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.
[Illustration: Map—BROMLEY to CROYDON]
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.
[Illustration: THE LITTLE CHURCH OF WOLDINGHAM.]
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.
There is no village, only a few cottages outside the park wall. House
and park are the property of Earl Stanhope. Should the tourist wish to
explore the course of the Pilgrims’ road, running across the park, he
must ask permission as a favour, for in 1780 one of my lord’s ancestors
was allowed to stop up the right of way that had existed from time
immemorial, and it has been closed ever since by virtue of that special
Act of Parliament.
The house is a stately but gloomy building designed originally by the
inevitable Inigo Jones, but altered and added to at different periods.
Among the notable collections here is the manuscript of the Earl
of Chesterfield’s famous (or rather infamous) letters to his son,
formulating a course of conduct aptly said to be a _vade mecum_ to
perdition. There is one very notable object in the church—a building,
to judge from their monuments, expressly devoted to perpetuating the
fame and name of the Stanhopes. This is the remarkably beautiful white
marble recumbent group representing Lady Frederica Louisa Stanhope and
her child; the work of Chantrey, and perhaps his best. It is a touching
and very human monument, and a fitting pendant to that other fine work
by Chantrey, the “Sleeping Children,” in Lichfield Cathedral.
Lady Frederica Stanhope’s many virtues are hinted at in no uncertain
manner on the other side of the monument, in the epitaph to the lady’s
husband, “Lieutenant Colonel the Honourable James Hamilton Stanhope,”
which says, “His afflicted relatives would have found a melancholy
satisfaction in commemorating the many talents and virtues which
adorned him, but in laying him by the side of his beloved wife, with
no other record than that he was not unworthy to be her husband, they
obey his last injunctions.” Could praise be of a more negative kind or
uxorious post-mortem compliment farther go?
Returning to the road, which runs eastward for half a mile, and then
climbs from these levels up the steep, unrideable Star Hill to the
summit of the Downs, we reach Knockholt, obtaining views on the way
including the hollow on the extreme right hand, whence the clouds of
blue smoke, rising like a column, indicate Dartford and its chemical
works, with Shooter’s Hill in front, and the heights of Penge to
the left. Passing the hamlet of Knockholt Pound, obtaining its name
from an old pound for strayed horses, cattle, and sheep that formerly
stood here, we enter Knockholt village, passing a hideous, unfinished
freak-building of gigantic size, looking like some prison or barrack,
with the addition of a chimney-shaft resembling an observatory. This
piling up of stones and mortar on a colossal scale, and in the most
disapproved manner—the very negation of style, with sheer walls and
plain, rectangular windows—appears to be the amusement of a wealthy
gentleman, who is alike his own builder and architect. “Vavasour’s
Folly” is the uncomplimentary name by which it is locally known.
Knockholt Beeches, a favourite Saturday afternoon and Sunday
holiday-ground for bean-feasters and the like, are most conveniently
reached by a lane at the side of the “Crown Inn”; but the machine will
have to be lifted over a couple of stiles, unless you like to leave it
outside the inn for the bean-feaster to play monkey-tricks with it. For
themselves alone the beeches are distinctly not worth seeing, being
just a grove of not particularly old nor especially fine trees. The
attraction is the view from them towards London; and, standing as the
trees do on very high ground, the view is sufficiently remarkable. The
Tower Bridge, it may be added as an inducement to visit the spot, can
be distinctly seen from here—although the cynical might say that it can
be seen better and with less trouble on Tower Hill—and that tiresome,
eternally insistent Crystal Palace, from which it seems almost
impossible to get away in cycle runs round the south of London, is
seen scintillating in the sun as clearly as though it were quite close
at hand, instead of being eleven miles distant. A feature of Knockholt
Beeches is the Cockney abandonment of the merrymakers here, when ’Enery
and ’Enrietta exchange hats and dance to the inspiring strains of
the concertina. There are artists who paint the Beeches and the view
thence, and to them these corybantic revels are sad stumbling-blocks;
which only serves to prove (what we already know) that the days of
classic landscape are dead, with Salvator Rosa, Claude, and Turner. Any
one of that artistic trio would have seized the grand opportunity, and
have composed a picture of Knockholt Beeches in which ’Enrietta would
become a sylph and ’Enery a wood-faun.
[Illustration: KNOCKHOLT BEECHES.]
We have now just the return journey to indicate. Taking the second
turning to the right on leaving Knockholt, a road is reached which
affords a safe coast to Cudham. Just at the little church of that
place, however, a sign-post and a danger-board give us pause, and
dismounting, we discover that our road to Downe lies along a sudden,
short, and sharp drop, well meriting that warning. A little way on, we
can safely mount again for another grand coast, carrying us half-way
up the next hill, and then a walk up the remainder brings us through
plantations to the hill-crest, whence we drop comfortably into Darwin’s
picturesque village. This is the evolutionist’s place of pilgrimage,
and Downe House, for forty years the residence of that great man of
science, a much-observed retreat. Truth compels the admission that
it is an extremely ugly house. Darwin died in 1882, a victim to
scientific enthusiasm, having caught a cold on the damp grass of his
lawn one night, on going out with a dark lantern to study the domestic
arrangements of the earthworms.
From Downe pretty lanes lead to Keston, passing Holwood Park, a lovely
estate now belonging to the Earl of Derby, but noted as having been
the scene of William Wilberforce’s determination to devote his life
to the abolition of slavery, so long ago as 1788. A stone seat, a few
hundred yards within the park, marks the spot, and bears an explanatory
inscription; and a hoary oak, its decrepit limbs chained and fastened
elaborately together, overhangs the scene.
In the pretty churchyard of Keston, situated in a secluded hollow not
far from this spot, and removed by a long way from that bean-feaster’s
paradise, Keston Common, lies Mrs. Craik, who, when Dinah Muloch, wrote
the once-popular _John Halifax, Gentleman_.
Proceeding, we come to Keston Common, where “Cæsar’s Well” and the
charming ponds near it may be sought, unhindered by the bean-feasters
aforesaid, who do not roam far from the public-houses. Keston is
thought to have been a Roman station on the old Watling Street, hence
the name given, in allusive fashion, to the pool—frequently dry in
summer—called Cæsar’s Well.
[Illustration: CÆSAR’S WELL.]
Bordering the Common is the “Fox Inn,” where, on the left hand, down in
the hollow, are the twin settlements of “Paradise” and “Purgatory”—the
first not particularly desirable, and the second, perhaps, the more
preferable of the two. Purgatory is at the bottom of an extraordinarily
steep road, which, if not indeed broad, certainly will lead the unwary
to destruction. The two places are just groups of labourers’ cottages,
and their names are their only remarkable feature.
Glance at the ugly “George Inn” on passing through Hayes. Its sign was
painted, many years ago, by Sir John Millais, with a picture of the
half-mythical “George and the Dragon” contest; but it hung outside,
exposed to the weather, until it became faded, when a former landlord
had it repainted, “as good as new,” by a “local artist”!
Through Hayes and Bromley there is a fine broad road, eminently suited
for a speedy ending of this somewhat hilly run. Bromley Common, like
the adjoining Commons of Keston and Hayes, may be overrun with the
week-ender, but not even the raucous van-loads, yelling the latest
“comic” songs, can succeed in vulgarising these healthy uplands. From
Bromley it is desirable to proceed home by train.