OXTED AND LIMPSFIELD
East of Godstone.--Tandridge.--The _Notebook of a Surrey
Justice_.--Sturdy rogues.--Oxted.--A Rustic Guildford.--Mittens and
corduroys.--Limpsfield.--Self-criticism.--_The Old Oak
Chair._--Titsey Park and the Roman villa.--Tatsfield above the
downs.
East of Godstone five churches stand in a bow stretched to the Kent
boundary. Not each church has a village. Oxted and Limpsfield, in the
middle of the bow, are near by a railway station, and Limpsfield plays
golf on the common: both are little old villages with many new houses
about them. But Tandridge and Titsey, towards each point of the bow, are
churches almost without cottages, but with great parks beside them:
Tatsfield, easternmost of all Surrey villages, has houses and cottages,
but the church stands apart, looking out over the Weald.
Tandridge was once Tanrige, and had a priory, which disappeared, of
course, at the Dissolution. It was quite a little place; its earliest
record, dated somewhere near the end of the twelfth century, describes
it as the Hospital of St. James, in the Ville of Tanregge, with three
priests, in perpetuity there serving God, and Confraters of the said
Hospital. So Odo, son of William de Dammartin, writes of it in his deed
of gift of lands, a windmill, and silver cups to make a chalice. The
establishment was less a priory than a small hospice, in which poor and
needy persons were cared for, and to which wayfarers might come for
refuge; one of those gentle places for the help and refreshment of
sorrowing men that are set so strangely before the days of Tudor
cruelties and tortures. The prior's hospice welcomed and comforted the
tired poor; Elizabeth's age beat them, men and women, for sturdy rogues.
[Illustration: _Tandridge Church._]
Later Tandridge history centres round the church and Tandridge Court.
Tandridge Court has had noble owners, but perhaps the most interesting
is Bostock Fuller, who was a Justice of the Peace in the days of
Elizabeth, and who has left a notebook describing his work and the cases
that came before him, which takes his reader extraordinarily close to
Tudor times and customs. The manuscript, entitled _Note Book of a Surrey
Justice_, is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and Mr. Granville
Leveson-Gower in the _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, has made
extracts from the Bodleian transcript. Here are some of them:--
Apryll 1608.
[Sidenote: 4 Rogues whypped]
The 7^th I rode with M^r Evelyn to Sir W. Gaynsfords whoe was sycke,
to have his testymonye versus George Turner & that day we tooke iiij
Rogues 2 men and ij women on Blyndlye heath & had them to Godstone
they had stolen ij duckes and accused eche other of other ffacts, &
the 8^th daye I went to M^r Evelyns & there we sawe them whipped and
made them pasports to Devonshire & Somersetshire.
[Sidenote: 2 Rogues whipped]
The 15^th daye I caused to stoute Rogues called Marye Rendoll a
wydow, & Anne Marks a wyfe to be whipped at Tanrydg & sent to
Rawlyns in Essex.
June 1608
The 22th I rode to Kyngston Assyses and there I stayed 23th and 24th
dayes. Botley and Renfyld whom I sent to the Gaole were there hanged
and Burges whom M^r Evelyn & I bayled was burnte in the hande.
January 1608
John Berrye whom I sent to the goale for stealing Colcocks and
Whites henns was arrayned & whipt....
Bartholomew Gander being accessarye & ... Roaker, were put into the
Byll with the principal....
1612. 23 Dec.
I sent a warrant for Richard Mathewe of Reygate for hunting my lord
admyralls Conyes.
1613. The 4^th of June
Amias Gullock brought to me by the offycers of Gatton the 4^th daye
of June for stealing of a petycote which was taken with him; but the
partie would not accuse him of ffelonye, & he said he boughte it. I
caused him to be whipte and sent to the place of byrth at Combe by
Chard in Somersetshire.
Julye 19. 1613
... the abouebounden John Lambe is accused by Tho. Dennys for
shooting in a gunne & vnlawfullie killing of his conyes....
Julye 1616
The xi^th I sent Eliz. Edsall seruant to Richard Greene to the house
of Correction for stryking her dame and threatning her after and for
departing from her seruice.
19 deg. Nov.
... they broughte ... Toller with a goose which he said he stole
from Rose Harling, & I charged the Constable to laye him by the
heeles all night & to bring him again next morning.
He brake the stocks and ran away.
So went village life for Tandridge in the golden days. Few cottages have
been added since Mr. Bostock Fuller used to ride to the assizes. He
would see little change, perhaps, in the church, with the glorious oak
beams that bear up its belfry, and little, too, in the mighty yew whose
branches brush its tower. Over one gravestone he might be puzzled. It
has been placed in the grass, I think since his day, near the south
door, and is an ancient monument of hard sandstone with a cross carved
on it. Legend says that it was brought from Tandridge Priory, but there
are others like it at Oxted and Titsey which belong to an older date
than the priory.
