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HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN SURREY
* * * * *
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON. BOMBAY. CALCUTTA. MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK. BOSTON. CHICAGO. ATLANTA. SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
* * * * *
[Illustration: _High Street, Guildford._]
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN SURREY
by
ERIC PARKER
With Illustrations by Hugh Thomson
MacMillan and Co., Limited
St. Martin's Street, London
1909
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,
Bread Street Hill, E.C., and
Bungay, Suffolk.
First Edition, 1908
Reprinted, 1909
PREFACE
A preface ought not to contain an apology. But mine must contain at
least an explanation, if only of omissions. The Highways and Byways of
Surrey belong not to one county or to one period of time, but to two
different ages, and, to-day, to two counties. London has made the
difference. What was Surrey country a hundred years ago has been
gathered into the network of London streets, and belongs, in the mind
and on the map, to London. Almost for ten miles south of the London
Thames the old Surrey countryside has disappeared, and the disappearance
has left the writer of a book of Surrey Highways a difficult choice. It
would have been easy to fill a large part of the book with the Surrey of
the past, the Surrey of Southwark, and the great church of St. Mary
Overie, and of Lambeth Palace and the Archbishops, of Vauxhall, and the
Paris Gardens, and the Bankside where Shakespeare brought out his plays.
But it is not easy to write anything new of any part of Surrey, and of
that part I could have written nothing new at all. So that it seemed
best to leave the Surrey that has disappeared to writers who have dealt
with its history far more adequately than I could, and to choose for the
Highways and Byways of this book only those which still run through open
country and through country villages and towns. That is the Surrey of
to-day.
The general plan of the book is simple. I have entered the county from
the west at Farnham, with the old Way along the chalk ridge, and I leave
it by Titsey on the east. Of course, not all the Surrey villages belong
to the ridge, though the chief towns lie along it. Other villages set
themselves along the banks of the two Surrey rivers, the Wey and the
Mole, and there are separate little groups like the villages of the Fold
country, or on the plateaux of the Downs round Epsom, or between
Chertsey and Windsor on the Thames. These group themselves in their own
chapters. But the main progress of the book is the trend of the great
Surrey highway. As to following the book through its chapters from west
to east, Surrey is threaded by such a net of railways that the
deliberate choosing of a route, with definite centres and points of
departure, is unnecessary. But those who believe that the best way to
see any country is to walk through it will find that, as a general rule,
the book and its chapters are divided, sometimes naturally, sometimes
perhaps a little perversely, into the compass of a day's walking. My own
plan has been simple enough: it has been to set out in the morning and
walk till it was dark, and then take the train back to where I came
from. Others will be able to plan far more comprehensive journeys by
motor-car, or by bicycling, or on horseback--though not many, perhaps,
ride horses by Surrey roads to-day. But only by walking would it be
possible to explore much of the country. You would never, except by
walking, come at the meaning or read the story of the ancient Way, or
the Pilgrims' Road that follows it; only on foot can you climb the hills
as you please, or follow the path where it chooses to take you. It is
only by walking that you will get to the best of the Thursley heather,
or the Bagshot pines and gorse, or the whortleberries in the wind on
Leith Hill, or the primroses of the Fold country, or the birds that call
through the quiet of the Wey Canal--though there, too, you may take a
boat; it is one of the prettiest of the byways. The walker through
Surrey sees the best; the others see not much more than the road and
what stands on the road.
The omission, or rather neglect, of Surrey in London is deliberate.
There must be many other omissions, I fear, which are not. For pointing
out some of them, and for suggesting alterations and additions, I have
to thank my friend Mr. Anthony Collett, who has kindly looked through my
proofs. I should like also to be the first to thank Mr. Hugh Thomson for
the pleasure and the help of his charming sketches.
WEYBRIDGE, _October, 1908_ ERIC PARKER.
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I have made several additions to the second edition of this book, and, I
hope, have corrected some mistakes. I am greatly indebted to reviewers
who have pointed out errors and omissions, and to correspondents who
have kindly written to me.
E.P.
