Surbiton, that great modern suburb of Kingston, can conveniently be
made the starting-point of many pleasant runs through Surrey. Let us
on this occasion start from Surbiton Station, and, making for the high
road that runs to Ripley, turn to the left at Long Ditton, where the
waterworks are, and so in a mile to the first semblance of rusticity at
that well-known inn, the “Angel at Ditton,” as it is generally called
by the many cyclists to whom for years this has been a rallying-place;
although this is not Ditton at all, and its real name the not very
romantically-sounding one of “Gigg’s Hill Green.” We pass the “Angel”
on the left; on the right hand stretches the pleasant Green, with roads
running away in the same direction to the village of Thames Ditton, a
mile away, and worth seeing for those who have the exploring faculty
well developed.
But to continue straight ahead, we pass Gigg’s Hill Green only to
come to other and larger commons—Ditton Marsh and Littleworth Common
respectively—along a road straight and flat for a considerable
distance, passing under the long tunnel-like archway of the London
and South-Western main line, and emerging from it to a full view of
beautiful Esher Hill, a mile and a half away, while away on the left
stretch miles of open country. Notice outside a modern, dry, and
dusty-looking inn, called the “Orleans Arms,” a tall, circular stone
pillar about ten feet in height, with names of towns along the road,
and the distances to them, carved on it. This is familiarly known as
the “White Lady,” and dates back to the coaching age; for this was the
old road to Portsmouth, and was once crowded with traffic.
From this point it is a mile of continuous, though gentle, rise to
Esher village—Sandown Park racecourse on the right, under the hill.
Notice the very highly ornamental iron gates and railings of the park:
a romantic history belongs to them. They came from Baron Grant’s
palatial mansion of Kensington House, built but never occupied, and
then demolished, which stood in Kensington Gore.
Kensington House is now quite forgot, and on its site rise the stately
houses of Kensington Court. It was in 1873 that Baron Grant, bloated
with the money of the widow and the orphan, plundered from them in
his Emma Mine and other rascally schemes, purchased the dirty slum at
Kensington then known as the “Rookery,” and set about building a lordly
pleasure-house on its site. Just as it was finished, his career of
predatory finance was checked, and he never occupied the vast building.
For years it remained tenantless, and was then demolished. “Grant,”
as he called himself, died obscurely in 1899. He had in his time been
the cause of the public losing over £20,000,000 sterling. The _Daily
News_ spoke of him as an Irishman, but it will readily be conceded that
his real name of Gottheimer is not strikingly Hibernian. He was, it
is true, born in Dublin. So was Dean Swift: but, as the Dean himself
remarked, to be born in a stable does not prove one to be a horse.
Although “Grant” died obscurely, and his name and his schemes had long
before that time become discredited, it must not be supposed that he
was personally ruined with the wreck of his projects. Not at all.
He lived and died very comfortably circumstanced, while many of his
creditors remained unsatisfied. He could pay debts when he chose, but
when he chose not to, there were no means of compelling him. Where have
we heard the same story in recent years?
[Illustration: Map—SURBITON to LEATHERHEAD]
Esher, up along the hill, is a pretty village, with many and varied
associations and an extraordinary number of curious relics. It is a
charmingly rural place, with a humble old church behind an old coaching
inn, and a new church, not at all humble, across the way. The old
church and the old inn—the “Bear,” they call it—are both extremely
interesting. In the hall of the inn, placed within a glass case, secure
from the touch of the vulgar, are the huge boots worn by the post-boy
who drove Louis Philippe, the fugitive King of the French, to Claremont
in 1848. They are huge jack-boots closely resembling the type worn by
Marlborough and his troopers at Blenheim, Ramilies, and Malplaquet.
“Mr. Smith”—for under that plebeian disguise the Citizen King fled from
Paris—resided at Claremont by favour of Queen Victoria, and died there
two years later.
Claremont is an ominous place, with a tragical cast to its story.
Most of those connected with it have been unfortunate, if not before
they sought the shelter of its ill-omened roof, certainly afterwards.
Clive, the “heaven-born general,” who built it, shot himself; the
newly married only child of George the Fourth—the ill-fated Princess
Charlotte—died there, under somewhat mysterious circumstances; and the
Duke of Albany, who had not long been in residence, died untimely in
the south of France, in 1884.
The old church of Esher, long since disused and kept locked and given
over to spiders and dust, has a Royal Pew, built for the use of the
Princess Charlotte and the Claremont household in 1816. It is a huge
structure, in comparison with the size of the little church, and
designed in the worst possible classic taste; wearing, indeed, more the
appearance of an opera-box than anything else.
The authorities (whoever they may be) charge a shilling for viewing
this derelict church. It is distinctly not worth the money, because the
architecture is contemptible, and all the interesting monuments have
been removed to the modern building, on a quite different site, across
the road.
