The Londoner of the southern and western suburbs is fortunate in the
many breezy and picturesque stretches of wild commons that form a
more or less continual girdle around those districts, at a distance
of from fifteen to twenty miles from town. The Surrey Commons, more
than those of Kent, are secluded and free from the bean-feast parties
that render Keston and Hayes Commons somewhat less desirable than they
would otherwise be. It is true that in the neighbourhood of Esher and
Oxshott those who have the conduct of the extensive Crown lands that
border the commons are beginning to exploit their healthy sites for
villa-building; but although this red rash of “desirable residences”
among the dark green of the pine-woods is looked upon with disfavour by
the rambler in these hitherto unfrequented spots, what cannot be cured
must be endured with the best grace at command.
Esher Station is the key to this district for those who hail from
town, and sets you down on a common to begin with. In fact, the London
and South-Western Railway runs along “common or commonable lands”—as
the Parliamentary Bills of the railway companies express it—from
Surbiton, and practically cuts Ditton Common in half: more shame to the
Parliamentary Committees that ever permitted the deed. But then the
South-Western has, for some reason or another, always been allowed to
cut up and practically destroy the open spaces along its route, so that
there is scarce a common in the south-western suburbs but that line
has a cutting through or an embankment across it, with level crossings
innumerable, at which those who use the roads must needs wait the
pleasure of the railway, until the crowded traffic of passenger and
goods trains has passed by!
[Illustration: Map—Esther Station to Byfleet Station ]
We gain the old Portsmouth road in a few hundred yards from Esher
Station, and, turning to the right, climb the hill to the village,
through Littleworth Common. Reaching Esher, the way to Oxshott lies
to the left, past that old coaching inn the “Bear,” and the old and
long-disused parish church that modestly hides itself behind the inn.
The lodge gates of Claremont Park, beside the road, on the lovely
common of Esher, are now passed, and within this, perhaps the
best-wooded park near London, stands the great classic mansion begun
by Lord Clive in 1768. Macaulay tells with dramatic effect how “the
peasantry of Surrey looked with mysterious horror on the stately house
which was rising at Claremont, and whispered that the great wicked lord
had ordered the walls to be made so thick in order to keep out the
devil, who would one day carry him away bodily.” Clive made an end by
committing suicide in his gloomy mansion in Berkeley Square in 1774.
Claremont is now, of course, Crown property; but the arms of Clive
still remain on the pediment of the mansion.
[Illustration: CLAREMONT.]
From here the road goes straight across Esher and Arbrook Commons,
with glimpses into the well-kept park on the way, in sharp contrast
with the wilderness of bracken, just turning an “old gold” tint with
the first touch of autumn. A rugged, sandy hillock will be noticed on
the right hand, amidst the bracken and the blackberry brambles. It
is known as Round Hill, and, although apparently and actually of no
great height, commands exquisite views. Safely leaving the cycle down
below in this unfrequented spot, it is distinctly well worth while
to scramble to the summit for the views of the surrounding country.
Telegraph Hill—the wooded ridge between Oxshott and Leatherhead—is
prominent, and recalls the days before the advent of the electric
telegraph in 1838, when this height was one of a series between the
Admiralty in London and Portsmouth Dockyard, and fitted with semaphores
for signalling. More prominent still, peering over the woodlands of
Ruxley Lodge at Claygate, is the castellated outlook tower built by
Lord Foley; while dense woods and billowy expanses of gorse-clad
commons complete the picture, save on the clearest days, when, faintly
to be seen over the ridge of the North Downs, is Chanctonbury Ring, the
great hill near Worthing.
From here to Oxshott Station the way still lies through commons. Around
the station the builder is busy on the Crown lands, and is creating a
modern village. Avoiding a knobbly road on the right, which a sign-post
informs us is the way to Stoke D’Abernon, we continue ahead, more by
token that in doing so there is a fine road and a good coast downhill.
In another mile a sign-post appears directing to Woodlands and Stoke
D’Abernon. Here we will leave the Leatherhead road, whose course we
have been travelling, and turn to the right, coming in less than a
mile, still gently downhill, to another post. Instead of turning to the
right here we keep on for half a mile along the road, which now begins
to wind about and to take on the character of a country lane. Then look
out for a right-hand turning at the corner of a park enclosed by a new
red brick wall. This is Randalls Park. Turning down here a hundred
yards or so, along a lane where the local authorities delight to blast
the scenery by tipping all the potsherds and domestic refuse of the
district, the explorer, after enduring much, comes at last to a pretty
scene on the river Mole, which here runs in two branches: the first
spanned by a substantial bridge, the second bridged by a very long and
narrow structure of wood intended for foot passengers only. Wheeled
traffic goes through a picturesque water-splash; but the cyclist must
perforce dismount and walk his machine over the wooden bridge. From
this point, crossing a road running right and left, the way lies ahead,
up a sharp rise through Fetcham village and along the road to Great
and Little Bookham. At the last-named place we turn off to the right
for the four miles’ run to Ockham, famous as being the Waterloo of the
Bloomer women; for it was here, at the “Hautboy,” that Mrs. Sprague,
the champion of convention, withstood the breeched Lady Harberton, with
complete success. Why is there no monument to this historic event?
The route to Ockham is almost wholly through Effingham Common and
Blackmore Heath, past solitary Effingham Junction, and thence through
woods to Martyr’s Green, where we turn to the left, and so to the
“Hautboy” and the village built under the shelter of Ockham Park, the
seat of the Earl of Lovelace. The church, standing in the park, is
worth seeing. Nailed to the gallery front is the Chancellor of the
Exchequer’s Purse worn by Lord Chancellor King, who held the office in
the reign of Queen Anne.