_June, 1909._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
THE PILGRIMS' WAY 1
CHAPTER II
FARNHAM 14
CHAPTER III
FRENSHAM AND TILFORD 30
CHAPTER IV
WAVERLEY ABBEY AND MOOR PARK 43
CHAPTER V
THE HOG'S BACK 55
CHAPTER VI
GUILDFORD 64
CHAPTER VII
GUILDFORD'S ENVIRONS 85
CHAPTER VIII
SHALFORD AND WONERSH 95
CHAPTER IX
THE VILLAGES OF THE TILLINGBOURNE 101
CHAPTER X
GUILDFORD TO LEATHERHEAD 115
CHAPTER XI
GODALMING 126
CHAPTER XII
HASLEMERE AND HINDHEAD 139
CHAPTER XIII
THURSLEY AND THE MOORS 153
CHAPTER XIV
THE FOLD COUNTRY 163
CHAPTER XV
CRANLEIGH AND EWHURST 173
CHAPTER XVI
CHERTSEY 179
CHAPTER XVII
WEYBRIDGE 190
CHAPTER XVIII
NORTH TO RUNEMEDE 200
CHAPTER XIX
CHOBHAM AND BISLEY 209
CHAPTER XX
THE WEY VILLAGES 217
CHAPTER XXI
RICHMOND AND KEW 235
CHAPTER XXII
KINGSTON 244
CHAPTER XXIII
THE DITTONS AND WALTON 250
CHAPTER XXIV
EPSOM 259
CHAPTER XXV
MID-SURREY DOWNS AND COMMONS 270
CHAPTER XXVI
LEATHERHEAD 280
CHAPTER XXVII
STOKE D'ABERNON 287
CHAPTER XXVIII
LEATHERHEAD TO DORKING 296
CHAPTER XXIX
DORKING 308
CHAPTER XXX
WOTTON AND LEITH HILL 316
CHAPTER XXXI
DORKING TO REIGATE 328
CHAPTER XXXII
UNDER LEITH HILL 335
CHAPTER XXXIII
REIGATE 344
CHAPTER XXXIV
CROYDON 357
CHAPTER XXXV
BEDDINGTON AND CARSHALTON 365
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHALDON TO THE DOWNS 373
CHAPTER XXXVII
HORLEY AND CHARLWOOD 380
CHAPTER XXXVIII
GODSTONE AND BLETCHINGLEY 389
CHAPTER XXXIX
LINGFIELD AND CROWHURST 401
CHAPTER XL
OXTED AND LIMPSFIELD 414
CHAPTER XLI
DULWICH TO WIMBLEDON 424
CHAPTER XLII
THE SURREY SIDE 432
INDEX 441
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
HIGH STREET, GUILDFORD _Frontispiece_
ALONG THE CHALK RIDGE.--LEITH HILL IN THE DISTANCE 3
THE HOG'S BACK 4
COMING IN TO PUTTENHAM 8
BY SLIPSHOE LANE TO THE RED CROSS INN, REIGATE 12
LOOKING TOWARDS FARNHAM FROM THURSLEY COMMON 15
FARNHAM CASTLE FROM THE HIGH STREET 17
COBBETT'S BIRTHPLACE AT FARNHAM 22
WEYDON MILL, FARNHAM 24
OASTHOUSES NEAR FARNHAM 26
IN FARNHAM CHURCHYARD 28
FRENSHAM POND 30
PIERREPONT HOUSE AND BRIDGE 31
BESIDE FRENSHAM POND 32
FRENSHAM POND HOTEL 33
FRENSHAM POND 34
THE DEVIL'S JUMPS, BEYOND FRENSHAM POND 35
THE DEVIL'S JUMPS, FROM FRENSHAM COMMON 36
BRIDGE AT TILFORD 37
BETWEEN TILFORD AND ELSTEAD 39
THE KING'S OAK, TILFORD 41
MOOR PARK 44
STELLA'S COTTAGE 46
IN MOOR PARK 47
WAVERLEY ABBEY 49
WAVERLEY ABBEY 50
IN THE GROUNDS, WAVERLEY ABBEY 51
CROOKSBURY HILL AND FRENSHAM LITTLE POND, FROM FRENSHAM COMMON 53
A DIP IN THE HOG'S BACK 55
TONGHAM CHURCH, WITH WOODEN TOWER FOR BELLS 56
SEALE 58
WANBOROUGH CHURCH 61
BARN AT WANBOROUGH 62
THE CASTLE GATE, GUILDFORD 67
ABBOT'S HOSPITAL, GUILDFORD 73
ST. MARY'S CHURCH, GUILDFORD 77
ST. CATHERINE'S CHAPEL 89
ST. MARTHA'S CHAPEL 92
SHALFORD 96
CHIMNEYS, ALBURY 106
FIREPLACE IN THE WHITE HORSE, SHERE 109
SHERE CHURCH 111
SHERE 112
GOMSHALL 114
