THE VILLAGES OF THE TILLINGBOURNE
Chilworth.--Gunpowder and Banknotes.--Cashier for fifty years.--The
Evelyns' Powdermills.--Albury's chimneys.--A Yew hedge quarter of a
mile long.--Sherborne ponds: the Silent Pool.--King John and Sabrina
drowned.--Trout fed on Sandwiches.--Shere.--The prettiest village of
all.--The Tillingbourne.--William Bray, aged 97.--A Yeoman's
Will.--Shere Registers.--From Ann to Carbetia.--Gomshall.--Starving
a Retainer.
Four villages and a group of powdermills stand on the banks of the
Tillingbourne, which runs its short race of clear spring water from the
northern slopes of Leith Hill to the Wey by Shalford. There are scarcely
a dozen miles of the Tillingbourne altogether, but it runs through the
prettiest string of villages in the county. Friday Street is at its
source; Abinger Hammer, with two large millponds, is next; Gomshall lies
a mile to the west of Abinger Hammer, Shere a mile to the west again,
and Albury beyond Shere. Chilworth stands last on the bright little
stream, hardly a village; not much more than a station, some
powdermills, and reedy ponds.
The quickest road from Guildford to Chilworth is the railway. The best
road is over the downs. The road which Cobbett took when he came from
Kensington was over Merrow Downs to Newlands Corner, and it is worth
while to climb up Newlands Corner to look at the view as Cobbett saw it,
with the pale distances of eight counties on his horizon, and the dark,
tall chimneys of the powdermills he detested smoking below him. "Here we
looked back over Middlesex," he writes, "and into Buckinghamshire and
Berkshire, away towards the north-west, into Essex and Kent towards the
east, over part of Sussex to the south, and over part of Hampshire to
the west south-west." He might have added Oxfordshire. Nothing in Surrey
delighted Cobbett more than "the narrow and exquisitely beautiful vale
of Chilworth," at which he used to gaze from these downs. Only Hawkley
Hanger, just over the Hampshire border, filled him with greater
pleasure. But the Chilworth powdermills goaded him to fury:--
"This valley," he writes, white hot, "which seems to have been created
by a bountiful providence, as one of the choicest retreats of man; which
seems formed for a scene of innocence and happiness, has been, by
ungrateful man, so perverted as to make it instrumental in effecting two
of the most damnable of purposes; in carrying into execution two of the
most damnable inventions that ever sprang from the minds of man under
the influence of the devil! namely, the making of _gunpowder_ and of
_bank-notes_! Here in this tranquil spot, where the nightingales are to
be heard earlier and later in the year than in any other part of
England; where the first bursting of the bud is seen in spring, where no
rigour of seasons can ever be felt; where everything seems formed for
precluding the very thought of wickedness; here has the devil fixed on
as one of the seats of his grand manufactory; and perverse and
ungrateful man not only lends him aid, but lends it cheerfully! As to
the gunpowder, indeed, we might get over that. In some cases that may be
innocently and, when it sends the lead at the hordes that support a
tyrant, meritoriously employed. The alders and the willows, therefore,
one can see, without so much regret, turned into powder by the waters of
this valley; but, the _Bank-notes_! To think that the springs which God
has commanded to flow from the sides of these happy hills for the
comfort and the delight of man; to think that these springs should be
perverted into means of spreading misery over a whole nation and that,
too, under the base and hypocritical pretence of promoting its _credit_
and maintaining its _honour_ and its _faith_! There was one
circumstance, indeed, that served to mitigate the melancholy excited by
these reflections; namely, that a part of these springs have, at times,
assisted in turning rags into Registers! Somewhat cheered by the thought
of this, but, still, in a more melancholy mood than I had been for a
long while, I rode on with my friend towards Albury up the valley."
The papermills which called down Cobbett's curses were probably
originally powdermills, and were turned to their new uses first in the
reign of Queen Anne. The Bank at first issued no notes of smaller value
than L20; ten-pound notes were first issued in 1759, and five pound
notes in 1793, and one and two pound notes four years later. Local
tradition, for an explanation of the name Newlands Corner, has decided
that it must have been called after Abraham Newland, who was chief
cashier of the Bank of England for fifty years till 1807, and whose
name, therefore, would be as familiar to King George's subjects, as is
May or Owen to a later day. But local tradition is mistaken. The name
occurs on Bowen's map of the county, dedicated to Richard, third Baron
Onslow, in 1749, when Newland was an unknown boy of nineteen.
