Part 14

The descent to Reigate requires caution, imposed on prudent wheels by its steep turns, and on imprudent ones by the fame of the local police, who have made themselves a terror to scorchers. In the valley, beyond the railway station, the road pierces into the heart of Reigate by the unusual feature of a tunnel beneath the hillock on which stand its Castle ruins and the brand-new block of Municipal Buildings.

Reigate, now so disguised in villas and wooded grounds, and so swollen by the railway growth of Redhill on its east side, is no mere mushroom-bed of London homes, but an old chief town of south-eastern Surrey. Here was built a Norman Castle of the De Warennes, a rival to that of Bletchingley on the sand ridge beyond Redhill. Till the last Reform Bill Reigate had a member of its own, and two in olden days. When membership of Parliament was often felt a burden rather than a privilege, this neighbourhood was but too well represented, Gatton on the Downs above being one of the most notorious rotten boroughs, and Bletchingley another, that made a phosphorescent end with Lord Palmerston as its member.

The nucleus of the place is marked by a gathering of old inns and shops about the cross-roads, above which the site of the Castle has been laid out as a public garden. There is not much of the structure left, the chief sight being the sandstone caves underneath, which tradition, or perhaps no better authority than Tupper's novel, _Stephen Langton_, makes the secret meeting-place of the barons conspiring to bring King John on his knees for the signing of Magna Charta. Still older legends haunt these caves, where rude carvings have been attributed to Roman soldiers quartered in them. Under other houses in or about the town there are caves or excavations said to be better worth seeing, but not always open to idle curiosity, one of them, indeed, being used for a rifle gallery. What will be apparent to the passer-by is a pleasant mixture of lawns, gardens, and clumps of fine foliage, among which footpaths lead one in view of these private amenities well displayed on the swells of the valley.

Reigate, then, may prove a spot to "delay the tourist," certainly for the charms of its situation between the varied features of chalk and sand closely facing each other from either side. On the north a steep ascent leads to the celebrated Beechwood view, from which one may wander along the timbered Downs to Box Hill. Up the valley runs the road to Dorking, going out by Reigate Heath, where on a byway to Leigh is found the curious feature of a windmill turned into a little church. Beyond the town the sand ridge leads eastward to the broken expanse of Earlswood Common; on the west side of the road it is crowned by the clumps and knolls of Reigate Park, open to the public for striking prospects both north and south; and from this enclosure one may hold on along the heights to come upon the Mole winding through one of the most Surreyish corners of Surrey.

The Brighton road mounts straight up the sand hill, deeply cut under the edge of Reigate Park, below which the old Augustinian Priory has been transformed into a mansion, whose late owner, Lady Henry Somerset, made herself a high name both in England and America as a temperance reformer. By path to Redhill along the top of the ridge, or over Earlswood Common on its south side, one can now in a couple of miles strike across to the road through Croydon, soon to converge with that we have followed through Reigate. From Woodhatch, the latter drops on to the Weald, in four miles joining the other road at Povey Cross, twenty-six miles from London. A mile or so more brings us to the edge of Surrey, guarded by a "White Lion," but no longer marked by the "County Oak," whose time-seasoned timber has gone to make the screen of Ifield Church.

Henceforth this much travelled road belongs to Sussex. The last stretch of it in Surrey is not its most attractive part, from which, however, one could make a fine diversion among the branches of the Mole to the west, crossing over to the line of Stone Street. But our theme is the Brighton road, on which let us now skim backwards along the main branch _viâ_ Croydon, that, more closely accompanying the Brighton rail, might be chosen by wayfarers bent on business or record-making.

Behind the convergence, this branch leads by the racecourse of Gatwick, then, across the Mole, by the new growth of Horley, that might be called the southernmost of London's dependencies, if the same thing were not to be said of Brighton; but the old yews by the Church, and the "Chequers" and "Six Bells" inns speak for Horley's unvillaed antiquity. To carry out the sporting character of the neighbourhood, Horley is headquarters of the Surrey staghounds, and at Burstow, to the east, are the kennels of one of three packs of foxhounds that hunt this edge of the county, where Mr. Jorrocks must have had many a day before he came to his mastership at Handley Spa. To the east here extends a part of the Weald little famed in the tourist world, yet containing such points as Burstow with its monument to Flamsteed, our first Astronomer-Royal; Thunderfield Castle, taken to have been a Saxon fortress; and the old mansion of Smallfield Place, by which the free foot or wheel might wander across to the East Grinstead road.

