CROYDON, CARSHALTON, EPSOM, AND OTHER
SUBURBS IN NORTH-WEST SURREY
[Sidenote: Croydon]
Situated near the source of the Wandle at the entrance to a beautiful
valley that is shut in on the east by wooded hills, and on the west and
south-west by breezy uplands, the prosperous modern town of Croydon
occupies the site of a very ancient settlement that owned before the
Conquest a church and a mill, as proved by the detailed description
given of it in Doomsday Book. Now one of the largest and most
important, though by no means the most picturesque of the Surrey
suburbs of London, Croydon, the name of which is variously interpreted
to mean the chalk hill, the crooked or winding valley, and the village
of the cross, is associated from very early times with the history of
the Church in England. Its manor, the value of which was assessed at
the Conquest at sixteen hides and one virgate, was given by William I.
to Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury, to whose successors it long
belonged, though the palace that in course of time replaced the ancient
manor-house was deserted by them in the middle of the eighteenth
century and {149} was later altogether superseded by that at Addington
already referred to.
[Illustration: THE OLD PALACE, CROYDON]
Combining, as did most of the episcopal residences of mediæval times,
the strength of a fortress and the latest refinements of domestic
architecture, the palace of Croydon before its partial destruction must
have been a kind of epitome of the various styles that succeeded each
other between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries, or, to quote the
words of Archbishop Herring writing in 1754, 'an aggregate of buildings
of different castes and ages.' Fortunately it still retains its three
most distinctive features, the banqueting-hall, the guard-room, and the
chapel, with some few relics of the many outbuildings for the use of
its owner's retainers, and those of his guests, that once covered a
vast area. In spite of all its manifest advantages, however, it was
never a favourite residence of the archbishops, who, though many of
them spent large sums upon it, are said to have complained constantly
of its unhealthy situation. Henry VIII., too, often spoke of it in a
disparaging way, and Lord Bacon once declared it to be 'a very obscure
and dark place.'
Of the existing buildings the oldest is the guard-chamber, with a fine
stone ribbed roof and a beautiful oriel window, a true gem of Gothic
architecture. Built between 1396 and 1415 by Archbishop Arundel--who
is chiefly remembered for his devotion to Henry Bolingbroke, at whose
coronation as Henry IV. he officiated in 1399, and for his bitter
hostility to the Lollards--the guard-chamber was the scene, in 1587, of
the stately ceremony when {150} Queen Elizabeth gave to Sir Christopher
Hatton the seals of office of Lord Chancellor of England, that dignity
having been refused by the then reigning Archbishop Whitgift, whose
memory is held in high honour at Croydon as the founder of the famous
hospital and other charities bearing his name.
Of somewhat later date than the guard-chamber, for it was built by
Archbishop Stafford between 1443 and 1452, and restored in the
seventeenth century by Archbishops Laud and Juxon, the great hall is
still, in spite of much defacement, a noble structure, with a fine
timber roof and a beautiful late Gothic porch. It is associated with
many important historic memories, for in it, when in residence at
Croydon, the archbishops held their court, receiving visits from the
reigning sovereign and the great nobles and statesmen. It was there
that Archbishop Cranmer, in 1553, condemned the heretic John Firth to
the stake, at which he was himself to suffer three short years
afterwards; there that Queen Mary, with Cardinal Reginald Pole as her
adviser, presided over her first council after her beloved husband had
left her and she had realised how hopeless was the task of winning his
affections; and there her successor, Elizabeth, gave frequent audience
to Archbishop Parker, whom she had made primate soon after her
accession, and whom she sorely embarrassed by expecting him to give her
and her whole court hospitality for several days at a time. In the
great hall at Croydon, too, the virgin queen received the French
ambassador after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, taking his
breath away by {151} introducing him to his fellow-guests as the man
who had plotted to bring about her own death; and it was there,
perhaps, that the doomed Archbishop Laud penned much of the journal
that reveals the secret springs of his severely criticised actions.
To Croydon, after the see of Canterbury had been vacant for fifteen
years, came the newly appointed Archbishop William Juxon, the faithful
friend who had ministered to Charles I. to the bitter end, in spite of
the contempt the ill-fated monarch had shown for his wise counsels; and
later the palace was tenanted for a few weeks at a time by Archbishop
Sheldon, builder of the theatre named after him at Oxford, and by his
successors: Sancroft, suspended in 1689 for his refusal to take the
oath of allegiance to William and Mary; Tillotson, the famous preacher
who attended Lord Russell on the scaffold; Tenison, Herring, Hutton,
and Dr. Cornwallis; none of whom, except Archbishop Herring, who wrote
of it in loving terms, showed any affection for their Surrey home.
