your very mouth felt frozen, and in fact you felt frozen all over. Sometimes, with all this cold, you were also wet through, your hat wet through, your coat wet through, the large wrapper that was meant to keep your neck warm and dry wet through, and, in fact, you were wet through yourself to your very bones. Only twenty minutes were allowed for dinner; and by the time you had got your hands warm enough to be able to untie your neck wrapper, and had got out of your great-coat, which, being wet, clung tenaciously to you, the time for feeding was half gone. By the time you had got one quarter of what you could have consumed, had your mouth been in eating trim and your hands warm enough to handle your knife and fork, the coachman would put his head in, and say: “Now, gentlemen, if you please; the coach is ready.” After this summons, having struggled into your wet greatcoat, bound your miserable wet wrapper round your miserable cold throat, having paid your two and sixpence for the dinner that you had the will, but not the time, to eat, with sixpence for the waiter, you wished the worthy Mr. Crouch good day, grudged him the half-crown he had pocketed for having dined so miserably, and again mounted your seat, to be rained and snowed upon, and almost frozen to death before you reached London.”

[Picture: Biggleswade]

Leaving Biggleswade, the Ivel is crossed and Tingey’s Corner passed. Tingey’s Corner marks the junction of the old alternative route from Welwyn, by Hitchin to Lower Codicote, the route adopted by record-breaking cyclists. The hamlets of Lower Codicote and Beeston Green open up a view of Sandy, away to the right, with its range of yellow sand-hills running for some three miles parallel with the road, and seeming the more impressive by reason of the dead level on which they look. The canal-like, bare banks of the Ivel are passed again at Girtford, and the roadside cottages of Tempsford reached; the village and church lying off to the left, where the Ouse and the Ivel come to their sluggish confluence, and form a waterway which once afforded marauding Danes an excellent route from the coast up to Bedford. Even now the remains of a fortification they constructed to command this strategic point are visible, and bear the name of the “Dannicke”; that is to say, the “Danes’ work,” or perhaps the “Danes’ wick,” “wick” meaning “village.”

An infinitely later work—Tempsford turnpike-gate, to wit—has disappeared a great deal more effectively than those ancient entrenchments, and the way is clear and flat, not to say featureless, over the Ouse, past the outlying houses of Wyboston, and so into Little End, the most southerly limit of Eaton Socon.

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PAST Tempsford some of the coaches, notably the Stamford “Regent,” turned off into the loop road by St. Neots and Huntingdon. In the winter time, or when the spring rains were falling, they did this at some risk, for the low-lying land by the river Ouse was often awash. Two old ladies were on one occasion given a terrible fright, the road being deeply flooded and the water coming into the coach, so that they had to stand on the seats. They quite thought they were going to be drowned, and perhaps they would have been had the “Regent” been driven by one unused to the road. Had the coachman driven into a ditch—as he might easily have done with the floods covering all the landmarks—it would have been “all up” with the “insides” for certain and perhaps for the “outsides” as well.

The most prudent coachmen in winter time kept to the main road, which lies somewhat higher, and passed through Eaton Socon. Once—to judge by its name—a place of importance, this is now only a long village of one straggling street. At some undetermined period the head of a “soke,” or separate legal jurisdiction, all memories of the dignity implied are gone, save only the empty title, which Dickens makes fun of by calling the village in _Nicholas Nickleby_ “Eton Slocomb.” The “White Horse,” a picturesque roadside inn, may be looked upon with interest by those keen on identifying Dickens landmarks. In later days it became a favourite resort of the North Road Cycling Club, and witnessed the beginning and ending of many a road race in the “eighties” and early “nineties,” when such things were.

The story of the London to York cycling record is fitly to be told in this page. It is not so long a tale as that of the famous one from London to Brighton and back, but it stands for greater efforts and for a vast amount of pluck and endurance. There have been those unsportsmanlike souls who, not finding sport an end in itself, have questioned the use of record making and breaking. But it has had its use, and even from this point of view has amply justified itself, for the continually increasing speed required out of cycles for these purposes has led to the perfecting of them within what is, after all, a comparatively short time; so that the sporting clubman has, after all, while strictly occupied within the range of his own ambitions, contributed to the general good by bringing about the manufacture of a vehicle which, used by many hundreds of thousands of people who never raced in their lives, and are probably incapable of a speed of more than twelve miles an hour, has brought the roads and lanes of the country within the knowledge of many to whom rural life was something new and strange.

The first recorded cycle ride to York in which speed was an object was that of C. Wheaton, September 1872. That pioneer took two days to perform the journey, making Stamford, a distance of eighty-nine miles, the end of his first day’s adventure, in 15½ hours, and on the second day reaching York in a further 26 hours 40 minutes: total, 42 hours 10 minutes. This, with the front-driving low cycle of those days, was an achievement. Wooden wheels and iron tyres did not conduce to either speed or ease, and that now historic figure, painfully crawling (as we should now think his progress) to York is heroic.