MERROW 116
SLYFIELD PLACE 124
ON THE WAY TO GODALMING FROM HASLEMERE 127
THE TOWN HALL, GODALMING 128
TIMBERED HOUSE IN THE MARKET PLACE, GODALMING 129
CHURCH STREET, GODALMING 133
EASHING 135
BETWEEN ELSTEAD AND PEPERHAROW 137
VIEW FROM HINDHEAD 139
HASLEMERE 140
A PORCH AT HASLEMERE CHURCH 142
BROOKBANK COTTAGE, SHOTTERMILL 146
THE DEVIL'S PUNCH BOWL, FROM GIBBET HILL 151
THE POST OFFICE, CHURT 152
THE RED LION, THURSLEY 153
INTERIOR OF THURSLEY CHURCH 154
THURSLEY 155
ELSTEAD 158
WITLEY 159
THE WHITE HART, WITLEY 160
A CORNER IN THE WHITE HART, WITLEY, KNOWN AS GEORGE ELIOT'S CORNER 162
A SURREY BYWAY 166
THE CROWN INN, CHIDDINGFOLD 169
ROCK HILL, HAMBLEDON 170
BLACK DOWN, FROM HAMBLEDON 172
AT EWHURST 175
CHERTSEY 179
CHERTSEY BRIDGE 181
COWLEY'S COTTAGE, CHERTSEY 183
A BYWAY NEAR WEYBRIDGE 190
WEYBRIDGE 192
RUINS AT VIRGINIA WATER 201
ENTERING EGHAM 205
THORPE 207
THE CROUCH OAK, ADDLESTONE 208
HORSELL CHURCH 217
VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, WOKING 220
THE VILLAGE STREET, RIPLEY 223
TREES ON THE GREEN, RIPLEY 224
PRIEST'S DOOR AND NORMAN CHANCEL, RIPLEY CHURCH 225
OCKHAM CHURCH 226
NEWARK PRIORY 228
MILL ON THE WEY, BETWEEN PYRFORD AND RIPLEY 230
PYRFORD CHURCH 232
WISLEY CHURCH 233
RICHMOND BRIDGE 236
THE THAMES FROM RICHMOND HILL 238
PALACE YARD, RICHMOND 239
RICHMOND HILL 241
KEW CHURCH 243
KINGSTON 245
KINGSTON BRIDGE 246
THE SWAN, THAMES DITTON 250
WALTON CHURCH 256
EPSOM 259
A QUIET CORNER IN WITLEY 269
WOLSEY'S TOWER, ESHER 276
LEATHERHEAD 281
YE OLDE RUNNING HORSE INN, LEATHERHEAD 282
THE MOLE AT SLYFIELD PLACE 287
STOKE D'ABERNON CHURCH 291
YE OLD CHURCH STILE HOUSE, COBHAM, A.D. 1432, RESTORED 1635 293
BRIDGE OVER THE MOLE, COBHAM 295
MICKLEHAM CHURCH 297
CEDARS AT JUNIPER HALL 302
VIEW OF BOX HILL, MISTY DAY 307
DORKING 308
DORKING 310
THE WHITE HORSE, DORKING 312
WOTTON HOUSE 318
CROSSWAYS FARMHOUSE, ABINGER 321
FRIDAY STREET 323
AMONG THE PINES 325
LOOKING TOWARDS DORKING FROM WESTCOTT 328
THE RED LION, BETCHWORTH 331
BUCKLAND 333
THE ROMAN ROAD AT OCKLEY 335
NEWDIGATE CHURCH 342
REIGATE 345
A REIGATE BYWAY 346
PARK LANE, NEAR REIGATE 347
REIGATE HEATH 349
VIEW FROM NEAR REIGATE 353
WHITGIFT'S HOSPITAL, CROYDON 359
SUTTON 371
THE SIX BELLS INN, HORLEY 381
THE WINDMILLS AT OUTWOOD 384
CHARLWOOD 386
GODSTONE 389
OLD TIMBERED HOUSE NEAR BLETCHINGLEY 392
BLETCHINGLEY 394
NUTFIELD CHURCH 399
LINGFIELD 401
THE VILLAGE CAGE, LINGFIELD 402
CROWHURST CHURCH AND THE OLD YEW 409
THE FARMHOUSE OPPOSITE CROWHURST CHURCH 410
CROWHURST PLACE 411
THE BRIDGE OVER THE MOAT, CROWHURST PLACE 412
TANDRIDGE CHURCH 415
A STREET IN OXTED 417
OXTED CHURCH 418
THE GOLF HOUSE AND WINDMILL, WIMBLEDON COMMON 429
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS
IN
SURREY
CHAPTER I
THE PILGRIMS' WAY
The Pageant of the Road.--Canterbury Pilgrims.--Henry II.