The chapel of Croydon Palace, built under Archbishops Laud and Juxon
between 1633 and 1663, occupies the site of a much earlier place of
worship that is often referred to in ecclesiastical records. No trace
of it, however, remains, and its successor has suffered much in the
various vicissitudes through which it has passed. It was divided from
the see of Canterbury in 1780, and secularised in 1807, after which it
served for some time as an armoury for the local militia, and was put
to other even less dignified usages. In 1887 it was bought, with the
{152} banqueting-hall, by the Duke of Newcastle, who presented both to
the sisters of the Church Extension Society, and it is now an orphanage
under the care of the Kilburn sisters.
The Saxon church of Croydon, or Croidene, as it was then spelt,
referred to in the Doomsday Survey--whose priest, Ælffic by name, was
one of the witnesses to a will still extant dated 960--probably rose,
as did its Norman successor, from an islet in the midst of the
head-waters of the Wandle, which united to form that tributary of the
Thames in what was known as My Lord's or Laud's Pond in the palace
grounds. Near to this church were a great water-mill and a huge dam,
but this was not the mill of Doomsday Book, all trace of which is lost.
The huts of the original settlement, of which a few interesting relics
were discovered when the excavations were made for the railway,
probably extended from the church in the direction of Beddington, but
those that formed the nucleus of the new town, and were chiefly
occupied by charcoal-burners, were grouped near the church on the
Haling side. Until the completion in 1850 of the admirable modern
system of drainage, the whole of the now healthy district of Croydon
was frequently flooded, and for several centuries the inundations were
looked upon as supernatural visitations that could not be averted, but
were tokens of impending evil or good fortune. References to this
strange belief are of frequent occurrence in the contemporary press,
the seventeenth-century antiquary John Aubrey, to quote but one {153}
case in point, writing: 'Between this place (Caterham) and Coulsdon ...
issues out sometimes a bourne which overflows and runs down to Croydon.
This is held by the inhabitants to be ominous, and prognosticating
something remarkable approaching, as it did before the happy
restoration of Charles II. in 1660; also before the Plague of London in
1665.'
The walls of the church in which the priest Ælffic officiated were
skilfully incorporated in the Gothic building that was begun in 1382,
completed in 1442, and well restored in the sixteenth century; but
unfortunately the latter, with the exception of the Norman walls and
Early English tower, was destroyed by fire in 1869. A new building,
however, soon rose out of the ruins of its predecessor, in which these
two distinctive features were skilfully retained, and the lines of the
ancient fabric were followed; but, strange to say, little attention was
given to the old monuments, amongst which those to Archbishops Grindal,
Whitgift, and Sheldon were the most remarkable, all of which were
seriously damaged by the fire, which also destroyed several interesting
epitaphs and some quaint frescoes that were discovered in 1845 beneath
the whitewash disfiguring the walls.
The only other building of note in modern Croydon is the Whitgift
Hospital, erected between 1596 and 1599 by the archbishop after whom it
is named, for the reception of twenty-two old men and sixteen old
women, and for the education of twenty poor children, ten boys and ten
girls, who were under the care of a warden and schoolmaster, the latter
also {154} acting as chaplain. Well restored in 1860, and supplemented
later by a modern college that receives as many as three hundred boys
at a time, the actual hospital still presents very much the appearance
it did during its founder's lifetime, and is a good example of
Elizabethan architecture. In its hall, a spacious apartment with some
fine stained glass, is preserved a black-letter Bible, said to have
been given to the school by Queen Elizabeth; and in the room known as
the treasury above the entrance-gate are several valuable MSS.,
including the letters-patent granted to Whitgift.
[Illustration: THE WANDLE NEAR CARSHALTON]
[Sidenote: Carshalton]
To the extensive parish of Croydon belong a number of outlying villages
that were not long ago picturesque riverside hamlets, but are now
rapidly developing into populous suburbs, with little to distinguish
them from each other. There is still, however, a certain rural charm
about Waddon, with its ancient mill, and Beddington, with its
well-restored fourteenth-century church, in which are some interesting
monuments to the Carews, retains something of the dignity that
characterised it when its hall was the seat of that famous family. The
history of Beddington can be traced back to Roman times, for near to it
have been found the remains of a villa and foundry, with other relics
left behind them by the conquerors from Italy; its manor is referred to
in Doomsday Book as owning a church and two mills, and it was the
property in the early fourteenth century of Sir Nicholas Carew.