Perhaps this tale of hardship was calculated to deter others from trying their mettle, but at any rate it was not until July 9, 1874, that two others, Ian Keith-Falconer and J. H. Stanley Thorpe, followed, and they failed in the effort. After another two years had almost passed, on June 5, 1876, Thorpe made another attempt. Leaving Highgate Archway at 11.10 P.M., he arrived the next day at York at 9.40 P.M. = 22 hours 30 minutes; chiefly, of course, by favour of that then “improved” form of bicycle, the tall “ordinary.”

Thirteen years passed before this record was lowered, and the one that replaced it was not a remarkable performance, considering the further great improvements in cycles. This ride, in the summer of 1889, performed on a solid-tyred “safety,” took 21 hours 10 minutes, and was beaten in the same year by six minutes by H. R. Pope, riding a tricycle; himself displaced, shortly after, by F. T. Bidlake, also mounted on a tricycle, who did the 197 miles in 18 hours 28 minutes.

In 1890, and for several years following, records came and went with increasing rapidity. In 1890 J. M. James put the safety record at 16 hours 52 minutes, and T. A. Edge soon followed, reducing it to 14 hours 33 minutes, James regaining the record again in 1891 by a bare thirteen minutes. In the following year, S. F. Edge, on a front-driving safety, made a splendid record of 12 hours 49 minutes, but had the mortification to see it beaten the next day, June 27, by F. W. Shorland, in 39 minutes less. In this year there were several rival tricycle records: that of W. J. A. Butterfield, of 18 hours 9 minutes being lowered by F. T. Bidlake by nearly three hours, and beaten again, on September 29, Bidlake’s figures on this occasion being 13 hours 19 minutes. On the same day M. A. Holbein and F. W. Shorland rode to York on a tandem tricycle in exactly the same time.

C. C. Fontaine went for the safety record on August 29, 1894, when he put the figures down to 11 hours 51 minutes. Fontaine lowered his own record in the following year, on October 18, by 21 minutes 45 seconds, and this was disposed of by George Hunt on May 7, 1896, when he got well within the eleven hours, at 10 hours 48 minutes.

This was lowered by F. R. Goodwin on July 19, 1899, his time being 10 hours 16 minutes; the speed on this occasion averaging rather over nineteen miles an hour. Even this could not have been accomplished without the aid of the most perfect motor pace-making arrangements. Goodwin smashed all these previous records on his way to establish the London to Edinburgh record of 25 hours 26 minutes, in which the average was somewhat higher; nearly twenty miles an hour.

The next, and latest, safety cycle record to York was made, unpaced, in 1900; when H. Green performed the journey in 10 hours 19 minutes.

The tandem safety London to York records should be mentioned. The first two were set up on July 24, 1895, and October 2, 1896, respectively: by G. P. Mills and T. A. Edge; and T. Hobson and H. E. Wilson, the times being 12 hours 33 minutes, and 11 hours 35 minutes.

These were followed by:—

Hrs. Mins. 1901. A. H. and P. S. Murray (unpaced) 10 59 1905. R. L. I. Knipe and S. Irving 10 52 (unpaced) 1907. F. H. Wingrave and R. A. Wingrave 9 30 (unpaced)

The London to Edinburgh records are:

SAFETY BICYCLE.

Hrs. Mins. 1889. F. W. Shorland 44 49 1891. P. A. Ransom 43 25 1892. R. H. Carlisle 32 55 1894. G. P. Mills 29 28 ,, C. C. Fontaine 28 27 1895. W. J. Neason 27 38 1897. J. Hunt 26 47 1899. F. R. Goodwin (motor-paced) 25 26 1903. F. Wright (unpaced) 31 48 1904. E. H. Grimsdell 28 3 ,, G. A. Olley 27 10 1905. E. H. Grimsdell 26 10 ,, R. Shirley 23 43

A tricycle record, unpaced, made by F. W. Wesley in 1905, at 32 hours 42 minutes yet stands.

Tandem safety records:—

Hrs. Mins. 1894. E. Oxborrow and H. Sansom 27 33 1905. E. Bright and P. H. Miles (unpaced) 27 54

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EATON Socon, its long straggling street and beautiful church-tower, left behind, the road descends to the “river Kym,” as the guidebooks call the tiny stream which, bordered by marshes, crosses under the road at a point known as Cross Hall. The “river Kym” certainly is, or was, important enough to confer its name upon the neighbouring townlet of Kimbolton, but the country folk now only know it as Weston Brook. The descent to it has of late years acquired the name of “Chicken Hill,” given by the North Roaders, racing cyclists, who must often have run over the fowls kept by the people of a cottage at the bottom. This is succeeded by Diddington Bridge, a picturesque, white-painted timber structure spanning the little Diddington Brook, which has eaten its way deeply into the earth, and is romantically shaded by tall trees and bordered by the undergrowth that fills the pretty hollow.