barefoot.--Choosing the Road.--Wind on the Hill.--Wine in the
Valley.--_Pilgrim's Progress._--Shalford Fair.--A doubtful
Mile.--Trespassers will be Prosecuted.--With Chaucer from the
Tabard.
East and west through the county of Surrey runs the chalk ridge of the
North Downs, the great highway of Southern England from the Straits of
Dover to Salisbury Plain. Of all English roads, it has carried the
longest pageant. It saw the beginnings of English history; for four
centuries it was one of the best known highways in Christendom: the
vision from its windy heights is one of the widest and most gracious of
all visions of woods and fields and hills. By the trackway they made
upon the ridge came the worshippers to Stonehenge; Phoenician traders
brought bronze to barter for British tin, and the tin was carried in
ingots from Devon and Cornwall along the highway to the port of Thanet;
Greeks and Gauls came for lead and tin and furs, and the merchants rode
by the great Way to bring them. When Caesar swept through Surrey on his
second landing, his legions marched over the Way before he turned north
to the Thames. When the Conqueror drove fire and sword through Southern
England, he went down to Winchester by the chalk ridge; and when the
great lords under the Conqueror and Rufus, Richard de Tonebrige and
William de Warenne, built their rival castles, they built them to
command the highway; so did Henry of Blois build his castle at Farnham;
and so was Guildford Castle built. Of warfare later than Norman days,
the Way saw nearly all that went through Surrey. Simon de Montfort and
his barons rode fast by the ridge the year before Lewes; they lay at
Reading on the twenty-ninth of June, and on the first of July at
Reigate. In the wars of the Parliament, Farnham west of the Way saw the
siege of an hour; Lord Holland led his little band from Dorking to
Reigate and fled back again. Last of the echoes of Stuart battles,
Monmouth, after Sedgmoor, was driven through Farnham to lodge for one
night of misery and fear at Abbot's Hospital in Guildford.
But the Way has another meaning and other memories. It is as the
Pilgrims' Way that it is best known, and as the Pilgrims' Way that it
has been written about and tracked and traced and surrounded with legend
and story and the haunting melancholy of an old road once used and now
half forgotten. The Pilgrims' Way is more than the old Way, for it runs
by more than one road. The old Way took its followers along the ridge or
just under it, high in the sun and wind where the traders and fighters
could see their route clear above the thick woods of the Weald. The
Pilgrims' Way lies as often on the low ground as on the hill. But it
follows the line of the chalk ridge, and the parallel roads, though here
and there it would be difficult to choose between them as to which was
most used by travellers, have become vaguely named the Pilgrims' Way,
and as the Pilgrims' Way they remain.
[Illustration: _Along the Chalk Ridge.--Leith Hill in the Distance._]
The Way became the Pilgrims' Way in 1174, four years after Thomas a
Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. His tomb in the Cathedral
became the second shrine in Christendom, and pilgrims came to it along
the old trackway through Surrey, from Farnham east of the Hog's Back
along the hills to Canterbury in Kent. Henry the Second, one of the
earliest pilgrims of all, made his act of repentance a few days after
landing at Southampton from France, on February 8, 1174. Or so legend
relates, and adds that he swore to walk barefoot; history is less
precise. After Henry the stream of devotees multiplied. Pilgrims
landed, like Henry, at Southampton, or between Southampton and
Chichester, and came through Winchester or Alton to Farnham; travellers
from the West of England joined the foreigners at Winchester, or came to
Farnham by the old Harrow Way, another ancient track from Salisbury
Plain. Thousands made the journey; more and more followed year by year.
