Highways and Byways in Surrey Part 30

There is a strip of country lying south of Purley in which you cannot get more than a mile and a half or so from the railway, but which contains tiny hamlets and lonely roads. Purley and Kenley will one day come out to Coulsdon, perhaps, but Coulsdon's day is not yet. The village itself is nothing more than a cottage or two with a church. But the road to Coulsdon opens on broad slopes of gra.s.s and plough, bordered with a line of yews--an ancient trackway, perhaps. Such a line, or rather lines, for there are several along the sides of the downs a little further south, would certainly be claimed as evidence of a "pilgrims' way" if they ran east and west between Guildford, say, and Dorking. Fields with such n.o.ble hedges to define them have their own air of wildness and age; it is easy enough, even with Purley slate roofs hardly a mile away, to fancy partridges calling across those open s.p.a.ces. Coulsdon, indeed, was once celebrated for its game. Aubrey tells us that in the parish there was "a large coney-warren belonging to the Desbouveries." They, for many years under Stuarts and Georges, were lords of the manor.

From Coulsdon one may walk to Chaldon over Farthing Down. The horizon changes, but Farthing Down itself remains high and free, smooth with short down gra.s.s, and dinted with the hoofs of galloping horses. Croydon and Purley send many riders abroad on Sat.u.r.days and Sundays. But Farthing Down is peopled with other older forms. Along the ridge, bordering the ancient trackways, lies a line of barrows. They were opened in 1872 by Mr. John Wickham Flower; some were found untouched, and contained perfect skeletons. In one grave lay the bones of a great lady; buried with her was a beautiful wooden drinking-cup, its staves fastened by bronze bands of an intricate Runic pattern of coiled snakes.

Another grave held the skeleton of a warrior giant, his sword lying across him and the boss of his s.h.i.+eld upon his foot. Mr. Flower thinks he can add a name. Coulsdon is a corruption of Cuthredesdune, and perhaps Cuthred, an Anglo-Saxon prince, lies buried here with his family. Cuthred, son of Cwichelm, and grandson of Cynegils, the first Christian king of Wess.e.x, was baptised in 639 at Dorchester.

Farthing Down stretches for nearly three miles north and south, and under its southern slope lies the little village of Chaldon. Chaldon church holds the most remarkable wall-painting in the country. The "Ladder of Life," or "Ladder of Salvation," is the subject, and it occupies nearly the whole of the west wall of the church. In red and white and yellow ochre paint you are shown the torments of the d.a.m.ned, the salvation of heaven, the trampling of Satan. A ladder rises through the middle; up it the poor souls of men struggle to the joys above; some tumble headlong; a demon picks off others with a pitchfork and sets them aside to burn or boil. An enormous dog eats a woman's hand; in life she had thrown to dogs what she should have given to the poor. A usurer painted without eyes, for usurers could not weep, sits among flames; devils drive pitchforks into his head, moneybags hang round his neck, he counts and swallows red hot coins. Other hapless souls, condemned to walk a bridge of spikes, carry burdens over a thin plank like a saw set on edge. Above is a nimbus of clouds, and above the nimbus, the weighing of souls. The archangel Michael balances the souls in great scales; a fiend tries to make them kick the beam. On the other side is the Harrowing of h.e.l.l. h.e.l.l is the mouth of a monstrous devil; Christ advances with the cross and banner, and thrusts the wood of the cross into the devil's mouth. The souls rise up delivered from purgatory; above them, a flying angel floats with a scroll. Mr. J.G. Waller, writing in the _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, explains most of the painting, but has hardly a guess for the scroll. "The heavens depart, as it were a scroll rolled together;" Mr. Waller does not mention the text which to the layman seems obvious but the expert may have reasons against it.

The punishment of the Bridge--the walking over a sharp edge, set with spikes or narrow as a hair--is one of the oldest things of all the religions. The Chinese had it, in the distant Eastern ages, and Mr.

Waller, in the _Collections_, prints verses which show it surviving in Yorks.h.i.+re in 1624. There was a Yorks.h.i.+re tradition that a person after death must pa.s.s over Whinney Moor; and at a funeral it was the custom for a woman to come and chant verses over the corpse. These are an extract:--

When thou from hence doest pa.s.s away, Every night and awle, To Whinney Moor thou com'st at last, And Christ receive thy sawle.