The slight rise from this spot is succeeded by an easy descent into narrow-streeted Buckden, one of those old “thoroughfare” coaching villages which imagined themselves on the way to becoming towns in the fine, free-handed old days. The huge bulk of the “George” is eloquent of this, with its fifteen windows in a row, and the signs still noticeable in the brickwork, showing where the house was doubled in size at the period of its greatest prosperity. Nowadays the “George” is all too large for its trade, and a portion of it is converted into shops. As for the interminable rooms and passages above, they echo hollow to the infrequent footfall, where they were once informed with a cheerful bustle and continuous arrival and departure. There was a period, a few years ago, when the North Road Club’s road-racing events brought crowds of cyclists and busy times once more to the “George,” but they are irretrievably gone.

To and from Buckden and Welwyn in coaching times drove every day the notable Cartwright, of the York “Express”; a day’s work of about seventy miles. Cartwright was something more than a coachman, being himself landlord of the “George” at Buckden, and horsing one or two of the stages over which he drove. “Peter Pry,” one of the old _Sporting Magazine’s_ coaching critics, waxes eloquent over him. It was a vile day when, to sample Cartwright’s quality, he set out by the York “Express” from London for Grantham; but neither the weather nor the scenery, nor anything in Heaven or Earth drew his attention from Cartwright. He starts at once with being struck at Welwyn with Cartwright’s graceful and easy way of mounting the box, and then proceeds to make a kind of admiring inventory of his person. Thus, he might have been considered to be under fifty years of age, bony, without fat; healthy looking, evidently the effect of abstemiousness; not too tall, but just the size to sit gracefully and powerfully. His right hand and whip were beautifully in unison; he kept his horses like clock-work, and to see the refinement with which he managed the whip was well worth riding many hours on a wet day. But the occasions on which he used the whip were rare, although the tits were only fair, and not by any means first-rate. No dandy, but equipped most respectably and modestly, and with good taste, he was the idol of the road, both with old and young; while his manners on the box were respectful, communicative without impertinence, and untarnished with slang. Acquainted with everybody and every occupation within his sphere, he was an entertaining companion even to an ordinary traveller; but he enchanted the amateur of coaching with his perfect professional knowledge, which embraced all niceties. His excellent qualities, we are glad to notice, in conclusion, had gained their reward; he was well-to-do, lived regularly, had a happy family, and envied neither lord nor peasant.

[Picture: Buckden]

Welwyn, the road to Buckden, and Buckden itself seem quite lonely without this figure of all the virtues and the graces.

Spelt “Bugden” in other times, the inhabitants still pronounce its name in this way. There is a well-defined air of aristocracy about this village, due partly to the ruined towers of the old palace of the Bishops of Lincoln, and to the sturdy old red-brick walls that enclose the grounds in which they stand. They are walls with a thickness and lavish use of material calculated to make the builder of “desirable villa residences” gasp with dismay at such apparently wanton extravagance. But the Bishops of Lincoln, who built those walls in the fifteenth century, had not obtained their land on a building lease; and, moreover, they were building for their own use, which makes a deal of difference, it must be conceded.

You cannot help noticing these walls, for they run for some distance beside the road. Through a gateway is seen a pleasant view of lawns and the front of a modern mansion. The Bishops have long left Buckden, and have gone to reside at their palace at Lincoln, Buckden Palace having been wantonly demolished when the Order in Council, authorising these Right Reverend Fathers in God to alienate the property, was obtained. The church adjoins their roofless old gatehouse, and is a fine old place of worship, with a stone spire of the Northants type.

In this church will be found a singular example of modesty. It is an epitaph without the name of the person:—

“Sacred to the memory of AN OFFICER, who sincerely regarded this his native village and caused an asylum to be erected, to protect Age, and to reward Industry. Reader, ask not his name. If thou approve a deed which succours the helpless, go and emulate it. Obiit 1834, aet 65.”