On the Brighton road itself--where the reader must bear in mind that his head has been turned Londonwards--he finds not much of interest till it comes to switchback over Earlswood Common, between an artificial lake and the palace of the idiot asylum. Thus it mounts the sand ridge, stretching towards Reigate in boldly broken scars and tangled hollows of the red sandstone that gives Redhill its name, here crowned by a circular clump to commemorate the Jubilee of 1897. On the other side this range invites a fine diversion, by either low or high roads, past Nutfield and Bletchingley to Godstone, on whose Green can be joined the road going southwards by Caterham.

Our business-like highway has now nothing for it but a long down and up through the main street of Redhill, in the central depression passing the big Junction and St. Ann's Schools on the right, where, on the other side, the excrescence of Warwick Town has grown along the cross-road almost into Reigate. When the high-road gets out of Redhill, it is climbing the Downs, reached at Merstham below Gatton Park, and passed by a valley making the course of the Bourne, one of those English _wadys_ so common in chalk countries, which, filled by the overflowing of some subterranean reservoir, may burst out in ravaging floods, as this one has often done. In the same hollow pass is pent up the railway that was apt to be choked by the trains of two lines, till the Brighton Company relieved the pressure by a new conduit from Earlswood to Purley.

The road through Croydon falls into Smitham Bottom, brightened for Londoners by such names as Stoat's Nest and Hooley Farm, but overshadowed by the great County Asylum on Cane's Hill, and the buildings that have sprung up about it. By Cane's Hill opens the Chipstead valley, running up to Kingswood and Walton Heath. On the other side rises the smooth swell of the Farthing or Fairdene Downs, which, with Coulsdon Common beyond, are a pleasure-ground of the City of London, as seems too little known to Londoners, unless it be the Guardsmen from Coulsdon Barracks, whose uniforms may appear as showy dots on the turf slopes, where sometimes hardly a human figure comes in sight over a mile of open prospect. Yet few finer rambles can be found so near London than by mounting from Coulsdon station to the bare top of this ridge, and keeping straight along, to hold on by a woodland lane for Chaldon and the brow of the Downs, with more than one rough path dropping off into the hollow on the left to straggle up again to Coulsdon Common and towards Caterham.

But our road, as Mrs. Gamp philosophically remarks, being born in a vale, must take the consequences of such a situation. It leads us humbly on to the violent outbreak of new houses about Purley, looked down on by the Reedham

[Illustration: FLANCHFORD MILL.]

Orphanage to the right and the Warehousemen's and Clerks' School on Russell Hill to the left. Guide-books remind us how here Horne Tooke wrote his _Diversions of Purley_; but contemporary Radicals seem not much disposed to seek either amusement or instruction from the works of that philosophic grammarian and agitator. What will interest the present generation more is an effort to preserve Purley Beeches, a fine woodland on the Downs, as pleasure-ground for this fast-growing suburb.

On the east, beyond the railway, beside a face of quarried chalk, opens the Caterham valley, its hollow and its south side much choked up with streets and mansions, strung together by two railway lines; but the north slope opens in the steeps of Riddlesdown, where a thousand acres are preserved as a London park, with tea-gardens and other attractions much in favour with school-treat parties; and in the background, by a path to Warlingham, may perhaps be found a strong encampment of gypsies. The last time I passed that way, on a fine Sunday evening, I came upon a band of "burly chiels and clever hizzies" from the North, actually dancing about a piper--"to give them music was his charge," as more rigid Scots might quote grimly. The waters by which these cheerful exiles thus forgot the Sabbath songs of their Zion show, in the reservoirs of Kenley and Purley, a strikingly blue tint one guesses to be due to some process for softening their chalky impregnation; and this valley also has a subterranean bourne, to which fond tradition gives a periodicity of seven years. Again a word to the unshackled wanderer: let him pass up by the curving face of Riddlesdown and through the lower part of Caterham, past the Congregational College, then by a track up the Harestone valley, leading to a high brow of the Downs at the War Coppice. The Caterham valley itself is some hundreds of feet above the sea, so no wonder that so many well-to-do Londoners make their nests about what a local guide styles "its cluster of ambrosial hills."

At Purley begins the long tram line that takes us through Croydon, and on to Norbury by still open spaces, shrinking like Balzac's _Peau de chagrin_, where the footpaths that run off to the heights of Norwood may any year be found hedged by houses. Croydon ought to be well equipped with trams, for one of the first in the country was made hence to Wandsworth, the very first, in 1800, belonging to Derbyshire, the contrivance of Benjamin Outram, from whose name _Outramways_ is said to have been playfully derived; but the word tram is of course an old one. There is now only one hiatus, at Streatham, in the electric tram route from the Chalk Downs to the Thames bridges; and that seems like to be bridged over, for Croydon is running into London as fast as its own satellites, Purley, Sanderstead, Thornton Heath, and Beddington are drawn into the growing mass of Croydon.