From Whinney Moor that thou mayest pa.s.s, Every night and awle, To Brig of dread thou com'st at last, And Christ receive thy sawle.

From Brig of dread, na brader than a thread, Every night and awle, To Purgatory fire thou com'st at last, And Christ receive thy sawle.

East of Chaldon is Caterham, west is Chipstead and south-west is Merstham, each two miles or so away as the crow flies and something more as the road runs, and each with a railway station. Caterham once was a valley; Aubrey wrote of it: "In this parish are many pleasant little vallies, stored with wild thyme, sweet marjoram, barnell, boscage, and beeches." I do not know barnell, but the last twenty years have set many houses among the boscage. They have built, too, two new churches, one of them set very finely on a hill; the old church is disused, or used, rather, only for a Sunday school. Upon Sunday scholars, from a Norman wall, looks down a hideous stone corbel. A clown's face stretches a devil's mouth wide open with hands like rat's paws; the sharp teeth grin like rat's teeth; perhaps in the Sunday school they make their own faces at it.

Chipstead, to the west, is on a hill the other side of the railway. It has some pretty modern cottages by a pond and shading elm-trees; a post-office also, with the smallest possible aperture for introducing letters to the notice of the post-mistress within. The church has some quaint features; there are a number of oddly shaped lancet windows, a curiously carved boss in the groining of the tower, and a strange arrangement by which the members of the choir sit facing the east with their backs to the pulpit. In the churchyard lies Sir Edward Banks, perhaps Chipstead's most ill.u.s.trious native. He was born poor and he died rich; and he built three great bridges, Waterloo, Southwark, and London. Chipstead churchyard, too, has a fine yew; but good yews are common in the churchyards south of Croydon.

The best walk from Chaldon is over the hill to Merstham; the sign-posts show you the path and mark it "The Pilgrims' Way" to Tollsworth Farm with the utmost a.s.surance. From Tollsworth Farm the path drops over a plough down the side of the hill; before the railway and the tunnel came the old Way perhaps went straight across to the church. Merstham itself has little to show except one pretty little side street; but the church is more full of curiosities than any other near. Its builders placed it delightfully on a mound which is all air and sunlight, and though much of the charm of the church was destroyed in 1861, much that is old and curious remains. A queerly placed clock tells the time low down on the tower; inside are ancient monuments, one a stone effigy recovered from use as a pavement, others to the Elinbrygge family. That is only one spelling of the name, and perhaps as good as any other; variations are Elinebrigge, Elyngbrigge, Elinerugge, Ellerug, Elmerugge, Elmebrugge, Elmridge, Elmbrige, Elmebrygge, Ellmbridge, Elinrugge, Ellyngbrugg, Elenbrig, Elingbrig, Ellyngbrigg, and Ellynbrege. An Elinbrygge in those days could spell practically anything. Other memorials are fragments of stone carving, once belonging to the Southcotes and Waldegraves, and built without reason into windows and walls. Over the west chancel arch is a broken piece of carving from old London Bridge; and forlornest possession of all, the north chantry is paved with a tessellated floor which was made in prison, I was told, by an unhappy woman who hoped that forgiveness would take and use her work. Merstham has had some famous rectors. One was the great Thomas Linacre, King's Physician to Henry VII and Henry VIII, founder of the Royal College of Physicians, and friend of Melanchthon and Erasmus. He became a priest when he was fifty-eight, four years before his death, and was only Rector of Merstham for a month. "I much wonder," Fuller writes of him in his _Worthies_, "at what I find in good authors, that Linacre a little before his death turned priest and began to study the Scriptures with which he was formerly unacquainted, in so much that reading the fifth, sixth and seventh chapters of St. Matthew he vowed, '_That_ either this was not the Gospel or we were not Christians.'"

