HORLEY AND CHARLWOOD
Restored church windows.--A Cow for an apprentice.--A Horley
eleven.--Thunderfield Castle.--Horne.--Outwood Common.--A daring
jump.--Over the Green.--Burstow's Astronomer.--Causies.--St.
Margaret and the Devil.--A Country Sermon.
"The pretty village and church of Horley" is the opening of a
descriptive paragraph in a Surrey guide-book not thirty years old.
Horley is more than a village and a little less than pretty to-day. But
it has two good old-fashioned country inns, and it is a convenient
centre to some interesting country. It contains in itself little of
interest except the church, which has a fine tower; but which is one of
the unhappiest examples of unintelligent "restoration." The story of the
"restoration" is, indeed, hardly credible. In 1877 the Surrey
Archaeological Society visited the church, and Major Heales wrote an
admirable paper on its architecture, particularly drawing attention to
the beauty of the windows in the north aisle, which dated from 1310, and
contained some rare deep ruby glass. He described the tracery as the
most beautiful in the county. Yet within five years the church was
"restored"; the windows, which were in excellent preservation and would
have lasted another five hundred years, were destroyed, every stone of
them; and the glass had disappeared, either broken up or sold.
[Illustration: _The "Six Bells" Inn, Horley._]
Horley parish registers have some pleasant entries. Stray daughters, who
ate too much at home and otherwise were hard to look after, used to be
apprenticed to persons who would undertake, for a consideration, to keep
them until they were twenty-one. The consideration might be in cash or
in kind. Thus, Jeremy Shoe, on January 13, 1604, took An Chamley,
daughter of Edmund Chamley, deceased, apprentice "until she come to xxj,
in consideracon he receives some household stuffe to the valew of vj^s
viij^d and is to be eased in not paying to the poore for iiij yeares to
come." John Chelsham had a better bargain, for he agreed to take An
Williams till she came to twenty-one, and had from her father "one mare
and a colte in full satisfaction." Sometimes the apprentices were bound
even longer. Susan Washfoord was bound to Bernard Humphry, and he
undertook "to keep her sufficient meate, drink, and apparell until she
come to the age of fower and twenty yeares." Susan's mother was a widow,
and she paid to get rid of her daughter a cow and twenty shillings from
the churchwardens.
Not many Surrey towns or villages can boast a family cricket eleven.
Horley can. Eleven Watneys of Horley have played frequent matches
against local clubs, and against eleven Wigans of Mortlake. Mr. F.S.
Ashley-Cooper has collected some other instances of family cricket teams
in the county. Eleven Bacons, a father and ten sons, played eleven
postmen at Thornton Heath in 1895, but were beaten by the postmen. In
1877 eleven Mitchells played eleven Heaths on Shalford Common. The
Heaths all belonged to the same family, but the Mitchells were only
relations. Eleven Lovells played a match at Tulse Hill in 1901, but had
much the worst of it; and, most famous name of all, twelve Caesars of
Godalming, three fathers and their nine sons, once played the Gentlemen
of the District. The family luck was no better; they lost by 16 runs.
Hardly a mile to the south-east of Horley lies an enigma--Thunderfield
Castle. There is no castle; perhaps there never was one. A moat of brown
water, splashed with white duck-feathers; an irregular mound beyond,
thick with brushwood, and an ordinary set of farm-buildings through a
gate to the side--that is all that is to be seen of the castle to-day.
Was it an old British camp? Almost certainly not, nor a Roman camp. Mr.
Malden, the Surrey historian, thinks it may have been one of the
numberless castles built by the quarrelsome de Clares to annoy the
equally quarrelsome de Warennes. Perhaps it was built in the days when
castles sprang up like mushrooms; and perhaps it was demolished when
demolitions were so frequent that one more or less was never noticed. It
may have had a stone keep, but nobody can tell whether it had or not
unless he excavates the ground within the moat, and that is a task which
nobody, apparently, desires to try.
Another mile and a half along the west road from Horley leads to
Smallfield Place, once the manor-house of the Bysshe family, afterwards
a farmhouse, and now a private residence, with the Jacobean part of the
old house apparently well worked in with the new. Further, by another
mile, is the tiny village of Horne, not much more than a school, a
church, and an old cottage or two. In such a simple, open-air little
place it was attractive to see, on a hot September day when I was there,
a ring of schoolchildren being given their lessons out of doors in the
shade. Horne is one of those little villages in which, when the busy,
pleasant hum of the children's school first comes down the wind, you
wonder where the children spring from. It does not look as if there were
enough cottages within walking distance to provide a class, much less
four or five standards--if that is the correct expression. Horne is,
indeed, one of the most out-of-the-way little places in this part of the
county. But it makes a satisfactory objective for a walk from Horley,
and its small church contains at least two memorials of interest. One is
an elaborate piece of wood-carving, painted to look like marble, which
commemorates John Goodwine, who died when James I was king; the other is
an ingenious model of the church itself, as it stood before restoration.
The restorers altered the interior pretty thoroughly; but the old church
must have been a curious building. It had a long, large window on the
roof, especially let in to throw light on the hymn-books of the
musicians in the gallery. How was such a window cleaned?
Walking in this part of Surrey, which is chiefly pasture, is apt to be a
little monotonous, without a good view. One of the prettiest views near
Horne is at Outwood, a little more than a mile to the north-west, on the
way back to Horley. Outwood Common is delightful. Two great windmills,
black and white, spread sails to the blowing air; below them, black and
white like the mills, pigs nose quietly over the short grass, and geese
strut cackling. To the north, beyond rich and tranquil fields, lie the
grey-green wooded hills by Bletchingley and Nutfield.