Croydon has some right to resent its threatened absorption into the metropolis, for, as populous as London was three centuries ago, it is by far the largest independent municipality in Surrey. It was a town of high antiquity, and a main seat of the Archbishops of Canterbury in days when those prelates had a dozen palaces in their diocese. The "Colliers of Croydon" were once well known as burning charcoal in the woods around. Then the town lay mainly to the west of the present main thoroughfare, on low ground about the head-waters of the Wandle. This part has been swept and garnished in our day; and with other old taverns has gone the "King's Head," kept by Ruskin's grandmother. But Croydon has still relics of the past among its smart modern features displayed by electric light round the tower of its Town Hall. At the corner where the chief street is gained from the Central station stands Whitgift's Hospital, a "haunt of ancient peace" since it was founded by Elizabeth's archbishop; but it is now threatened with removal or alteration as standing too much in the way of the busy tram line, that seems already to have pushed the Brighton coaches off this road, where Croydon's "Greyhound" was once a well-known stage. From the crossing at Whitgift's Hospital, Church Street leads down to Croydon Church, destroyed by fire forty years ago, but reproduced by Sir Gilbert Scott, and containing some of the old monuments saved from that disaster. Close to it may be seen the remains of the Archbishops' Palace, in part preserved and restored, now, after being turned to base offices, used as an orphanage school under care of the Kilburn Sisters. It is said to have been founded by Lanfranc, and was occupied by a long line of prelates up to George II.'s time.

When this palace was sold in 1780, the proceeds were used to buy Addington Park, on the heights to the east, which became the Archbishops' country seat till it in turn came to be sold and replaced by a mansion at Canterbury in our time. The park, several miles in circuit, shows a beautiful contrast of fir-woods and heath, recalling Scotland, with the softer features of an English demesne; so one hoped for it to escape the fate of being broken up for building lots, as seems now the doom of its seclusion. But the Addington Hills on the Croydon side, and the bare brow of Shirley, are open, giving a wide view over South London, with the Crystal Palace in the foreground upon the edge of Kent. Into a pretty corner of this county we soon pass by a conspicuous windmill and the high built spire of Shirley Church, outside which, at the east end, may be seen the tomb of Ruskin's parents, with a characteristic inscription. Kent is entered a mile farther on, at West Wickham.

This is not the only fine point of view about Croydon. Just outside of the town, to the south-east, above Selsdon Road station, the high wooded bank called Crohamhurst is now a public park, about which pleasant footways lead over a country too rapidly being built over. On the other side, beyond the Duppas Hill Park, the Wandle is our guide to half-rural scenes of Waddon and Beddington, already mentioned as we passed by Mitcham.

The main road runs Croydon into Purley, passing the aerodrome station for Paris. A fork of it is the oldest Brighton Road, which leaves the county below East Grinstead. From Croydon it goes by Caterham, dropping through a hollow in the Downs to Godstone Green, with its good old inns, then by Tilburstow Hill, a bold knob of the sand ridge, on to a stretch of the Weald, from which once more it rises to the Forest Ridge of Sussex. But we have already crossed this road at its best points; and fresh scenes will be opened out by taking a more devious line a little to the east, on which articulate guide-posts and more or less articulate men may be consulted to keep one in touch with straighter roads to Brighton.

From the main road, this line diverges by a fork to the left at the "Red Deer," no longer the south terminus of Croydon trams. Past spreading suburbs it mounts up to Sanderstead, whose pretty Church stands at a height of 500 feet upon a sandy patch, from which our road soon passes on to the chalk tableland. An hour's sharp walk would bring us to Warlingham above the Caterham valley, where the Church, with its ancient yews, has among other old features a faded fresco of St. Christopher. A mile or two farther on, the chalk is broken by gravel pits and traces of ancient excavation on Worms Heath; then the road rises to 800 feet on Nore Hill, and still higher as by Botley Hill, the unpretending Mount Blanc of the Surrey Downs, about seven miles beyond Croydon, it reaches the sharp drop to Titsey, on the brow where five roads meet, between Tatsfield to the left and Woldingham to the right. This is the point we gained in passing along the edge of the Downs by Harden Park, above the Pilgrims' Way.