A much greater Surrey industry than paper-making is the manufacture of
gunpowder. Indeed, whenever England was at war, from the days of
Elizabeth to those of the Parliament, the control of the Surrey powder
works was a vital point in the struggle. The first gunpowder manufactory
seems to have been established at Rotherhithe, where Henry Reve had a
mill in 1554. We were then getting a considerable quantity of our
gunpowder from abroad, and that was a state of affairs which continued
till the coming of the Armada. When the Armada came, England was
dangerously unprepared for war. It was lucky that Howard's and Drake's
fireships ended the fleet so quickly, for anything like a prolonged sea
campaign would have been out of the question. We had not enough powder.
Accounts made up in the year 1600 show that up to the day when the
Armada sail was sighted, there was never more than twenty or thirty
lasts (a last was about a ton) of English powder delivered yearly into
the Queen's stores. After the Armada, the Queen's Ministers set to work
to put the gunpowder supply on a proper basis, and it was then that
Surrey and a great Surrey family became inseparably associated with the
making of explosives.
George Evelyn (grandfather of a more famous grandson, John Evelyn of
Wotton) and John, his son, were first licensed in 1589 to dig saltpetre
in Great Britain and Ireland, and set up their first powdermills on the
little Hogsmill River, which joins the Thames at Kingston. Later, George
Evelyn retired, and John, having transferred his mills to Godstone, took
his brother Robert and three others into partnership and started on a
contract by which they supplied the Queen with a hundred lasts of powder
yearly at 7d. the pound. In 1604 the firm was practically reduced to
John and Robert Evelyn, and a partner named Hardinge, the others being
dead or doing no work. The firm was now employing a thousand hands, and
was given twenty-one years' contract to supply 120 lasts yearly at 8d.
per pound--nearly L10,000 worth of powder. But James I soon broke this
contract, and after three years the contract was given to the Earl of
Worcester; though whether the Earl ever made any powder, or what he did
with his contract, nobody knows. The progress of the manufacture of
gunpowder now becomes very obscure, though probably John Evelyn kept his
mills running at Godstone, making reduced quantities. It is not till
1621 that we find John Evelyn making another large contract with the
Government, but after that date the contracts were renewed every two or
three years, until the Evelyns in 1636 ceased to supply the Government
altogether. Their difficulties must have been almost intolerable. John
Evelyn and his son, also named John, who succeeded him in 1627, appear
to have been always punctual and trustworthy in supplying the powder
required, but the King would not or could not pay for it. The history of
each contract is always the same; for a few months all goes swimmingly,
then comes the Crown's inability to pay up; next stoppage of supplies;
eventually, settling up and a new contract. The Evelyn mills made the
last pound of powder for the King in 1636, and then under protest.
Charles was used to protests.
So far very little powder had been made at Chilworth. The Evelyn mills
were at Godstone--possibly near Wotton also. But it was the Chilworth
powdermills which broke the Evelyns' business. Immediately on coming to
the throne Charles I gave leave to the East India Company to set up
powdermills on the skirts of Windsor Park; but the mills frightened the
deer and were moved to Chilworth. Here, apparently, Sir Edward Randyll
owned or built a large number of mills, which he leased to the Company,
and it was the competition of the Company which silenced Evelyn's mills.
But the Company was equally unsuccessful in keeping the business.
Charles I was struck with the idea of turning shopkeeper himself, and
gave the sole Government contract to one Cordwell, from whom he bought
powder at 7-1/2d. the pound and sold it to the lieges at eighteenpence.
That did not last long. The Long Parliament assembled in 1641, and the
monopoly was abolished. From that date anybody might make gunpowder, and
Surrey ceased to be the single centre of the industry. But the Chilworth
mills still did a great deal of business--sometimes bad business. Sir
Polycarpus Wharton, who had a twenty-one years' lease under Charles II,
James II and William III, is said to have lost L24,000 over the mills,
simply because he could not get paid by the Government, and actually
went to a debtor's prison. Fifty years ago the industry had declined
almost to a vanishing point. It revived in 1880, when experiments were
made in new powders for heavy guns, and to-day the Chilworth Mills make
cordite, without the miserable consequences which befel Sir Polycarpus
Wharton.
It seemed worth while, at the risk of spattering the page with dates and
facts of gunpowder dryness, to attempt this short sketch of the Surrey
gunpowder industry, if only to escape from the confusion of current
legends. Chief among the traditions of the Chilworth mills is that which
makes them the property of John Evelyn of Wotton. No Evelyn owned a
powdermill at Chilworth, and John Evelyn of Wotton, though he may have
owned a casual mill or so elsewhere, is not the John Evelyn who owned
and worked the Godstone mills. Those mills belonged to the diarist's
grandfather, George Evelyn, and to George Evelyn's son and grandson,
both named John. The latter was the diarist's cousin. I ought to add
that I am indebted, for most of this history of gunpowder, to the
admirable article on the subject by Mr. Montague Giuseppi, published in
the Victoria History of the County.
