Highways and Byways in Surrey Part 33

East of G.o.dstone 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 t.i.tsey, 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 G.o.d, 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 st.u.r.dy rogues.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Tandridge Church._]

Later Tandridge history centres round the church and Tandridge Court.

Tandridge Court has had n.o.ble 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 ma.n.u.script, ent.i.tled _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 G.o.dstone 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 Ess.e.x.

June 1608

The 22th I rode to Kyngston a.s.syses 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 Colc.o.c.ks and Whites henns was arrayned & whipt....

Bartholomew Gander being accessarye & ... Roaker, were put into the Byll with the princ.i.p.al....

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 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 a.s.sizes. 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 gra.s.s, 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 t.i.tsey which belong to an older date than the priory.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 cl.u.s.tered 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 ap.r.o.ns, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Oxted Church._]

Oxted church tower is n.o.ble and ma.s.sive; 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 n.o.ble 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 a.s.suring us that he is skilled in glamoury, and ill.u.s.trating 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, c.o.c.kneys 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 gra.s.s has grown on my grave, And like armed men, come want and care, Know, my boys, that G.o.d'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 G.o.d'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.