Forfeited in the reign of Henry VIII. by another Sir Nicholas, who was
beheaded in 1539 for his {155} supposed share in the Cardinal Pole
conspiracy, it was restored to his son by Queen Elizabeth, who was
often the guest of the new owner. The manor-house was either rebuilt
or added to for her reception, and is said to have been a grand example
of the architecture of the time, but it was unfortunately pulled down
in 1709, with the exception of the great hall that was preserved in its
successor, and now forms the nucleus of an orphanage for girls that was
completed in 1866, its site, with the still existing buildings of the
Carew mansion and twenty-two acres of its grounds, having been bought
by the corporation of that institution in 1857. Not far from
Beddington is the still pretty village of Wallington, famous for the
beautiful gardens laid out in the low-lying meadows in which it is
situated by the enthusiastic botanist Alfred Smee; and adjoining it is
the more important Carshalton, that, in spite of much building in the
neighbourhood, retains several picturesque features, notably one or two
old mills on the Wandle. Known before the Conquest as Oulton, or the
Old Town, a name implying great antiquity, Carshalton is supposed to
have received the prefix now distinguishing it because of its position
on cross-roads. In the Doomsday Survey no less than five manors are
mentioned as included in Oulton that were later consolidated into one,
and were owned until the time of Stephen by the powerful De Mandeville
family. Confiscated then because of its owner's devotion to the cause
of the Empress Maud, it has since changed hands many times, and of the
ancient manor-house, {156} associated with many memories of Norman
times, not a trace now remains. To atone for this, however, in
Carshalton Park--soon, alas! to be built over--is a fine
eighteenth-century mansion, now a Roman Catholic convent, in which long
lived the great lawyer Lord Hardwicke, replacing a much earlier
building that was for some years the home of Dr. Ratcliffe, founder of
the library at Oxford bearing his name. Another interesting old house
in Carshalton is Stone Court, now the rectory, that once formed part of
a much larger mansion, pulled down in 1800, that belonged at one time
to Nicholas Gwynesford, Sheriff of Surrey in the reigns of Henry VI.,
Edward IV., and Henry VII., and who was also Esquire of the Body to the
two latter monarchs.
[Illustration: CARSHALTON POND]
The church of Carshalton was founded in the fourteenth century, but
with the exception of the lower part of the tower, it has been entirely
rebuilt. It contains, however, a very fine fifteenth-century brass to
the memory of Thomas Ellymbridge, a servitor of Cardinal Morton, and
several interesting old monuments, including one to the Nicholas
Gwynesford mentioned above, and one to Sir William Scawen, the devoted
friend of William III., who owned Stone Court from 1729 to his death.
Close to the churchyard is another relic of the long-ago, a railed-in
and arched-over spring, known as Queen Anne Boleyn's well, because of a
tradition that its water suddenly gushed forth beneath the feet of her
horse as she was riding with her husband from Nonsuch Palace to
Beddington, a legend not borne {157} out by historical fact, for the
palace was not begun until three years after Henry VIII.'s second wife
was beheaded. Probably the spring was in use long before the sixteenth
century, as it is but one of several feeders of the Wandle that flows
through Beddington, widening in the centre of the old village into a
pond, that is referred to by Ruskin in the _Crown of Wild Olives_, near
to which there used to be several picturesque old inns that were much
frequented in coaching days by Londoners on their way to and from Epsom
races.
[Sidenote: Sutton]
Some three miles from Carshalton, on the edge of the undulating downs,
that under different names extend for many miles on every side, is the
now populous town of Sutton, the last halting-place on the way to the
world-famous racecourse, that still owns the ancient though modernised
Cock Inn that is associated with so many memories, and the approaches
to which are still crowded with vehicles of every variety during the
race-weeks. The property in Saxon days of Chertsey Abbey, Sutton, has
a long and well-authenticated history. Its manor remained in the hands
of the monks until 1538, when it was given with those of Epsom,
Coulsden, and Horley to Sir Nicholas Carew, who, as related above,
already owned the neighbouring Beddington. Since then it has changed
hands many times; in 1845 it was bought by a certain Thomas Alcock, who
was in a great measure responsible for the conversion of a secluded
hamlet, deserted by all but the resident farmers and their dependants,
into a busy and prosperous suburb.