Albury is nearly two miles from Chilworth station, and the Tillingbourne
runs through and under it. Albury has a number of beautiful chimneys;
chimneys that are tall and graceful, of red brick, shaped and moulded in
ingenious spirals, with patterned sides and columns, and crowsteps and
other ornaments and uses. You would not guess all that a chimney can be,
until you have seen Albury. A year or two ago there was another charm in
the village. You looked in from the main street at what seemed like half
a road, half an entrance to a square of houses, and found yourself in
the remains of an old farmyard, of which one side was a row of cottages.
The rest was old red brick--I think I remember a great dovecote--and a
quiet look of age and disuse. But now new buildings are rising in its
place.
[Illustration: _Chimneys, Albury._]
Just outside Albury is one of the Duke of Northumberland's houses, in
Albury Park. The garden holds a historic yew hedge, but it is not shown
to the public and I have not seen it. John Evelyn laid out the gardens;
Cobbett has described the yew hedge. In his day it belonged to Mr.
Drummond, a banker, and Cobbett, who had heard much of the park and
gardens, rode up to the house and asked permission to see them. So he
saw the yew hedge, and wrote about it.
"Between the house and the gardens there is a very beautiful run of
water, with a sort of little, wild, narrow sedgy meadow. The gardens are
separated from this by a hedge, running along from east to west. From
this hedge there go up the hill, at right angles, several other hedges,
which divide the land here into distinct gardens, or orchards. Along at
the top of these there goes a yew hedge, or, rather, a row of small yew
trees, the trunks of which are bare for about eight or ten feet high,
and the tops of which form one solid head of about ten feet high, while
the bottom branches come out on each side of the row about eight feet
horizontally. This hedge, or row, is a _quarter of a mile long_. There
is a nice hard sand road under this species of umbrella; and summer and
winter, here is a most delightful walk! Between this row of yews, there
is a space, or garden (a quarter of a mile long you will observe) about
thirty or forty feet wide, as nearly as I can recollect. At the back of
this garden, and facing the yew tree row, is a wall probably ten feet
high, which forms the breastwork of a terrace; and it is this terrace
which is the most beautiful thing that I ever saw in the gardening way.
It is a quarter of a mile long, and, I believe, between thirty and forty
feet wide; of the finest green sward and as level as a die."
In Albury Park is a ruined church. Its history is not very edifying. Mr.
Drummond, the banker, who built the Catholic Apostolic cathedral near
by, obtained permission to shut up the old church if he built a new one
elsewhere. He built the new church, and the old, with its graves and
memories, was abandoned. The footpath leading to it remains open to the
public, and runs under the shade of some superb Spanish chestnuts.
Perhaps half a mile from the park, in the depth of a wood of box, are
the two Sherborne Farm ponds, one of which has come by the name of the
Silent Pool. The Sherborne ponds lie somewhere near the track of the
pilgrims, and I like to think that the journeying men knew them and
drank their clear water. Legend has grown round the deeper, upper pool.
Martin Tupper, in his strange medley _Stephan Langton_, has shaped it
into his story. A lovely peasant girl used to bathe in the pool; King
John, riding by, saw her and drove his horse at her, and she, trying to
escape, fell into deep water and was drowned. That was not enough for
Martin Tupper; he decided that her brother should try to rescue her and
be drowned also. There they lay, the two of them; "the brother and
sister are locked in each other's arms in the tranquil crystal depth of
Shirebourne Pond; and the rippled surface is all smooth once more; and
you may see the trout shoaling among the still green weeds around that
naked raven-haired Sabrina, and her poor drowned brother in his cowskin
tunic." So wrote Tupper; a most moving finish of a chapter.