[Illustration: _A Street in Oxted._]
Oxted is north-east of Tandridge; but there are two Oxteds. One is the
new village near the station, with new shops, a new inn, and the old
church. The other is the old village, set apart from the railway; a
little village clustered about a main street running up the hillside--a
rustic Guildford, a main street with cottage fronts for Guildford house
fronts, and an ancient timbered inn hanging out a golden bell instead of
Guildford's clock. Guildford's houses should hold Kate Greenaway maidens
and prim ladies with mittens: Oxted should have corduroys and aprons,
brown children and sunbonnets. So Oxted has; and it has also, I think,
more little inns than any Surrey village near its size. Each has its
sign; the street holds out a gallery of signs: stone steps and raised
alleys run to the cottage doorways, and the children play curious
village games with chalk squares and knucklebones, safe in the doorways
and on the pavement. There is a corner by the road crossing the main
street which is the prettiest in east Surrey. Weatherbeaten,
brick-and-timber cottages frame it: the Bell Inn, with its beams like
letters of a big black alphabet, hangs out its gold bell; beyond, the
road slopes to dim country greennesses and the hill of the downs.
[Illustration: _Oxted Church._]
Oxted church tower is noble and massive; a great content is about its
quiet, solid battlements. Once it had a spire, and I wish I had never
read that the spire was destroyed; now when I see it I am always
wondering what the church was like with a spire. In the churchyard are
two ancient tombstones, like the single stone at Tandridge; they, too,
are far older than the church.
Other strange monuments are in the church. One is to the memory of Ann,
wife of Charles Hoskins, who thus mourned her in 1651:--
LET THIS
PATTERNE OF PIETY
MAPP OF MISERY
MIRROUR OF PATIENCE
HERE REST
In another memorial you may trace the history of an extremely large
family. John Aldersey "haberdas^hr and m'chant ventoror of London" died
in 1616, aged seventy-five, "and had ysue 17 childeren." The whole
seventeen are represented in marble accompanying, and from their dress
and different sizes you may guess what happened to them. There are ten
sons and seven daughters; of the ten sons, six are bearded men, who grew
up, perhaps, and were men like their father: three are younger, just
ordinary sons, and one is a baby--I suppose died as a baby. Of the seven
daughters, two are babies, and the five that wear caps you may imagine
to be girls who grew up and were married and lived happily.
In Barrow Green House, an admirable building, perhaps more Georgian than
Jacobean, once lived Grote, the historian. He lies in Westminster Abbey;
his widow, as we saw, is buried in Shere churchyard. Barrow Green Farm,
close by, is all that an old farmhouse should be, complete with barns,
an oasthouse, and a fascinating front to the road. Oasthouses begin
here, near the Kent border. Surrey grows few hops; only at Farnham and
near Oxted, I think. In the west Hampshire encourages her, and here she
takes heart from Kent.
Limpsfield is the other side of the railway. The centre is unlike old
Oxted, for it is the church; but you cannot get a picture of Limpsfield
as separate and self-contained as of old Oxted. Oxted sets itself on its
hillside more charmingly than any village of the Surrey weald; you get
the picture from halfway up the road to the station, and you should look
at it when the sun is setting. Then the white ricks in the foreground
loom larger, and the huddled roofs and gables age into another century;
the blue smoke of wood fires drifts in the wind across the hill. But you
cannot hold Limpsfield at such a pleasant distance; you must come into
the village street close to the old cottages, and close too, to a large
house with a noble frontage on the roadway; great houses are seldom set
so near to cottages and the road. But Limpsfield, with all its
attractive antiquities of timber and gables, somehow strikes a modern
note. Detilens is the name--a name one vaguely tries to scan for a Latin
verse--of a little, hidden house of great age, in the village street.
But it is the common, not Detilens or neighbouring roofs, which marks
Limpsfield, and on the common are golf links and the huge red-brick
buildings of a school.
A century ago Limpsfield held an author and a critic. He was the author
of a tiny book, _Lympsfield and its Environs_, which was republished in
1838 with an introduction by a friend, who signs himself "H.G." and
dates his preface from Westerham. At Westerham, too, the curious little
republication was issued. It is illustrated by George Cruikshank and
with pleasant prints of old pencilled drawings, and besides a poem,
contains a number of descriptions of the chief houses of the
neighbourhood. Here is one of them:--
"CHART'S EDGE.