[Illustration: _The Windmills at Outwood._]
Horne is pretty near the centre of the country of the Burstow foxhounds,
which stretches from Leigh, the other side of Horley, to Edenbridge in
Kent. Two good stories are told of White, the Burstow huntsman. One is
of an extraordinary jump, singular not for its height or the width of
ground covered, but for its daring and adroitness. It was on one of
the best days the Burstow ever had, when they killed a fox at Crawley
after an hour and ten minutes' run almost without a check; and went on
to find another fox near New Chapel Green, which hounds ate in Kent at
half-past five, nobody knows quite where, so bad was the light. Nearly
at the end of the second run White found himself on the edge of a
narrow, deep ghyll, with a stream at the bottom, crossed by an overgrown
footpath which went down to the stream and up again by flights of stone
steps opposite each other. Riding down two or three of the steps, he
took a standing jump over the stream and landed on the top steps the
other side. On another occasion his daring was of a different kind; he
did not know where he was riding. Hounds had crossed the golf links on
Earlswood Common, and White, close behind them, was riding straight for
one of the greens. A member of the hunt shouted to warn him, but White,
who had not the slightest notion what was meant, galloped straight over
the green, turning round to point at the hole and shout to the hunt,
"Ware hole! ware hole!"
Burstow itself, hidden among pines, has named the hounds, but has not a
large part in Surrey history. One of its rectors, the Rev. J. Flamsteed,
who is buried in the church, was the first Astronomer Royal. Charles II
made him that, when he was twenty-nine; nine years later he took orders,
and went on astronomising till his death. Newton helped him and
quarrelled with him over the publication of his observations; but it was
something, even in the days of Charles II, to be made Astronomer Royal
when Newton was alive.
Three miles on the other side of Horley lies Charlwood, once a wholly
restful little village, but of late years stiffened and discoloured by
the building contractor. The centre street of the village, near the
church, is quaintly arched by a pair of elm trees, cropped and pollarded
to meet overhead. Elms are not often selected for experiments in
topiary. But Charlwood has more than one feature peculiar to itself, or
at all events to the district. The village lies deep in Wealden clay,
which can grow luxuriant roses, but which in days when Surrey roads were
less well laid made getting about in the winter rains a matter of
difficulty for those who could not drive. So those who walked made their
own paths, which can be seen running along the side of most of the
roads in the neighbourhood. "Causies" is the local name for these
causeways, which are single slabs of flat stone set like stepping stones
in the clay, sometimes for miles together. The villagers tell you that
they have been there since no one knows when. They may be right, but
their probable date is the middle of the seventeenth century, when John
Gainsford, as we shall see, was making a causeway like these at
Crowhurst.
[Illustration: _Charlwood._]
A very curious set of wall paintings portrays, in the south aisle of
Charlwood church, the legend of St. Margaret. St. Margaret was a virgin
and a martyr, a most popular saint in the middle ages, and the heroine
of a remarkable story. She was the daughter of a pagan priest at
Antioch, and since she was a weak child, she was sent into the country
for fresh air. Her nurse brought her up as a Christian, and when she was
older she was sent into the fields to mind sheep. One day the governor
of Antioch, whose name was Olibrius, was out hunting, saw the pretty
shepherdess, fell in love with her at sight, and offered her his hand in
marriage on the spot. St. Margaret refused him; she might not wed with a
pagan. Olibrius was furious. He seized the poor shepherdess, beat her
cruelly, and threw her into prison; even there she was not safe. The
devil himself came after her in the form of a dragon, entered the prison
and swallowed the saint whole, as you may see in the picture. However,
Providence intervened, and by a miracle she escaped from the dragon's
body. Evidently Providence then gave up helping, for Olibrius succeeded
where the devil had failed. He ordered her head off at once, and the
artist has painted her soul flying to heaven in the form of a dove.
Another painting sets out a commoner story, the allegory of the Three
Living and the Three Dead. Three kings ride out hunting in the forest,
and are met by three ghastly spectres, who lecture them on the vanity of
this world's pomps and pleasures. I should think this used to be a
favourite. It must have been vastly comforting to the poor, and pretty
easy, too, for the parson. Anybody could make a sermon on the sufferings
in store for kings and other rich people, and the way they go out
hunting and shooting and not caring for anybody, and then the spectres
come at them and they see how empty life is. Even to-day those ruddled
drawings can set a spell. Stare at them, and the little church calls
back its preacher and his flock; there, in the pulpit, he stood,
gesturing at the dragon and St. Margaret; here, below him, sat the
quiet-hearted countrymen, wondering in the solemn Sunday sunshine; here,
perhaps, a child, hearing the story for the first time. St. Margaret
must have been more difficult than the Kings. She begins well enough,
and she goes on well--the village maidens would doubt whether they would
have the strength to refuse an Olibrius. Then the deliverance from the
devil would do admirably; the bumpkins would swallow that as easily as
the devil swallowed St. Margaret. But how to go on? How to explain the
failure of Providence afterwards? The preacher must have slurred that,
and got on quickly to the wings of the dove.
Two great Surrey families belong to Charlwood. One is the line of
Sander, or Saunder, settled at Charlwood as early as Edward II, and
still surviving, in name at all events, in the neighbourhood. It was
Richard Saunder who placed in the church the delicate fifteenth-century
oak screen, the most beautiful in the county; but a more famous member
of the family was Nicholas Saunder, Regius Professor and Jesuit Divine,
over whose writings many good churchmen quarrelled. The other family are
the Jordans of Gatwick, almost as old as the Saunders, and like them
surviving in cottage life to-day.
[Illustration: _Godstone._]