{158}
Two still beautiful though rapidly growing villages, within easy reach
of Sutton, are Cheam and Ewell, both of which were long in close touch
with the famous Nonsuch Palace, part of the site of which is now
occupied by a nineteenth-century castellated mansion in the Elizabethan
style, the only relics of its predecessor being the foundations of the
banqueting-hall, that still remain in an orchard, near the long avenue
of trees leading up to the entrance of the new house, that was once
part of the now built over park.
The village of Cheam, situated on high ground commanding a fine view of
the Downs, clusters about a modern church with a good spire, close to
which is preserved the chancel of a much more ancient place of worship,
containing some interesting monuments, including one to Lord John
Lumley, the famous book collector, whose library was bought by James I.
on the death of its owner in 1609, and is now in the British Museum,
whilst in the care of the rector of Cheam parish are some exceptionally
fine brasses, that were removed to preserve them from injury when the
old church was destroyed.
[Illustration: THE COCK INN, SUTTON]
The manor of Cheam belonged at the Conquest to the see of Canterbury,
but it was divided somewhat later into two parts by Archbishop
Lanfranc, who retained the eastern half himself, giving the western to
the abbot of Canterbury Monastery. Both were, however, confiscated by
Henry VIII., and granted by Queen Elizabeth to Lord John Lumley, who
held them till his death, when they {159} passed to his nephew, Henry
Lloyd. The two old manor-houses were pulled down in the eighteenth
century, but one of them is represented by a modern residence, known as
Lower Cheam House. More interesting, however, is, or rather was until
quite recently, the early Tudor homestead, bearing the name of
Whitehall, containing a room called the council-chamber, because Queen
Elizabeth is said to have once presided in it over her council when she
was resident at Nonsuch Palace, which, according to local tradition,
was connected with Cheam by an underground passage that had an entrance
from a cellar beneath Whitehall. In this cellar, that probably served
as a larder, the persecuted Protestants used to meet for worship in the
reign of Queen Mary, and later, by a strange irony of fate, it was
turned to account for the same purpose by the Roman Catholics of the
neighbourhood.
[Sidenote: Ewell]
Ewell, the name of which is a corruption of the Saxon Ætwelle,
signifying the village on the well, so called because it is close to
the springs forming the source of a stream known as the Hogsmill, that
joins the Thames at Kingston, was but a short time ago a secluded
village, but is now rapidly growing into a popular suburb.
Unfortunately its characteristic old market-hall has been pulled down,
and of the ancient church the tower alone remains, but in its modern
successor are preserved several old monuments, tablets, and brasses
commemorating residents of days gone by, and in the churchyard are some
ancient tombs with curious {160} inscriptions. [Sidenote: Nonsuch
Palace] Ewell, however, owes its chief distinction to its nearness to
the site of Nonsuch Palace, and the whole surrounding district is full
of memories connected with the Tudor sovereigns. Situated in the still
sparsely populated parish of Cuddington, that owned a manor-house and
church at the time of the Doomsday Survey, the history of which can be
traced down to the sixteenth century, the property was acquired in 1539
by Henry VIII., who added it to his Hampton Court estate. With his
usual reckless lavishness he resolved to clear away all the existing
buildings to make room for a palace that should excel all his other
residences. He enclosed sixteen hundred acres as pleasure grounds, and
brought down from London a whole army of architects and workmen, under
whose auspices quickly rose up a truly beautiful structure, to which
the name of Nonsuch was given, because, said its proud owner, it had no
equal. It was not quite completed when Henry's career was cut short by
death, and his son, Edward VI., seems to have cared nothing for it. He
simply handed it over to the care of the then Master of the Revels, Sir
Thomas Carwardine, who evidently appreciated it greatly, for the story
goes that when Queen Mary came to the throne and instructed him to
vacate her palace at Nonsuch, he at first refused to leave it. Indeed,
he remained till the royal retainers arrived, and many unseemly
quarrels took place between them and their servants about trivial
details such as the division of the produce of the royal gardens.