It cannot be too strongly insisted upon that the death of the Princess
Charlotte in her eighteenth year made a vast difference in English
history—or, at least, English Court history. Had she survived, there
would have been no William the Fourth, and Queen Victoria would never
have been queen. Think of it! No Victorian Era, no Victoria Station, no
Victoria Embankment, no Victoria in Australia, no Victoria in Vancouver
Island; and, in short, none of those thousand things and places
“Victoria” and “Victorian” we are surrounded with. None of those, and
certainly no Albert Halls, memorials, streets, and places commemorative
of that paragon of men.
[Illustration: ESHER OLD CHURCH.]
The reflections conjured up by an inspection of Esher old church are
sad indeed, and the details of it not a little horrible to a sensitive
person. There is an early nineteenth-century bone-house or above-ground
vault attached to the little building, in which have been stored
coffins innumerable. The coffins are gone, but many of the bony
relics of poor humanity may be seen in the dusty semi-obscurity of an
open archway, lying strewn among rakes and shovels. To these, when
the present writer was inspecting the place, entered a fox-terrier,
emerging presently with the thigh-bone of some rude forefather of the
hamlet in his mouth. “Drop it!” said the churchwarden, fetching the
dog a blow with his walking-stick. The dog “dropped it” accordingly,
and went off, and the churchwarden kicked the bone away. I made
some comment, I know not what, and the churchwarden volunteered the
information that the village urchins had been used to play with these
poor relics. “They’re nearly all gone now,” said he. “They used to
break the windows with ’em.” And then we changed the subject for a
better.
The “new” church—new in 1852—is a very imposing one, also with its
Claremont Royal Pew, very like a drawing-room, built on one side of the
chancel, high above the heads of the vulgar herd, who often, when the
church is open, climb up the staircase to it, and, seating themselves
on the chairs, go away and boast of having sat on the seats honoured by
the great—thereby proving the vulgarity aforesaid.
The church was built chiefly from the accumulated funds of a bequest
anciently left to Esher. This was the piece of land now called
Sandown Park and the site of the well-known racecourse, let to the
racecourse company at an annual rent. Not until 1899 did it occur to
the Vestry that for the Church to be the landlord of a racecourse was
a rather scandalous state of affairs, and the sanction of the Charity
Commissioners was then sought and obtained for a scheme to sell the
land outright for £12,000, this sum to be invested in Consols. These
tender consciences obscured the business side of the question, for
the land, if not already worth more than that sum, very shortly will
be, considering the spread of London’s suburbs. It is rather singular
that this freehold, bequeathed so long ago, was once the site of the
forgotten Priory of Sandown, which would appear never to have been
revived after its Prior and all the brethren perished in the great
pestilence, the Black Death, that almost depopulated England in the
Middle Ages.
[Illustration: HORSESHOE CLUMP.]
Leaving the village behind and pursuing the Portsmouth road, the
woodlands of Claremont Park are left behind as we come downhill towards
Horseshoe Clump, a well-known landmark on this road. This prominent
object is a semicircular grove of firs on the summit of a sandy knoll,
looking over the valley of the Mole, the “sullen Mole” of the poets,
flowing in far-flung loops below, on its way to join the Thames at
Molesey. This is a switchback road for cyclists thus far, for the ridge
on which Horseshoe Clump stands is no sooner gained than we go downhill
again, and so up once more and across the level “fair mile,” to descend
finally into Cobham Street, where the Mole is reached again. Here turn
to the left, along a road marked by a sign-post “Church Cobham,” the
original village, off the main road, of which Cobham Street on the
Portsmouth road is only an offshoot developed by the traffic of old
road-faring days. Church Cobham has, besides its ancient church and
“Church Stile House,” a picturesque water-mill and mill-pond beside the
road. Beyond, in two miles, the tiny village owning the odd name of
Stoke D’Abernon is sighted; village in name only, for the church and
a scattered house or two alone mark its existence. The Norman family
of D’Abernon gave their name to this particular Stoke, originally a
primitive British stockade, or defensible camp, at a ford on the Mole.
For the happily increasing class of tourists who are interested in
archæology, let it be noted here that the chancel of this church
contains the earliest monumental brass in the kingdom, the mail-clad
effigy of Sir John D’Abernon, dated 1277.
Many of his race, before and after his time, lie here. The life-sized
engraved figure of this Sir John, besides being the earliest, is also
one of the most beautiful. Clad from head to foot in a complete suit
of chain mail, his hands clasped in prayer, heraldic shield on one
arm, his pennoned lance under the other, and his great two-handed sword
hanging from a broad belt outside the surcoat, this is a majestic
figure. His feet rest on a writhing lion, playfully represented by the
engraver of the brass as biting the lance-shaft.
A second Sir John D’Abernon, who died in 1327, son of the first, also
has his life-sized memorial engraved on brass.
[Illustration: BRASS TO SIR JOHN D’ABERNON.]
Stoke “Dabbernun,” as the rustics call it, is at once exhausted of
interest when its church has been seen.