The tiny hamlet of Hardwick, dignified with mention on the Ordnance map, is passed without its existence being noticed, and the road, flat as though constructed with the aid of a spirit-level, proceeds straight ahead for the town of Huntingdon, swinging acutely to the left for York. Beyond, at the cross-roads, stands Brampton Hut, the modern vivid red-brick successor of the old inn of that name. Brampton village lies down the cross-road to the right, and is the place where Samuel Pepys, it is thought, was born in 1632. {117} The registers afford no information, for they do not begin until twenty-one years later, and the old gossip himself makes no mention of the fact. His father and mother lived here, and both lie in the church. Their home, his birthplace, stands even now, but so altered that it is practically without much interest. It was in its garden, in October, 1666, that Samuel caused his £1,300 to be buried when the Dutch descent upon London was feared. A timorous soul, poor Samuel! sending his father and his wife down from London to Brampton with the gold, and with £300 in a girdle round where his waist should have been, but was not, for Samuel was a man of “full habit,” as the elegant phrase, seeking to disguise the accusation of exceeding fatness, has it. Great was his anxiety when, the national danger over, he came down to disinter his hoard. “My father and I with a dark lantern, it being now night, into the garden with my wife, and there went about our great work to dig up my gold. But Lord! what a tosse I was for some time in, that they could not justly tell where it was; but by and by, poking with a spit, we found it, and then begun with a spudd to lift up the ground.”

But they had not been cautious in their work. “Good God!” says he, “to see how sillily they hid it, not half a foot under ground, in sight of passers-by and from the neighbours’ windows.” Then he found the gold all loose, and the notes decaying with the damp, and all the while, routing about among the dirt for the scattered pieces, he was afraid lest the neighbours should see him, and fancy the Pepys family had discovered a gold mine; so he took up dirt and all, and, carrying it to his brother’s bedroom, washed it out with the aid of several pails of water and some besoms, with the result that he was still over a hundred pieces short. This “made him mad.” He could not go out in the garden with his father, because the old man was deaf, and, in shouting to him, all the neighbours would get to know. So he went out with W. Hewer, and by diligent grubbing in the mould, made the sum nearly tally. The day after, leaving his father to search for the remainder, we find him setting out for London, with his belongings; the gold in a basket in the coach, and he coming to look after it every quarter of an hour.

Something over a mile distant from Brampton cross-roads, and passing over two little bridges, we come to a third bridge, spanning one of the lazy rivulets that trickle aimlessly through the flats. It is just an old red-brick bridge, braced with iron and edged with timber; an innocent-looking, although dull and lonely spot, with the water trickling along in its deeply worn bed, and no sound save the occasional splash made by a frightened water-rat. Yet this is “Matcham’s Bridge,” and the scene of an infamous murder.

[Picture: Matcham’s Bridge]

Matcham’s Bridge, spanning the little river Wey, obtained its name from the murder of a drummer-boy here by Gervase (or Jarvis) Matcham, on the 19th of August 1780. The murder was a remarkable one, and is made additionally memorable by the after-career of the murderer, whose bloody deed and subsequent confession, six years later, form the subject of the _Dead Drummer_, one of Barham’s _Ingoldsby Legends_.

Gervase Matcham, the son of a farmer living at Frodingham, in Yorkshire, had a varied and adventurous career. When in his twelfth year, he ran away from home and became a jockey. In the course of this employment he was sent to Russia in charge of some horses presented by the Duke of Northumberland to the Empress, and returning to London well supplied with money, dissipated it all in evil courses. He then shipped as a sailor on board the _Medway_ man-of-war, but after a short experience of fighting, managed to desert. He had no sooner landed in England than he was seized by one of the prowling pressgangs that then scoured the seaports, and was shipped aboard the _Ariadne_, fitting out on an expedition to destroy the pirate, Paul Jones. Succeeding in an attempt to escape when off Yarmouth, he enlisted in the 13th Regiment of Foot, and deserting again, near Chatham, set out to tramp through London to York, visiting Huntingdon on the way. The 49th Regiment was then recruiting in the district, and Matcham promptly enlisted in it.

From Huntingdon, on the 19th of August 1780, he was sent to Major Reynolds at Diddington, to draw some subsistence-money, amounting to between £6 and £7. With him was a drummer-boy, Benjamin Jones, aged about sixteen years, the son of the recruiting sergeant. The boy having drawn the money, they returned along the high road, Matcham drinking on the way. Instead of turning off to Huntingdon, Matcham induced the boy to go on with him in the direction of Alconbury, and picking a quarrel with him at the bridge, seized him and cut his throat, making off with the money. He then fled across country to the nearest seaport, and shipped again to sea. For six years he continued in the Navy and saw hard fighting under Rodney and Hood, being at last paid off H.M.S. _Sampson_ at Plymouth, on June 15, 1786. From Plymouth he set out with a messmate—one John Shepherd—to walk along the Exeter Road to London. Near the “Woodyates Inn” they were overtaken one afternoon by a thunderstorm in which Matcham startled his shipmate by his abject terror of some unseen apparition. Eventually he confessed his crime to Shepherd, and begged his companion to hand him over to the nearest magistrate, so that Justice might be satisfied. He was accordingly committed at Salisbury, and, inquiries as to the truth of his confession having been made, he was brought to trial at Huntingdon, found guilty, and executed on the 2nd of August 1786, his body being afterwards hanged in chains on Alconbury Hill.

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