At last it was determined to divide the stream. St. Thomas was murdered
on December 29, and the great pilgrimage to Canterbury and the return
centred round that date. In 1220 pilgrims were given a chance of paying
their vows in summer as well as winter. St. Thomas's body, on July 7,
was moved from the crypt under the nave to the grand altar in the nave,
and from that day forward the Feast of the Translation took its share of
the pilgrims' numbers. A constant stream journeyed east and west;
travellers with vows unpaid met travellers returning from the shrine,
and on and round the peopled highway sprang up booths and shelters to
meet the pilgrim's needs. Pedlars and merchants hawked their wares and
drove bargains by the road. Fairs were instituted in the villages along
the route; strolling musicians earned idle wages; beggars sat by the
roadside, at the churchyard corners, at the foot of the hills, and asked
for alms.
[Illustration: _The "Hog's Back."_]
And here, before we follow the pilgrims across the county from Farnham
to the lane by which they leave it east of Titsey, I want to make a
point clear. The pilgrims did not all travel to Canterbury by the same
road, along the selfsame track so many feet wide, as the Ordnance map
and some of those who have written on the Pilgrims' Way would argue.
There is not one single, separate path along which every pilgrim who set
out from Winchester to Canterbury travelled through Surrey. All that the
pilgrims did was to journey forward either on, or near, the old Way from
west to east and east to west, and it has happened that they used, more
than any other track besides the Way itself, one particular road. This
road can be followed parallel to the old Way for a long distance,
running from church to church under the chalk ridge; and it is this road
which is marked in the maps as the Pilgrims' Way. Perhaps that is
convenient, but it should be understood that not all the pilgrims went
by it. For pilgrims, after all, were as human then as walkers along
country roads are to-day. They would not all want to do the same thing
in the same way. Some of them would set out to do one thing and some
another. Some would prefer to walk alone high up on the ridge; others
would choose a bevy of companions and chatter along the road under the
hill. Some would be thin, ascetic persons, who liked to stride along and
see how far they could go without eating or drinking; some would be
pleasant, good-tempered creatures, who would amble by dusty places and
be thankful for cool beer; some would eat or drink mechanically, filled
with a single thought of prayer and pilgrimage to a shrine. Some would
be always perverse, and because most people travelled by one path, or
halted at an easy spot, would choose deliberately another path, and halt
where others passed on. Some would determine, come what might of wind or
rain or sun, to sleep at a certain village at nightfall; others would
let the weather decide for them. The weather would decide much, and it
would choose differently for different travellers. One of the writers
who has discussed the problems of the Pilgrims' Way suggests that the
main route would vary with varying degrees of heat and cold. If the
weather were cold and wet, the pilgrims would travel on the chalk ridge;
and if it were hot, they would go by the leafy woodland path below. But
if I Were a pilgrim and the weather were hot, I should go by the top of
the ridge, so as to get the air and the view; probably I would go by the
ridge in any case, whatever the weather was.
If written proof were needed that the journeying pilgrims Were not
condemned to a sort of solemn observance of the rules of
"Follow-my-leader," or bound by uncomfortable routine like so many
Cook's tourists, it would not be difficult to find. From a paper on the
Pilgrims' Way, written by Major-General E. Renouard James, you may learn
that in 1463, nearly three hundred years after the first pilgrim
followed Henry II to Canterbury, St. Martha's chapel by Guildford--St.
Martha's being a corruption of "The Martyr's," that is, St. Thomas the
Martyr's chapel--was in need of repair. And so, through the Prior of
Newark, "forty days' indulgence was granted to such as should resort to
this chapel on account of devotion, prayer, pilgrimage, or offering; and
should there say Paternoster, the Angel's Salutation, and the Apostles'
Creed; or should contribute, bequeath, or otherwise assign anything
towards the maintenance, repair, or rebuilding of the same." But what
does that mean? It must mean that not all the pilgrims went into St.
Martha's to pray, or even went by St. Martha's on their way east. The
Prior specially framed the terms of his indulgence to attract more
pilgrims.
