The Brighton Road Part 9

The explorer of the Brighton Road who comes, by whatever method of progression he pleases, into Croydon, finds its busy centre at what is still called North End. The name survives long after the circ.u.mstances that conferred it have vanished into the limbo of forgotten things. It _was_ the North end of the town, and here, on what was then a country site, the good Archbishop Whitgift founded his Hospital of the Holy Trinity in 1593. It still stands, although sorely threatened in these last few years; but it is now the one quiet and una.s.suming spot in a narrow, a busy, and a noisy street. Fronting the main thoroughfare, it blocks "improvement"; occupying a site grown so valuable, its destruction, and the sale of the ground for building upon, would immensely profit the good Whitgift's n.o.ble charity. What would Whitgift himself do? When we have advanced still farther into the Unknown and can communicate with the sane among the departed, instead of the idiot spirits who can do nothing better than levitate chairs and tables, rap silly messages, and play monkey-tricks--when we can ring up whom we please at the Paradise or the Inferno Exchange, as the case may be, we shall be able to ascertain the will of Pious Benefactors, and much bitterness will cease out of the land.

Meanwhile the old building for the time survives, and its name, "The Hospital of the Holy Trinity," inscribed high up on the wall, seems strange and reverend amid the showy shop-signs of a latter-day commerce.

There is, of course, no reason why, if widening is to take place, the _opposite_ side of the street should not be set back, and, indeed, any one standing in that street will readily perceive it to be that side which should be demolished, to make a straighter and a broader thoroughfare. It is therefore quite evident that the agitation for demolishing the Hospital is unreal and artificial, and only prompted by greed for the site.

It is a solitude amid the throng, remarkable in the collegiate character of its walls of dark and aged red brick, pierced only by the doorway and as jealously as possible by the few mullioned windows. Once within the outer portal, ornamented overhead with the arms of the See of Canterbury and eloquent with the motto _Qui dat pauperi non indigebit_, the stranger has entered from a striving into a calm and equable world. It is, as old Aubrey quaintly puts it, "a handsome edifice, erected in the manner of a college, by the Right Reverend Father in G.o.d, John Whitgift, late Archbishop of Canterbury." The dainty quadrangle, set about with gra.s.s lawns and bright flowers, is formed on three sides by tiny houses of two floors, where dwell the poor brothers and sisters of this old foundation: twenty brothers and sixteen sisters, who, beside lodging, receive each 40 and 30 a year respectively. They enjoy all the advantages of the Hospital so long as of good behaviour, but "obstinate heresye, sorcerye, any kinde of charmmynge, or witchcrafte" are punished by the statutes with expulsion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DINING HALL, WHITGIFT HOSPITAL.]

The fourth side of the quadrangle is occupied by the Hall, the Warden's rooms, and the Chapel, all in very much the same condition as at their building. The old oak table in the Hall is dated 1614, and much of the stained gla.s.s is of sixteenth century date.

But it is in the Warden's rooms, above, that the eye is feasted with old woodwork, ancient panelling, black with lapse of time, quaint muniment chests, curious records, and the like. These were the rooms specially reserved for his personal use during his lifetime by the pious Archbishop Whitgift.

Here is a case exhibiting the original t.i.tles to the lands on which the Hospital is built, and with which it is endowed; formidable sheets of parchment, bearing many seals, and, what does duty for one, a gold angel of Edward VI.

These are ideal rooms; rooms which delight with their unspoiled sixteenth-century air. The sun streams through the western windows over their deep embrasures, lighting up so finely the darksome woodwork into patches of brilliance that there must be those who envy the Warden his lodging, so perfect a survival of more s.p.a.cious days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The CHAPEL, Hospital of the Holy Trinity.]

A little chapel duly completes the Hospital, and here is not pomp of carving nor vanity of blazoning, for the good Archbishop, mindful of economy, would none of these. The seats and benches are contemporary with the building, and are rough-hewn. On the western wall hangs the founder's portrait, black-framed and mellow, rescued from the boys of the Whitgift schools ere quite destroyed, and on the other walls are the portrait of a lady, supposed to be the Archbishop's niece, and a ghastly representation of Death as a skeleton digging a grave. But all these things are seen but dimly, for the light is very feeble.

