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.
[Illustration: THE WATERSIDE, ERITH.]
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.
[Illustration: ON THE THAMES, NEAR ERITH.]
[Illustration: Map—ERITH to OTFORD]
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.
[Illustration: PURFLEET, FROM THE DARENTH MEADOWS.]
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.
[Illustration: _The Darent below Dartford._]
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.
[Illustration: EYNESFORD.]
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.
[Illustration: THE FOOL’S CAP CREST OF SIR JOHN SPIELMAN.]