There were armed encounters in the park {161} before her majesty took
over the custody of the property, to which, however, she was really as
indifferent as her brother had been. She actually decided that the
best way to save herself from further trouble connected with it would
be to pull down the palace and sell the materials. It was saved from
this untimely fate only through the generosity of the Earl of Arundel,
who for love of his former master, who had taken such pride in it,
persuaded the queen to exchange it for certain fair lands in his
possession elsewhere. The transfer having been duly arranged, the new
owner, as related by his biographer Lyons, proceeded 'fully to finish
the house in building, reparations, pavements, and gardens in as
complete and perfect sort as by the first intent and meaning of the
King.' In it, thirty years after the first stone was laid, the Earl of
Arundel entertained Queen Elizabeth and her court for a week,
presenting her before she left with a costly set of plate. So greatly,
indeed, did the maiden queen enjoy herself at Nonsuch that she longed
to become its owner, and when a few years later it passed from the
possession of her host to that of his son-in-law, Lord Lumley, she made
overtures to the latter for its purchase, which had, of course, the
force of a command. During the rest of her life Elizabeth was often at
the palace, and from it many important state papers, and even more
interesting private letters, were dated. It was there that took place
the remarkable interview with her disgraced favourite, the Earl of
Essex, after his return from Holland on Michaelmas Eve 1599, that {162}
is so vividly described by Rowland Whyte in an oft-quoted letter to Sir
Robert Sydney, in which he says: 'At about ten o'clock in the morning
my Lord of Essex lighted at Court Gate in post, and made all hast up to
the Presence, and so to the Privy Chamber, and stayed not till he came
to the Queen's Bedchamber, where he found the Queen all newly up, the
hair about her face; he kneeled unto her, kissed her hands, and had
some private speech with her, which seemed to give him great
contentment for coming from her Majesty to go shift himself in his
chamber, he was very pleasant, and thanked God, though he had suffered
much trouble amid storms abroad, he found a sweet calm at home. 'Tis
much wondered at here,' comments the writer, 'that he went so boldly to
her Majesty's presence, she not being ready, and he so full of dirt and
mire, that his face was full of it.' It was this very boldness, as
Essex knew full well, that was his one chance with his angry mistress,
but this time it did not serve him long. The memory was still fresh
with them both of the bitter quarrel six months before, when Elizabeth,
stung to the quick by his insolent assertion that 'her conditions were
as crooked as her carcase,' had boxed his ears and told him to go and
be hanged, and on the very night of his arrival at Nonsuch, after the
apparent reconciliation, the earl was ordered to consider himself a
prisoner. A few days later he left the palace in custody, and the next
year he was beheaded in the Tower, all the appeals he had addressed to
the woman, to whom, in spite of all his plots against {163} her, he
pretended to the last to have been devoted, having been in vain.
On the death of Queen Elizabeth James I. gave Nonsuch Palace to his
consort, Queen Anne, and later Charles I. and Henrietta Maria were
often there, but its days of glory were already over. It was
confiscated by Parliament after the death of the king, but restored to
the Crown on the accession of Charles II., who, when his widowed mother
had passed away, gave it and the park in which it stood to his
mistress, Lady Castlemaine, whom a little later he made Duchess of
Cleveland. She, alas, valued not at all the memories of the historic
building, but as soon as it was legally secured to her, she had it
pulled down, let out much of the park in plots for building, and sold
the deer that used to wander about in it. Thus suddenly ended the
brief career of Henry VIII's dream palace, that is but poorly
represented by its successor, a building erected in the early
nineteenth century after the designs of the then popular architect, Sir
Jeffrey Wyattville. Part of the once beautiful park is now occupied by
the suburb of Worcester, but the grounds immediately surrounding the
new residence, through which there is a public footpath to Cheam and
Ewell, still retain much of their original charm, and some of the older
trees may possibly have been amongst those beneath which Queen
Elizabeth delighted to walk.
[Sidenote: Epsom]
Although it can scarcely, strictly speaking, be said to form a part of
outlying London, the town of Epsom is so intimately associated with the
{164} metropolis, to which it has from first to last owed its
prosperity, that an account of it may well be included in a book
dealing as much with the memories of the past as with the attractions
of the present. Its history can be traced back to the seventh century,
when it is said to have been the residence of the holy abbess, St.