To gain the Silent Pool, if you are in Albury, walk eastwards right
through the village and turn to the left over the Tillingbourne. Then to
the left again, and you will spy a cottage, the gate of which bears the
legend "Key of the Pool kept here." How should a pool have a key? It
turns out to be two keys, one of a padlock shutting an iron gate leading
to a grove of box trees; you shut the padlock and find that you have
left all who come after you--and on Saturdays at least they are many--to
climb the fence. The Silent Pool, when I saw it first, a little
disappointed me. I ought to have known that it would, because everybody
could tell me where it was, even quite unintelligent people walking
about the road two miles away. I think I hoped the pool would be, not
only solitary and sequestered, but entirely deserted by human beings; a
pool on which you came suddenly, lying hidden in the heart of chalky
dells dark green with box trees; it was to be as deep as a well, and
cold with the coldness of a spring; smelling, too, of bitter wet box and
sun-warmed chalk. It was to be a pool at the side of which the stranger
should seat himself, and discover the air of the place so quiet and
enchanted that he could hear no sound of birds or beasts or men; only,
perhaps, the melodious drip of the rain-heavy boughs into the clear
peacock-green depths of water. And, in fact, the disappointment is that
this is precisely what the Silent Pool might be. It is what it used to
be, I think; but so many people have heard of it and have come on
bicycles and in carriages and motor-cars to see it, that the leaf-strewn
paths are trampled into mud round it; and it cannot be called silent,
for you will not escape hearing other people, who have quite as much
right as you to be there, talk about it and tramp round its margin.
Then, too, for the convenience of visitors, there has been built on the
edge of the pool a thatched arbour of wood, into which you admit
yourself with a very large key, only to be deafened on the spot by ten
thousand cockney names scrawled on the white walls round you. Those who
have gibbeted themselves on the walls have also thrown the newspapers
that held their lunch into the water, and bottles with the paper--a most
unhappy spectacle. Had I the right to touch the place, the arbour would
be packed up offhand for Rosherville. Only in one particular has the
arbour any claim on the wayfarer's gratitude. It enables him to watch
the large trout which swim in the clear deep water under him as closely
as if they were behind the glass of an aquarium. Trout which leap out of
the water every two minutes in a spring afternoon, and yet which are
tame enough to come and be fed under the rail of a wooden arbour by
trooping visitors, are a sight for idle fishermen to see. I have fed
them with worms, but I suspect them to be better used to sandwiches.
[Illustration: _Fireplace in White Horse, Shere._]
The road runs eastward a mile from Sherborne ponds to Shere. Who first
named the Shirebourne pond the Silent Pool? The old name is the best,
and the water of the pond ought to be added to the beauties of Shere. If
Shere is to be counted the prettiest Surrey village of all, I think it
is the Tillingbourne which decides the choice. Six or seven other
villages occur, each with its own fascination; Alfold, deep among the
primroses of the Fold Country; Chiddingfold, with its old inn and the
red cottages set round the green; Compton, with its flower gardens and
old timber; Thorpe, quiet among the elms; Oxted, lining the hill road
under the downs, and the Bell inn at the cross-ways; Betchworth and its
cottage roses; Coldharbour dotted over the sandstone; Friday Street,
hardly a village, on the banks of the tarn among the pines; but each
fails compared with Shere. Friday Street shows the reason plain. Without
the water Friday Street would pass unnoticed; it is the water which
decides for Shere. The village groups itself with the little brook
running through the middle: a low bridge crosses the stream, villagers
sit on the bridge, white ducks paddle about the current and stand upside
down among the weeds: beyond the brook are the tiny village green and
the shade of elms; on one side of the village green is the old inn, the
White Horse; and on the other the grey tower and the quiet of the
churchyard. But it is the sparkle and the chatter of the Tillingbourne
which are the first charm of all.
The White Horse is a pattern of an old village inn, with panelled rooms
and dark beams over its ceilings, and a parlour hung with oil paintings,
with the air of the Surrey countryside blowing through them. Your host
is the artist, and fellow artists come to the White Horse to sketch with
him. It is the only inn in Surrey I know which also sells a guide to the
neighbourhood, and a good guide too, so far as directions for finding
walks among the hills and woods can make a guide-book. Mr. Marriott
Watson has written an introduction to it, of which the sum is that all
walks start from the White Horse, and all walkers come back to it.