In Mr. Hilaire Belloc's admirably interesting book _The Old Road_, in
which he describes the way in which he, sometimes with one companion and
sometimes with two, sought out the exact track of a single Pilgrims' Way
from Winchester to Canterbury, I find him writing of the compulsions of
the pilgrimage--"The pilgrim set out from Winchester: 'You must pass by
that well,' he heard, 'it is sacred.' ... 'You must, of ritual, climb
that isolated hill which you see against the sky. The spirits haunted it
and were banished by the faith, and they say that martyrs died there.'
... 'It is at the peril of the pilgrimage that you neglect this stone,
whose virtue saved our fathers and the great battle.' ... 'The church
you will next see upon your way is entered from the southern porch
sunward by all truly devout men; such has been the custom here since
custom began.' From step to step the pilgrims were compelled to take the
oldest of paths." Well, some of the pilgrims, perhaps most of them,
since human nature imitates more often than it contradicts, may have
been so compelled. But not all. I should like to set next to Mr.
Belloc's passage a passage from the book of another pilgrim. Bunyan,
when he wrote _Pilgrim's Progress_, may not have referred directly to
the Way from Winchester to Canterbury, though his 'Vanity Fair' has been
guessed to correspond with Shalford Fair, and other details of the
progress have been fitted in with other happenings, as we shall see at
Shalford. But unquestionably he reproduces the state of mind with which
a pilgrim would undertake a journey, wherever his pilgrimage would take
him. He was born only ninety years after the last pilgrim had paid his
vows; he would have talked to men whose fathers had made the pilgrimage,
and as he writes of it the keynote is voluntary choosing of the road.
Here is the passage:--
"I beheld, then, that they all went on till they came to the foot of the
hill Difficulty, at the bottom of which was a spring. There were also in
the same place two other ways, besides that which came straight from the
gate: one turned to the left hand, and the other to the right, at the
bottom of the hill; but the narrow way lay right up the hill; and the
name of that going up the side of the hill, is called Difficulty.
Christian now went to the spring and drank thereof to refresh himself,
and then began to go up the hill, saying--
'The hill, though high, I covet to ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend;
For I perceive the way to life lies here.
Come, pluck up heart, let's neither faint nor fear,
Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.
The other two also came to the foot of the hill. But, when they saw that
the hill was steep and high, and that there were two other ways to go;
and supposing also that these two ways might meet again with that up
which Christian went, on the other side of the hill; therefore, they
were resolved to go in those ways. Now the name of one of those ways was
Danger, and the name of the other Destruction. So the one took the way
which is called Danger, which led him into a great wood; and the other,
took directly up the way to Destruction, which led him into a wide
field, full of dark mountains, where he stumbled and fell, and rose no
more."
Now that is exactly the way in which the pilgrims might have separated
and gone their own ways at a dozen places along the road to Canterbury.
Take, to begin with, the joining and the parting of the ways at Farnham.
Pilgrims would meet there, as we have seen, coming through Winchester,
from Normandy, or by the Harrow Way from Salisbury Plain, from Wales,
from Ireland, and all the West of England. But they would not all
necessarily leave by the road that runs straight from Farnham to the
foot of the Hog's Back. Some would have letters to the Abbot of
Waverley, would spend a night at the Abbey two miles to the south-east,
and join the others perhaps at Puttenham, six miles further along the
Way. Then, among those who chose to travel straight to the western slope
of the Hog's Back, there would be different minds at the foot of the
hill. Some would climb the hill at Whitewaysend--the white way of the
chalk would begin for them there--and would stride along in the sunlight
the seven straight miles to Guildford. Others would prefer to keep to a
path under the hill, stopping at the churches and gossiping at the inns.
You can trace the old road clearly through Seale to Puttenham, where it
must have travelled south of the church door, instead of taking the
awkward and unnecessary turn to the north which is taken by the modern
road. Then at Puttenham the pilgrims would divide again. Some would
journey straight on across Puttenham Heath, heading towards St.