Ebba, after whom it is named, the daughter of King Ethelred the
Avenger, and sister of Kings Oswald and Oswy, whose story is very
variously told, certain chroniclers declaring that she suffered
martyrdom at the hands of the Danes after disfiguring herself to escape
a worse fate; others that she died peacefully at a great age,
surrounded by her devoted nuns. However that may be, no trace now
remains of the home of St. Ebba at Epsom, though some are of opinion
that its site is occupied by the farm now known as the Court, replacing
the manor-house that is referred to in the Doomsday Survey as an
appanage of Chertsey Abbey, which also owned in the same district the
manor of Horton, the homestead of which is now represented by an
eighteenth-century mansion called Horton Place, two churches and two
mills, with many acres of land. To these a park, now known as that of
Woodcote, with 'right of free chase and free warren,' was added in the
twelfth century, the whole property remaining in the hands of the abbot
of Chertsey until 1538, when it was bought from him by Henry VIII.,
who, strange to say, actually paid for it. A few months afterwards it
was given to Sir Nicholas Carew, who already owned so much real {165}
estate in Surrey, and on his execution for treason in 1539 it reverted
to the Crown. In 1589 it was bestowed by Queen Elizabeth on Edward
D'Arcy, one of the Grooms of the Chamber, passing after his death
through many different hands, at one time being owned by Mrs. Richard
Evelyn, sister-in-law of the famous diarist.
For many centuries Epsom remained a secluded hamlet scarcely known to
any one but the owners of the great houses in the neighbourhood, who
delighted in its charming situation at the edge of the breezy Banstead
Downs. The discovery early in the seventeenth century, however, of
medicinal springs on the adjacent common inaugurated a complete change,
and Epsom Spa soon became a formidable rival to Tunbridge Wells and
Hampstead as a favourite resort of the _beau monde_ of the capital, who
flocked to it in crowds to drink its waters and amuse themselves. In
that entertaining storehouse of local information _The Worthies of
England_, published in 1662, the Rev. Thomas Fuller gives a very
graphic description of the finding of the springs at Epsom in 1618:
'One Henry Wicker,' he says, 'in a dry summer and great want of water
for cattle, discovered in the concave of a horse or neat's footing some
water standing ... with his pad staff he did dig a square hole about it
and so departed. Returning the next day, with some difficulty he
discovered the same place, and found the hole running over with most
clear water. Yet,' he adds, 'the cattle, though tempted with thirst,
would not drink {166} thereof, it having a mineral taste therin.' He
then relates the gradual growth in popularity of the spring thus
accidentally discovered, but he himself evidently had his doubts as to
the real efficacy of the waters, for he remarks that he does not wonder
the citizens coming to Epsom from the 'worst of smokes into the best of
airs find in themselves a perfective alteration.'
In 1621 the lord of the manor had a fence put round the well and a
rough shelter erected for the use of those who came to drink from it;
but in spite of many efforts made by those interested in advertising
its merits Epsom did not become really fashionable for another forty
years, probably because the people of London were too much occupied by
the political troubles of the day to be able to give much attention to
other things. Soon after the Restoration however, the golden age of
the Banstead Wells began: a great hall for balls and other
entertainments, houses, inns, and shops sprang up as if by magic:
regular services of coaches were established between London and the
rapidly growing town on the downs; and all through the summer the
approaches to the latter were crowded with the equipages of those in
search of health or pleasure. Charles II. was very fond of going to
Epsom with his court, and one special occasion was long remembered when
he was accompanied by his consort Caroline of Braganza, his mistress,
Lady Castlemaine, and his illegitimate son, the future Duke of
Monmouth, then a handsome boy of twelve years old, who was born the
very year of his grandfather's {167} death on the scaffold. The
neglected queen, it is said, looked really beautiful for once, but for
all that she was quite eclipsed by her rival in her husband's
affections, who was triumphantly lovely. The king won all hearts by
his gracious manner, and it was indeed impossible to help sympathising
with him in his evident delight in the noble child, who kept close to
him all day, and would have been a noble heir to the throne.
The popularity of Epsom was maintained throughout the whole of the
seventeenth century, as proved by many references to its attractions in
the contemporary press. John Toland, for instance, in a work published
in the reign of Queen Anne, speaks of it as 'an enchanted camp ...
where,' he quaintly observes, 'the rude, the sullen, the noisy, the
affected, the peevish, the covetous, the litigious, the sharping, the
proud, the prodigal, the impatient, and the impertinent become visible
foils to the well-bred, prudent, modest, and good-humoured.' In the
early years of the reign of George III., however, the efficacy of the
Banstead waters began to be doubted, and changing fashions resulted in
the abandonment of Epsom by the _beau monde_. All efforts to revive
interest in the once beloved resort were unavailing, and though the
mineral spring still exists in a private garden, its existence was soon
practically forgotten. By a strange turn of the wheel of fortune,
however, what the fickle goddess took away with one hand she gave back
with the other, for thanks to Banstead Downs being the scene of what is
looked upon as a national {168} event, the running of the annual races
known as the Derby and the Oaks, Epsom has long occupied a more
important position than it did even in the eighteenth century.