On such a descent the cyclist needs no notice boards as warning to caution. The pedestrian may leave the careful course of the high-road for the steep chalky lane on the right, plunging straight down beside the woods of Titsey Park. Either road brings him by Titsey, across the line of the Pilgrims' Way, to Limpsfield, a scattered village lying prettily against the farther slope, where the common makes a favourite golf ground. Village is hardly the word for what seems a roomy suburb, spreading itself on the broken ground that has given fine sites for such institutions as the Church Missionary Home and the Caxton Convalescent Home for printers; but here is well shown that scene so frequent around London, a quiet roadside Church and core of old houses beginning to be lost among rows of new ones, even as in many a Surrey graveyard the heavy, flat, weather-worn slabs, under which "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep," are now thrown into shade by a thickening display of choicer and fresher memorials that mark the passing of a more æsthetic generation to its last home.

Here one might turn aside on either hand through fine country. Near the station, shared by Limpsfield with Oxted, to the west of it stands the Church of the latter village, looking up to the Downs, which may be ascended by steep ways. A little beyond this Church is Barrow Green, the summer home of Jeremy Bentham, where he entertained James Mill and his well-taught son. By Oxted, an hour or so's walk leads westward to Godstone, past or not far from Tandridge and Godstone Churches, both finely restored by Sir Gilbert Scott, who lived here under the brow of Marden Park. His alabaster monument to his wife in Tandridge churchyard, and the view from its ancient yew, are worth a slight bend to the south, bringing one in the latitude of Tilburstow Hill, that rises between Godstone Green and its far-off station; then along that sand ridge one might keep on for half a dozen miles to Redhill. There is a still finer walk to the east of Limpsfield, across

[Illustration: A SLOPE OF BLUEBELLS, HASCOMBE.]

its common, with a windmill and the little Chart Church as landmarks to the left, then up an avenue-like road to Kent Hatch, where the wooded heath of Crockham Hill slopes suddenly to the Kentish Weald. A most beautiful round might be made of this excursion into Kent, by taking the path through Squerryes Park, behind Crockham Hill, to descend into the pretty town of Westerham, with its memories of Wolfe, from which some three miles bring one back over the Surrey border to Limpsfield.

But there still remains to be seen the south-eastern corner of the Surrey Weald, containing some notable sights. For them, from the "Plumbers' Arms" cross-roads at Limpsfield, let the traveller trace out his way along labyrinthine byroads near the straight course of the L.B. & S.C. rail southward. Three miles on, a little to the west of this line, soon after it has been intersected by the S.E.R., he will find the old-world village of Crowhurst standing up among the remains of Wealden woods. The restored Church has two brasses, and one of the cast-iron tomb-stones common in this Black Country of old days; but its lion is the churchyard yew, taken as the oldest and largest in Surrey, thirty-two feet in girth, its fame sometimes confused with that other great yew's, that distinguishes likewise the Sussex Crowhurst. The yew-hedged farm close by was the manor-house of the Angell family, whose name revives in the highly respectable but commonplace Angell Road, Brixton. A mile farther south, to the right of the road, lies Crowhurst Place, one of the old moated granges of Surrey, still a delight to the artistic and antiquarian eye. A little more to the south, and rather farther off the road, Moat Farm is another old house to be sought out; and indeed the whole of this district makes a happy hunting-ground for the sketcher or photographer.

The road from Crowhurst goes on with the railway to Lingfield. If one have strayed as far west as the high-road through Godstone, at Blindley Heath a byroad turns off it for Lingfield, to which a footpath leads from Moat Farm. Lingfield is a place of varied note, not least for its quaint timber-fronted houses, and its "Star" inn, a type of hostelry now rare about London. The noble Church, formerly a collegiate one, is to be visited for its show of Cobham monuments and brasses, and other old features. The old College has disappeared; but a modern foundation here is the "Homestead" colony for the afflicted in mind, body, or estate, a praiseworthy effort of the Christian Union for Social Service. Then, as the nettle grows near the dock, Lingfield has its noted racecourse, which may have ruined such lives as that colony strives to reclaim. What looks like a small-pox hospital to the south of Lingfield station turns out to be the Grand Stand and stables that bring noisy crowds to this else peaceful neighbourhood.

On a height to the south of the racecourse stands the last and latest village of Surrey, making a strong contrast with its time-weathered neighbours. This is the group of bungalows originally entitled Bellaggio, which a generation or so ago was built as a sort of co-operative country home for Londoners, standing in its own grounds round the tower of a club-house. The enterprise did not succeed very well; and the place has sought to gain a fresh start under the name of Dormans Park, the club being turned into an hotel, that does good business at the race meetings, and at other times would make a centre for exploring the skirts of Surrey, Kent, and Sussex, here converging. Beyond the grounds, ornamented with wood and water, across a dip rises in Sussex the edge of the Forest sand ridge, where the towers of East Grinstead beacon us to "fresh woods and pastures new" of a county no less beautiful than Surrey.