Among the eccentric epitaphs often quoted, that on John Spong of Ockham
should surely be numbered. He died 17th November 1736, aged sixty
years. The lines on his tombstone were written by Daniel Wray, F.R.S.
Spong was a carpenter—
“Who many a sturdy Oak has laid along,
Fell’d by Death’s surer hatchet, here lies SPONG.
_Posts_ oft he made, yet ne’er a _Place_ could get,
And liv’d by _Railing_ tho’ he was no _Wit_.
_Old Saws_ he had, altho’ no _Antiquarian_,
And _Stiles_ corrected, yet was no _Grammarian_.
Long liv’d he _Ockham’s_ Premier Architect,
And lasting as his fame, a tomb t’erect
In vain we seek an Artist such as He
Whose _Pales_ and _Gates_ are for Eternity.
So here he rests from all life’s toils and follies:
Oh spare, kind Heaven! his fellow-lab’rer _Hollis_.”
Hollis was a bricklayer friend of Spong’s, and appears, at anyrate, to
have been spared long enough to escape being a post-mortem butt for Mr.
Daniel Wray’s wit.
From Ockham village, roads lead round either side of Ockham Park into
Ripley, a mile distant. It is worth while to linger round Ripley for
half a day, for the village itself is pleasing and the surroundings
are exquisitely pretty. Ripley is a great deal more interesting now
to the cycling tourist than ever it was in the days of its cycling
popularity. For there is no doubt whatever that the days are gone,
never to return, when cycles were stacked by the hundred in the broad
village street on Saturdays and Sundays. Ripley has been called the
Mecca of every good cyclist, and for some fifteen years its popularity
was great among London clubmen, to whom the twenty-three miles from
town, and the run home again across the commons that border the
Portsmouth road from London, formed a delightful day’s cycling.
Indeed, so exclusively was this a place of pilgrimage that the road
to it was generally known among cyclists as the “Ripley road,”
although, as a matter of fact, Ripley is but an incident along the
old coaching highway that stretches a long course of seventy-three
miles between London and Portsmouth. So devoted was this class of
cyclist to Ripley that many never ventured beyond it, but made that
remarkably picturesque old inn, the “Anchor,” and the village green
opposite, their lounging and gossiping places, until it was time to
start again for home. Ripley was first “discovered” by cyclists in the
dawn of the ’70’s, when the very few who wheeled on what were then
called velocipedes found a welcome at the rustic “Anchor” at a time
when the riders of such new-fangled contrivances were generally looked
upon as pariahs, and refused accommodation or even ordinary civility.
Such unwonted consideration made the fortunes of the “Anchor,” of the
Dibbles who then occupied it, and of the village of Ripley in general;
for it became known that here, at least, was a place where the weary
wheelman, who trundled his hundredweight or so of old iron painfully
along the roads, and called it “pleasure,” could take his peculiarly
well-earned rest. Thus the fame of Ripley grew, and with the growth
of cycling clubs attained really great proportions. Such early racing
cyclists as Cortis, the Honourable Ion Keith Falconer, and “Jack” Keen
were the first comers. They have all passed into the Unknown, and so
have “the Dibbles,” as the genial family who once occupied the “Anchor”
were collectively spoken of; and to-day the tourist may see the
memorial windows to Cortis and the Dibble sisters in the ancient chapel
of Ripley, hard by the inn, windows erected by club-cyclists who knew
them well.
Now that the cycling club is an unnecessary and rapidly decaying
institution, Ripley is almost as deserted as it was before its sudden
popularity. Not quite, for of course the roads are more frequented
nowadays; but it has taken on again something of the old look it wore
when it was just the typical decayed coaching village.
Coming into the old-world street, with that truly countrified scent—the
scent of the wood-fuel burnt largely instead of coal—the place is
delightful. Away on the north side of the road stretches the so-called
“green,” in reality a broad and beautiful common, the ideal spot for
many a ramble by the winding Wey, with its picturesque weirs and mills
and background of solemn firs. Such rambles to be taken preferably
without the cycle, to be left conveniently in the village. Or a pretty
cycle ride lies across the village street to Newark Priory and Pyrford,
two miles distant. It is an unmistakable route, and, coming to the
humpbacked bridge across the Wey at Newark Mill, the grey ruins of the
Priory are prominent in a meadow on the right hand. The place is quite
solitary. No guide to chatter; most probably not even another cyclist.
Nothing to pay; only just to lift your machine over a field-gate, and
there you are. The fragment of a bridge or an entrance gate may be seen
on approaching; a fine piece of work, with alternations of stone and
knapped flints. Beyond stand the ruins in romantic solitude, in that
low-lying watery situation the old monks loved so well. Indeed, the
Wey and its rush-fringed tributaries, that wander so lazily through
the level meads, form a very maze. The monks’ fish-ponds are all
uncared for now, and their Priory roofless and stripped of almost
every fragment of worked stone; but the tall lancet windows remain to
show the Early English character of the building, and the sturdy flint
walls may last many centuries yet, if only one great ominous fissure,
extending almost to the ground, is looked after. There is a quite
wonderfully effective view of the ruins from the road to Pyrford, just
where the Wey crosses it; but for a grand comprehensive view of the
Priory, and the vale in which it stands, one must climb the slight rise
to Pyrford itself.
[Illustration: NEWARK PRIORY.]
Good roads lead thence to Byfleet Station, two miles distant, for
those who desire to return by train; but the more enjoyable course,
should daylight last, is to return to Ripley, and to cycle thence back
to Esher through Cobham Street, along that splendid highway, the old
Portsmouth road. Commons are almost continuous along this route—Ockham
Common, Wisley Common, and that of Fairmile—and the scent of the
surrounding pine-woods is over them all.