[Sidenote: Epsom Races]
According to local tradition James I., when resident at Nonsuch Palace,
was the first to introduce horse-racing on the downs, but the earliest
competitions referred to in the contemporary press were apparently
between men, not horses. Pepys, writing as late as 1663, describes a
foot-race between Lee, the Duke of Richmond's footman, and a certain
Tyler, a famous runner. That horse-racing was practised in the reign
of Charles I. is however, proved by the fact that in 1648 a meeting was
held by the Royalists on Banstead Downs under pretence of looking on at
it, on which occasion, as related by Clarendon in his _History of the
Rebellion_, '600 horses were collected and sent to Reigate for the use
of the King's adherents.'
Writing five years later, the dramatist Thomas Heywood says, 'Epsom is
a place of great resort and commonly upon the market days all the
countrye gentlemen appoint a friendly meeting ... to match their
horses.' Charles II. was as fond of watching the racing as of
attending the festivities at the spa, and it is generally supposed that
it was his patronage that enabled Banstead to rival Newmarket in
popular favour. However that may be, before the end of the eighteenth
century the fame of the Epsom races had spread throughout the length
and breadth of England, and advertisements {169} of the principal
events appeared in all the principal newspapers of the day. In an
August number of the _London Gazette_ for 1698, for instance, it is
announced that the Banstead Downs Plate of £20 value will be run for on
the 24th inst., being St. Bartholomew's Day; and the information is
added that any horse may run for the said plate that shall be at
Carshalton and certain other places specified, fourteen days before the
Plate Day. Before many years of the eighteenth century had passed by
Epsom had become practically the capital of the racing world, but the
famous Derby and Oak Stakes were not instituted until 1779 and 1780.
Both were founded by the then Earl of Derby, and were named, the former
after him, the latter after his seat at Woodmansterne, a picturesque
little village on the highest point of the Banstead Downs. As is well
known, the May meeting, which lasts from the Tuesday to the Friday
before Whitsuntide, during which these two great races are run, is the
chief event of the racing year, and Derby Day is looked upon as a
national festival, even members of Parliament taking a holiday in order
to be present at the great event. A vast concourse of people assembles
on the downs, and the scenes witnessed there and on the road to and
from Epsom, that have been again and again eloquently described in
poetry and prose, are without a parallel elsewhere. Scarcely less
popular is the Oaks, often called the Ladies' Race, when only
filly-foals are allowed to run, and the fair sex is always much in
evidence among the spectators, but the {170} excitement is generally
less than on the Derby Day. The grand-stand of Epsom, the finest in
England, commands a magnificent prospect, extending across the
beautiful undulating downs beyond Windsor Castle on one side and London
on the other. There are, moreover, many other fine points of view from
the higher portions of the common, and the town itself, though deserted
by all but its comparatively few residents except in race week, retains
even now a certain picturesque appearance, with its clock tower rising
up in the main street. The once much frequented assembly-rooms are now
divided up into shops, and of the ancient church, in which the
aristocratic drinkers of the waters used to worship, the tower alone
remains. There are, however, several well-preserved eighteenth-century
mansions in the neighbourhood, including Woodcote House, in which is a
room with a ceiling painted by Verrio, and Pitt Place, in which Thomas,
the second Lord Lyttelton, died suddenly on November 27, 1779, at the
very time, it is popularly believed, predicted by the ghost of a girl
he had wronged, who appeared to him as he was going to rest three days
before the end.
[Sidenote: Banstead]
The village of Banstead, that gives its name to the famous downs, and
is associated with the memory of Hubert de Burgh, is finely situated
536 feet above the sea-level and commands a view even finer than that
from the grand-stand on the racecourse. Its history can be traced back
to Norman times, but it retains scarcely any relics of the past, its
{171} ancient church having been almost entirely rebuilt and most of
its old houses pulled down. It is, however, in touch with much
charming scenery, and from it may be reached many beautiful hamlets
still far beyond the furthermost limits of outlying London.
{172}