Catherine's Hill--you can see the rough track; others would turn aside
to the south-east, to visit Compton church; perhaps they would come down
into Compton as you may come down into it from the east to-day, by what
is evidently an old track cut deep in the woods. They would go up north
again from Compton; perhaps they would be tired of the valley, and would
climb the Hog's Back to walk the last mile or so into Guildford in the
wind; perhaps they would join the other stream of pilgrims travelling by
the sandy lane by which you may walk to-day as slowly as they did
towards St. Catherine's Hill. Most of them, I think, would collect on
St. Catherine's Hill; St. Catherine's was more popular than the
Guildford churches. So General James has discovered, examining ancient
records of litigation. The parson of St. Nicholas, Guildford, fearing to
lose his profit from the pilgrims who visited the town, purchased from
the lord of the manor the freehold of the site of the chapel, and
rebuilt it in 1317. Perhaps the attraction of St. Catherine's was that
it was on the way to Shalford Fair. Guildford had two special fairs, on
May 4 and November 22, to catch the summer and the winter pilgrims. But
Shalford Fair was the great fair, and actually covered 140 acres of
ground.
[Illustration: _Coming in to Puttenham._]
The pilgrims would cross the Wey under St. Catherine's Hill by a ferry
or a rough plank bridge. The merchants travelling with their horses, and
the ponies driven from Weyhill Fair out towards Salisbury Plain, would
come through the water by a ford. But the ferry and the bridge were both
of almost immemorial antiquity. In 1736 there was a dispute about the
bridge. The lord of the manor of Braboeuf had built a bridge over the
Wey for a fair on St. Matthew's Day. The owner of the church lands at
Shalford ordered it to be destroyed; he claimed the right of conveying
passengers over the river. They went to law, and it was alleged that
there had been a bridge there time out of record. Judgment, however,
decided "that there had been no bridge except _per unum battellum_ (one
plank) at the mill belonging to the heirs of Henry de la Poyle (a mile
lower), laid for convenience of the pilgrims going to the chapel of St.
Katherine at the time of the fair." General James has unearthed the
decision of the Court, and incidentally added another bypath to the
Pilgrims' Way.
Opposite the ferry under St. Catherine's the line of the Way to St.
Martha's is clear enough, a green track in a green field; and once I saw
it as the pilgrims may have seen it on a spring morning. It was in May,
and there was a haze over the meadowland by the river which blurred
shapes and colours. St. Catherine's was no longer a ruin; the buildings
on the hill faded into the trees; the clothes of wanderers by the
riverside took on mediaeval brightnesses, lost modern forms; and into the
foreground ran three bare-headed, yellow-haired children, and in their
brown arms great bunches of cuckoo-flowers. So might one returning from
the Martyr's chapel have seen the path to the ferry in the days when the
Clerk told the tale of Griselda.
The track crosses the road near the ferry, and by a wood named the
Chantries comes up to St. Martha's, at the foot of the hill a
close-cropped aisle of down grass, and nearer the top a loose, sandy
path among pines. At the base of the hill the pilgrims who had come by
the ferry would be joined by those who had left Guildford by Pewley
Hill, to come out through the valley past Tytings, now a private
residence, but once the dwelling of St. Martha's priest. And on the
other side of the hill a difficulty waits. Mr. Belloc traces the road
from the foot across a ploughed field, to connect with a narrow lane on
the other side of the road dropping from Newlands Corner to Albury.
Well, it is possible that some of the pilgrims strayed out in that
direction, though it means that they would have to descend a bank like
the wall of a house by the Newlands Corner road, which is a sunken
track; also, Mr. Belloc owns that a little further on this road he
chooses has a doubtful section of a mile and a half. May he not be on
the wrong road? Why should not the pilgrims drop down the road which
leads from the foot of St. Martha's Hill into Albury? The inns would
have tempted them; they would be heading straight for the church; and
the road leading to inns and church is clearly a road that led from St.
Martha's Hill into the valley of the Tillingbourne long before the hill
bore a Christian chapel. It is evidently an old British trackway. It
runs along a ridge, and yet it is sunk deep between two very high banks.
If it was there when the pilgrims came down from the Martyr's chapel,
why should they make a fresh track for themselves, especially one which,
as Mr. Belloc admits, "raises a difficulty unique in the whole course of
the way"? The track he follows goes by the wet, northward side of a
hill--"an exception to an otherwise universal rule."
I have no space to follow the way in detail through the country, but
this particular section seemed to me to illustrate clearly the need for
imagining what the pilgrims would be likely to do, rather than to try to
fit in their doings with a particular path or lane through Albury. I do
not see why the pilgrims should not have followed the same route as we
travel by to-day. Doubtless by what is now Albury Park the road has
become confused. May it not have led through Albury Park past the south
porch of the ruined church, and so come in a natural way to Shere church
by the old inn? All five would then lie in a line--the old track from
the Martyr's chapel, Albury Church, the White Horse Inn, the short road
to Shere Church, and the track that leads up from Gomshall to the flank
of the downs again. But that is only guessing; the line on the maps
tempts it.