Another rector, Robert Cole, once was a nonconformist, especially in the matter of ecclesiastical vestments, but eventually got rid of his objections. Ecclesiastical Commissioners then decided to have an object lesson in properly dressed clergymen at Lambeth. Mr. Cole was dressed in full clerical attire, and was then "placed as the front figure at the meeting, while the chancellor of the Bishop of London thus harangued the auditory: 'My masters and the ministers of London, the Council's pleasure is, that ye strictly keep the unity of apparel, like to this man as you now see him; that is, a square cap, a scholar's gown, priestlike, a tippet, and in the church a linen surplice.'" The auditors then had to sign "Volo" or "Nolo," and those who refused were deprived of their livings. Poor Mr. Cole, priestlike in his tippet, cuts a meeker figure than another Merstham rector, James Samborne. This reverend gentleman was actually supposed to possess supernatural powers, and when a thief climbed up a pear-tree in the rectory orchard, Mr. Samborne went in pursuit, fixed his gaze upon the robber from a suitable distance and from where he stood, using dreadful arts, fastened the robber in the tree.

Another walk from Croydon, for those who like a string of little old churches, and an occasional fine view, would be by Addington to the south-east through Sanderstead to Warlingham, or further south to the edge of the chalk ridge at Woldingham. The railway is never very far off. There is nothing imposing among these hillside hamlets; they leave an impression of tiny villages which felt their first need to be a church; the congregations must have been small and poor. They, of the Surrey churches, are nearest in heart to the "little, lost down churches" of Suss.e.x and Mr. Kipling's most magical poem.

Addington, perhaps, could hardly be called lost, for many archbishops have lived at Addington Park, and two lie buried in the churchyard, Archbishop Longley and Archbishop Tait. There are memorials to three others--Manners-Sutton, Howleigh, and Sumner. But the most attractive name on the church walls belongs to the wife of the builder of Addington House. She was Mrs. Grizzel Trecothick. Addington still lies in deep country; Sanderstead, its neighbour three miles to the south-west, is half in the country and half in the town. Old Sanderstead, the Sandy Place, has a large, square red-brick house overlooking a park and a quiet churchyard, where the little church, with sloping roofs over each aisle, looks rather like a hen brooding chickens. In the chancel is a memorial to one of those squires who held strange offices under Tudor kings. He kneels in painted marble, and he was "John Ownsted, esquier, servant to y^e most excellent princesse and our dread soveraigne Queene Elizabeth, and seriant of her ma^ties cariage by y^e s.p.a.ce of 40 yeres."

South-east of Sanderstead are Farley and Chelsham, each with an old church; Farley's is a tiny building by a fine farmyard, but the peace of the little church is gone; its modest spire, as you walk to the churchyard, is dominated and affronted by the hideous clock-tower of a neighbouring lunatic asylum. Why should such a thing be? County Councils have decreed that in this part of Surrey must be ma.s.sed together the thousands of poor souls who have lost the reason which county councillors must be supposed to possess; but why insist on their unhappy presence? A building to hold such sadness should be a quiet thing, hidden among trees, silent, alone. But that would suit neither councillors nor architects. For them, asylums must stare, scar, insist that they will be seen and known; and here, in what should be tranquil and lovely country, they violate the hills.

Two other villages, Warlingham and Woldingham, lie east of the railway.

Warlingham stands round a pretty green, and has a pleasant inn; the church, which once lay among fields, is at the end of a chestnut avenue which belongs to the future. It is a curious little building, with a sense of wide light and cool stone, and has been beautifully restored by Mr. Philip Mainwaring Johnston, who discovered, and has admirably preserved, a particularly interesting low-side window with a circular niche in the chancel. Woldingham, right on the edge of the chalk ridge, has a tiny church set apart among the fields; nearer the village, a pretty wooden chapel--almost the only pretty wooden chapel I have seen.

But the best of Woldingham is the broad and breezy gra.s.s plateau on which it stands. On a clear day you may see London; a better view to the south is blocked by new buildings and gardens.