The road now crosses the Mole by an old red brick bridge, and leads
up a gentle rise to Slyfield Farm, a very picturesque old farmstead
of red brick, designed in the classic style prevailing in the reign
of James the First. This was once the manor-house of the now extinct
Slyfield family. Fair speech and presentation of a visiting-card may
generally be relied upon to secure the courtesy of a glimpse into the
hall of this interesting old house, where an ancient massive carved-oak
staircase may be seen, still guarded by the original “dog-gates” that
in the times of our forebears kept the hounds in their proper place
below stairs.
[Illustration: THE HALL, SLYFIELD HOUSE.]
The road now winds pleasantly through the valley, but not within sight
of the river until past the outlying houses of the little village
of Fetcham. On gaining the point where the road from Great Bookham
to Leatherhead falls into the one we are following, look out for an
unassuming left-hand turning past the railway arch, leading in a
hundred yards to Fetcham mill-pond. This is a lovely spot, where the
wild-fowl congregate, and well worth halting at on a summer’s day, but
tucked away so artfully that it will scarce be found save by asking.
It is a long sheet of water, with reeds, and an island in the middle,
and a peep back towards Leatherhead from the farther end, where
the church tower peers above the trees. Flocks of moor-hens, a few
couples of stately swans, and some domestic ducks form the invariable
feathered company of the pond, and not infrequently the coot takes
up his quarters here, with myriads of dabchicks; the great swans and
little dabchicks, swimming together on the water, forming the oddest of
contrasts: the swans like warships and the dabchicks like little black
torpedo-boats.
Cycles can be walked along the path to the far end of the pond, where
the road is reached again.
[Illustration: THE “RUNNING HORSE.”]
Leatherhead itself lies off to the left, less than half a mile distant,
reached by a many-arched bridge straddling athwart the Mole, here a
divergent and sedgy stream broken up by osier aits. On the other side
of the bridge stands that crazy old inn, the “Running Horse,” claiming
a continued existence since the fifteenth century and to have been
the scene of the celebrated “tunning of Elynor Rummyng”; but, like the
silk stocking so long and so often darned with worsted that no trace of
the original material remained, the “Running Horse” has in all these
six centuries been so repaired here and patched there that he would
be a bold man who should dare swear to a fragment of that old house
remaining.
[Illustration: ELYNOR RUMMYNG.]
Elynor Rummyng was a landlady who flourished in the time of Henry the
Seventh. Skelton, poet-laureate of that day, in a long rambling set of
rhymes, neither very elegant nor very decent, describes her and her
customers at great length. As for Elynor herself, he says she was so
ugly that
“Her visage it would assuage
A man’s courage.
Her loathly leer is nothing clear,
But ugly of cheer, droupy and drowsy,
Scurvy and lousy, her face all bowsy,”—
with much else in the uncomplimentary kind.
She was, Skelton goes on to say, “sib to the devil”; she scraped up all
manner of filth into her mash-tub, mixed it together with her “mangy
fists,” and sold this hell-broth as ale—
“She breweth nappy ale
And makes thereof port-sale
To Travellers and Tinkers, to Sweaters and Swinkers
And all good ale-drinkers.”
There is no accounting for tastes, and, reading Skelton, it would seem
as though the whole district crowded to taste the unlovely Elynor’s
unwholesome brew, bringing with them all manner of goods—
“Insteede of quoine and mony, some bring her a coney,
And some a pot with honey; some a salt, some a spoone,
Some their hose, some their shoon; some run a good trot,
With skillet or pot; some fill a bag full
Of good Lemster wool; an huswife of trust
When she is athirst, such a web can spin
Her thrift is full thin.
Some go straight thither, be it slaty or slidder,
They hold the highway, they care not what men say,
Be they as be may. Some, loth to be espied,
Start in at the backside, over hedge and pale,
And all for good ale.
Some brought walnuts,
Some apples, some pears, and some their clipping-shears;
Some brought this and that, some brought I wot ne’er what,
Some brought their husband’s hat,”—
and then, doubtless, there was trouble in the happy home.
Why the crowd resorted thus to tipple the horrible compound does not
appear: one would rather drink the usual glucose and dilute sulphuric
acid of modern times. The pictorial sign of the old house still proudly
declares—
“When Skelton wore the laurel crown
My ale put all the alewives down.”
To do that, you would think, it must needs have been both good and
cheap. Certainly, if the portrait-sign of Elynor be anything like her,
customers did not resort to the “Running Horse” to bask in her smiles,
for she is represented as a very plain, not to say ugly, old lady with
a predatory nose plentifully studded with warts.
Leatherhead is a still unspoiled little town, beside its “mousling
Mole,” as Drayton calls that river. “Mousling,” probably because of the
holes, or “swallows,” as they are called, into which this curious river
every now and again disappears, like a mouse, as the poet prettily
expresses it.
[Illustration: SIGN OF THE “RUNNING HORSE.”]