On inquiring of a native, we were told that this place was the
residence of "Mr. _Antiquary Streatfeild_." We doubt, however, if he
has any just pretensions to that designation, a divine across the
border assuring us that he is skilled in glamoury, and illustrating
his account by stating that 'where there was a hill, there he would
have a hollow, where there was a dell, there we should find a
mound'; and, indeed, we ourselves experienced the delusion, for the
spot which we had known for many years as a bleak desert, appeared
sheltered and decorated with thriving plantations, a house new from
the kiln, cheated us with its Elizabethan air; neither was the spell
broken when we found ourselves in the interior; there we saw, or
thought we saw, one of Raphael's loveliest easel pictures, one of
Rembrandt's deep toned yet brilliant interiors, and a goodly row of
ancestors in flowing wigs and ample ruffles; whilst, in fact, the
former were no more than a foxy Italian copy of the divine Urbino,
and a modern English attempt to mimic the glorious Fleming, and the
latter, Cockneys and Kentish Yeomen."
Such a concatenation of studied insults might be supposed to have
finished with a libel action. But it is the only description of a
neighbouring house which has a hint of raillery, and a pencilled note in
a copy I found of the little old book adds the explanation. Chart's Edge
belonged to the author of _Lympsfield and its Environs_. I imagine,
also, that Mr. Antiquary Streatfeild was the author of _The Old Oak
Chair_, republished in the same volume by his friend "H.G.," and
described as a ballad "sung at an anniversary dinner of the Westerham
Amicable Benefit Society, to which the author has proved a steady
friend." This is the ballad of _The Old Oak Chair_:--
My good sire sat in his old oak chair,
And the pillow was under his head,
And he raised his feeble voice, and ne'er
Will the memory part
From my living heart
Of the last few words he said.
"When I sit no more in this old oak chair,
And the green grass has grown on my grave,
And like armed men, come want and care,
Know, my boys, that God's curse
Will not make matters worse,
How little soever you have.
"The son that would sit in my old oak chair,
And set foot on his father's spade,
Must be of his father's spirit heir,
And know that God's blessing
Is still the best dressing,
Whatever improvements are made."
And he sat no more in his old oak chair;
And a scape-thrift laid his hand
On his father's plough, and he cursed the air,
And he cursed the soil,
For he lost his toil,
But the fault was not in the land.
And another set in his father's chair,
And talked, o'er his liquor, of laws,
Of the tyranny here and the knavery there,
'Till the old bit of oak
And the drunkard broke,
But the times were not the cause.
But I have redeemed the old ricketty chair,
And trod in my father's ways;
Have turned the furrow with humble prayer
To profit my neighbours,
And prosper my labours;
And find my sheaves with praise.
Cruikshank draws the scape-thrift roystering over punch and
churchwardens' pipes. The careful and thrifty farmer is in another
picture. He has no pipe, and he talks kindly to his wife, and dandles
his son on his knee. There is a large ale-jug on the table, and he has
had a capital dinner.
Titsey, a mile and a half away under the downs, is not a village at all;
just a modern church outside Titsey Park, and a cottage opposite the
church which was once an inn, and could swing a sign now if it wished;
the frame is there. Once the church stood inside the park. That was when
Titsey Place belonged to the Greshams, the ancestors of its later
owners, the Leveson-Gowers. Sir John Gresham, looking one day in 1776 at
the old church, decided that it was too near his house: it was only
thirty-five feet distant. With the insolence of the day, he knocked it
down, and the modern church stands obediently outside the gates. But
Titsey Park has made amends. When the late Mr. Granville Leveson-Gower
was at Titsey he brought to light, and described in the _Surrey
Archaeological Collections_, the foundations of a Roman villa discovered
in the Park, almost touching the old road used by the pilgrims on their
way to Canterbury. The foundations were interestingly complete, and from
the ground near were dug coins, pottery, and a bronze mask. To-day the
villa may be visited, but it is overgrown by weeds and elder bushes, and
the visible remains are of scanty walls and tumbled pillars; rabbits, I
think, see most of it.
From Titsey you may climb a steep road and find Tatsfield church,
separated from its scattered village, clean on the edge of the steep
hill. Tatsfield church, which is old and small, stands nearly eight
hundred feet above the weald, and its little churchyard, with a path in
it leading to no gate, but only to a hedge, lends a curious sense of a
garden. The stretch of Sussex and Kent to the south is freer and wider
than any other Surrey church sees; but Tatsfield, like other places with
a fine view, suffers continual loss in cloudy weather. When I was last
there the church stood alone on the brow, over unguessable depths of
grey mist.