East of Gomshall to Oxted almost on the county border the track of the
old Way and of the Pilgrims' Ways, sometimes coinciding, sometimes
running parallel to each other, runs along the crest and the southern
slopes of the chalk ridge. Yews and wind-bent thorn mark the ways,
sometimes, as east of Gomshall, by a clear cut ridge in the hill, lined
with ancient trees; sometimes, as under Denbies by Dorking, you can only
pick out the path by solitary yews studding grass fields and corn-land.
At the gap of the Mole by Dorking the old Way, perhaps, forded the Mole;
the pilgrims would cross by Burford Bridge, which joins the Roman Ermyn
Street to Stane Street beyond Dorking. Both the Way and the pilgrims'
track would join on the line of yews on Box Hill, and from Box Hill to
Reigate there is a succession of yew road-marks and hedges, with here
and there the whole face of the downs bitten out by a chalk pit;
gradually the road climbs, until the track above Reigate lies almost on
the highest point of the ridge. At Reigate the old Way carries on,
crossing the hill-road which was from the town north to London. The
slope of the modern road has been eased by cutting into the hill, and
the ancient Way now is joined, on Reigate Hill, by a suspension bridge.
But the pilgrims would drop down into the town to sleep and to eat and
drink. You may see their tracks on the chalk, streaming down from the
ridge like a bunch of white ribands in the wind. They came into Reigate
by Slipshoe Lane, and there, where the cross roads meet, they stood to
pray at St. Thomas's shrine, now no more.
[Illustration: _By Slipshoe Lane to the Red Cross Inn, Reigate._]
They would please themselves where they climbed the ridge again. Or they
joined the old Way, perhaps, in what is now Gatton Park, where the yews
point to Merstham church. After Merstham the tracks divide again. East
of an interrupting chalk pit, a thick yew hedge lines the side of the
hill, under which I once ate fine blackberries in December, as perhaps
the Wife of Bath ate them. But half way along the ridge of yews another
path climbs up a plough, and on the crest it joins a narrow lane which
is as much the Pilgrims' Way as any road on the downs; it runs by
Tollsworth Farm over the summit of White Hill, and is actually marked
"The Pilgrims' Way" twice on the sign posts, so sure are the local
painters of what they have to point out. East from White Hill you may
follow a single track, sometimes grass, sometimes modern road. There is
a puzzle at Godstone Quarry, where the chalk pits have cut the hill to
pieces, and the tiny path which perhaps still keeps the line across the
pits is a perilous slippery place in the rain. On the far side of
to-day's road by the chalk pit you may pick up the green track again,
though you will lose it rounding the spur of the hill that lies half way
between Godstone and the railway. The old Way probably still kept to the
ridge, and Sir Gilbert Scott thought he had traced the Pilgrims' Way
through the Hanging Wood north of Tandridge Hill Lane. But I think I
found it in a green track which runs westward from a gap in that same
lane. It looked like a rough cart-track through a field, and would join
the road already traced beyond. In its centre, a foot from the ground,
was placed, and doubtless remains, a blue enamelled notice board, with
the brief but usual caution to trespassers.
East of Tandridge Hill Lane, on the far side of a grass field, a curious
path, half ditch, half avenue of yews and thorns, leads down through
woodland to green trackway again. The green track crosses the railway
cutting, and so journeys on into Titsey Park on the level lowland. Under
the new Titsey church it runs, as it once ran past the old church in the
Park, and from Titsey church eastward, by a country lane through broad
and glorious cornfields, it passes out of Surrey into Kent.
By those ways they went, fur-clad Briton, ravaging Dane, Roman eagle,
traders of tin and drivers of ponies, along the ridge in the sun and the
wind and the rain; by their side and after them, along the ridge and
under it, travelled the knight and the clerk and the friar and the
summoner, as they travelled from the Tabard Inn to St. Thomas's shrine
with Chaucer; and we may follow them, beginning with Surrey's western
town, and journeying at the end from the Tabard again, with the pilgrims
passing to the east.