The railway returns to Purley and Croydon; Purley, where Tooke lived, and gave his name to Horne Tooke, with eight thousand pounds, for winning him a lawsuit. From Purley Horne Tooke named his _Diversions_; they may have diverted him, but if they did, he could be moved to mirth by a very dreary business indeed.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 gla.s.s. 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 gla.s.s had disappeared, either broken up or sold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 s.h.i.+llings 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 Mitch.e.l.ls played eleven Heaths on Shalford Common. The Heaths all belonged to the same family, but the Mitch.e.l.ls 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 G.o.dalming, 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 n.o.body can tell whether it had or not unless he excavates the ground within the moat, and that is a task which n.o.body, 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 cla.s.s, 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 gra.s.s, and geese strut cackling. To the north, beyond rich and tranquil fields, lie the grey-green wooded hills by Bletchingley and Nutfield.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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, n.o.body 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 suns.h.i.+ne; 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 b.u.mpkins 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _G.o.dstone._]

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

G.o.dSTONE AND BLETCHINGLEY

The White Hart at G.o.dstone.--Cobbett's violets.--Bletchingley.--Beagles and Foxhounds.--Dr. Nathaniel Harris.--Begging the Love of Neighbours.--A gratious woman.--Swift and a gentle prelate.--Bletchingley manor.--The Master of the Revels.--An English gentleman's Armour.--How to be buried.--Posing for a tombstone.--Nutfield.--Fuller's earth and its new uses.

The key to the east of Surrey is G.o.dstone. It is true that the village itself lies more than two miles from the railway station which bears its name, but which might equally well have been named Tandridge or Crowhurst. But there is no other centre in East Surrey from which so many other villages and places of interest are easily reached. To the west, a mile and a-half away, lies Bletchingley, and another mile beyond that, Nutfield, which has not yet been absorbed by Redhill, and, indeed, belongs to Surrey country as surely as Redhill belongs to the railway and the town. To the north are Caterham and Chaldon, and Woldingham and Warlingham; Tandridge is two miles away, Oxted a little more, and Limpsfield not quite four; north of Limpsfield is t.i.tsey, and east of Limpsfield and t.i.tsey is the Kent border. Crowhurst lies to the south-east, and beyond that Lingfield; but Lingfield is almost Suss.e.x, and is perhaps a little too far for a walk from G.o.dstone; it is best reached by rail.

G.o.dstone begins hospitably, at least to the traveller from the south, with three old inns, the Bell, the Rose and Crown, and the old White Hart, now the Clayton Arms. The Bell and the Rose and Crown have not, I think, won any particular place in history; probably they were always a little overshadowed by the s.p.a.cious frontage of the old White Hart. The Rose and Crown, for all that, displays an imposing board setting out the numbers and the addresses of the many cycling clubs who have made it their country headquarters--doubtless it has been the first stage of many happy, dusty journeys. But the old White Hart has its place in the cla.s.sical country books. Cobbett often lunched there, and probably the inn-parlour where he had his bread and bacon is very much the same as when he wrote of the village in _Rural Rides_. Perhaps the rooms upstairs hold more furniture than in the twenties--particularly the fine dining-room with its oak-beamed ceiling, which is as full of furniture as a room can very well be, besides serving various public uses as a place in which audits and meetings are held and county and local account books inspected. In the yard outside, too, although the great vats of the brewhouse are gone, and Renault cars run under the arch which used to echo with the shoes of spanking teams, there can be little changed since Cobbett saw it. He wrote, in 1822:--

"At and near G.o.dstone the gardens are all very neat; and at the Inn, there is a nice garden well-stocked with beautiful flowers in the season. I here saw, last summer, some double violets as large as small pinks, and the lady of the house was kind enough to give me some of the roots."

The garden is still gay and full of flowers; though if I were the landlady I should certainly stock some peculiarly pretty sorts of violets to keep up the tradition--even if she were to find it a little difficult to provide the flowers in bloom in high summer. The village itself has not grown greatly during the past hundred years. Cobbett describes it as "a beautiful village, chiefly of one street, with a fine large green before it, and with a pond in the green." There is not much else to be seen now; the green is as wide and sunny, the geese and ponies graze as contentedly, and the pond is as bright under the chestnut trees and limes. If there has been any very noticeable change, it has been made, perhaps, nearer the church and away towards the railway station, which lie pretty far apart. From the main road by the Clayton Arms there runs a gravel path up to the church, which stands on higher ground, half a mile from the green, and by the path lies a very fine pond, broad and deep, edged with willows and bulrushes, where wild duck swim, and on the far side opening into a shallow bay in which you may watch plovers bathe through the summer afternoons.