[Illustration: _Shere Church._]
Shere church is a medley of alterations; perhaps its most interesting
connection is its link with the old Surrey family of Bray. The Brays
have lived at Shere for more than four hundred years. The first Sir
Robert Bray was a knight of Richard I, and one of his descendants, Sir
Reginald, was granted the manor of Shere, in 1497. Sir Reginald was one
of the most distinguished of all the long line; he was a Knight of the
Garter, and the Bray Chapel in St. George's, Windsor, is his work; his
emblem the bray, or seed-crusher, is on the ceiling. But the member of
the family who had most to do with the country was William Bray, the
second of the two classical writers of the county history. William Bray
was born in 1736, and was a scholar whose learning was only equalled by
his astonishing vitality. He began his main work at an age when most
men's work is done. When the Rev. Owen Manning, after years of labour
at the history of Surrey, went blind and had to give up the hope of a
lifetime, William Bray finished the book. He was untiring. The first
volume appeared in 1804, when he was sixty-eight, and when the second
volume was published, five years latter, he wrote in his preface "that
there was not a parish described in it which he had not visited, and
only two churches the insides of which he had not seen, and the
monuments in which he had not personally examined, once at least, but to
many he made repeated visits." The third volume came out in 1814, and
then, at the age of seventy-eight, he edited John Evelyn's _Memoirs_
from the original MSS. at Wotton. He was to live nearly twenty years
after that, and he died at Shere at the age of ninety-seven; a tablet
stands to his memory in the chancel of the church.
[Illustration: _Shere._]
Mr. Granville Leveson-Gower, in a paper on "Shere and its Rectors" in
the _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, gives the items of a will he
discovered by accident, interesting as showing the amount of stock kept
upon his farm by a yeoman of the sixteenth century. The will is dated
27th October, 1562, and the testator is John Risbridger--one of the good
old Surrey yeoman names, like Evershed and Whapshot and Enticknap. He
describes himself as "John Risbridger of Shere, yeoman, sicke of bodie
and yet walkinge. His body to be buried in Parish Church of Shere,
'without my seats ende.' 1 calf and 2 shepe, with sufficient breade and
drinke thereunto to be bestowed and spent at his burial towards the
reliefe of the poore there assembled. To every man and maid servant, 1
ewe shepe; to Alice Stydman his maid, one herfore (i.e. heifer)
bullocke, of two years and 15s: to his son William all his lease or
terme of years in lands called Stonehill, and to him 4 oxen, 2 steares
of 3 yeres, 2 horse beastes, a weane (wagon) yoke, cheynes to draw
withal, 2 keyne, half a hundreth of shepe. Children, John, William, and
Edward. To daughter Dorothie, L6. 13s. 4d.; all residue to wife
Katherine. Proved 3rd May, 1654, by William Risbridger."
Some extracts made by Mr. Leveson-Gower from the Parish Registers have
an interest which is not peculiar to Shere, but the Registers are a good
example of village history written in the names of its inhabitants. You
begin with the simplicity, almost the affection, of the early entries,
the Johns and Anns and Marys repeated year after year, and the few words
describing the older people; then comes the Georgian day when Fielding
and Richardson were on the bookshelves, and children were named after
the heroines of the novels. Here are a dozen entries out of hundreds:--
Elizabeth Gatton (widow), neer 100 yeeres old, was Buryed 13 of July,
1691.
Widow Rowland (old and poor). May 18, 1701.
Elizabeth Nye, an ancient widow. Buried 23 Mar., 1715.
1732. Old Edward Stone, yeoman. Dec. y^e 30^th.
1739. William Wood, a poor unfortunate lad, being drown'd, was buried
Ap. 27.
Mary, daughter of Thomas Evershed, bap. Ap. 30, 1729.
Ann, daughter of Thomas Evershed, bap. Aug. 17, 1733.
Mary, daughter of Thomas Evershed, bap. May 14, 1736.
Ann, daughter of Mr. Robert Parkhurst, bap. Feb. 23, 1741-2.
1779. Gosling, Tho., son of Thomas and Dinah. May 25. (Note)
--married, child christened, wife churched the same day, by me,
Tho^s Duncumb, Rector.
1817. Carbetia Hall, of Shere, gentlewoman. Sep. 2, 68.
1821. Servilla Briscoe, of Abinger. April 17, 23.
One of the later entries in the Registers is interesting to historians.
Harriet Grote, widow of George Grote, died at Shere in 1878, aged 86.
Her grave is south of the church: Grote lies in Westminster Abbey.
Shere and Gomshall are only divided by an avenue of elms--half a mile of
the pleasantest and shadiest of roads. Gomshall is a village scattered
round many lanes; it has a Black Horse inn near the station, but the
prettiest Gomshall cottages are away from the Black Horse, down the
lanes off the main road. Gomshall Manor, now a boarding-house, has
traditions of the Middle Ages. There is a story of a door leading to a
secret chamber which ought to be somewhere in Martin Tupper's books, but
I cannot find it. King John was annoyed with a retainer, shut him in
this room and turned the key in the door, and there the miserable
retainer starved to death. It was just like King John to do it, but what
he did at Gomshall only tradition knows.
[Illustration: _Gomshall._]