XII

The High Street of Croydon really _is_ high, for it occupies a ridge and looks down on the right hand on the Old Town and the valley of the Wandle, or "Wandel." The centre of Croydon has, in fact, been removed from down below, where the church and palace first arose, on the line of the old Roman road, to this ridge, where within the historic period the High Street was only a bridle-path avoiding the little town in the valley.

The High Street, incidentally the Brighton Road as well, is nowadays a very modern and commercial-looking thoroughfare, and owes that appearance, and its comparative width, to the works effected under the Croydon Improvement Act of 1890. Already Croydon, given a Mayor and Town Council in 1883, had grown so greatly that the narrow street was incapable of accommodating the traffic; while the low-lying, and in other senses low, quarter of Market Street and Middle Row offended the dignity and self-respect of the new-born Corporation. The Town Hall stood at that time in the High Street: a curious example of b.a.s.t.a.r.d cla.s.sic architecture, built in 1808. Near by was the "Greyhound," an old coaching and posting inn, with one of those picturesque gallows signs straddling across the street, of which those of the "George" at Crawley and the "Greyhound" at Sutton are surviving examples. That of the "c.o.c.k" at Sutton disappeared in 1898, and the similar signs of the "Crown," opposite the Whitgift Hospital, and of the "King's Arms" vanished many years ago.

The "Greyhound" was the princ.i.p.al inn of Croydon in the old times. The first mention of it is found in 1563, the parish register of that year containing the entry, "Nicholas Vode (Wood) the son of the good wyfe of the grewond was buryed the xxix day of January." The voluminous John Taylor mentions it in 1624 as one of the two Croydon inns, and it was the headquarters of General Fairfax in 1645, when Cromwell vehemently disputed with him under its roof on the conduct of the campaign, urging more severe measures.

Following upon the alteration, the "Greyhound" was rebuilt. Its gallows sign disappeared at the same time, when a curious point arose respecting the post supporting it on the opposite pavement. Erected in the easy-going times when such a matter was nothing more than a little friendly and neighbourly concession, the square foot of ground it occupied had by lapse of time become freehold property, and as such it was duly scheduled and purchased by the Improvements Committee. A sum of 400 was claimed for freehold and loss of advertis.e.m.e.nt, and eventually 350 was paid.

[Sidenote: RUSKIN]

I suppose there can be no two opinions about the slums cleared away under that Improvement Act; but they were very picturesque, if also very dirty and tumble-down: all nodding gables, cobblestoned roads, and winding ways.

I sorrow, in the artistic way, for those slums, and in the literary way for a house swept away at the same time, sentimentally a.s.sociated with John Ruskin. It was the inn kept by his maternal grandmother, and is referred to in "Praeterita":

"... Of my father's ancestors I know nothing, nor of my mother's more than that my maternal grandmother was the landlady of the 'Old King's Head' in Market Street, Croydon; and I wish she were alive again, and I could paint her Simone Memmi's 'King's Head' for a sign." And he adds: "Meantime my aunt had remained in Croydon and married a baker.... My aunt lived in the little house still standing--or which was so four months ago[7]--the fashionablest in Market Street, having actually two windows over the shop, in the second story" (_sic_).

There are slums at Croydon even now, for Croydon is a highly civilised progressive place, and slums and slum populations are the exclusive products of civilisation and progress, and a very severe indictment of them. But they are new slums; those poverty-stricken districts created _ad hoc_, which seem more hopeless than the ancient purlieus, and appear to be as inevitable to and as inseparable from modern great towns as a hem to a handkerchief.

The old quarter of Croydon began to fall into the slum condition at about the period of Croydon's first expansion, when the [Greek: ohi polloi]

impinged too closely upon the archiepiscopal precincts, and their Graces, neglecting their obvious duty in the manner customary to Graces spiritual and temporal, retired to the congenial privacy of Addington.

Here stands the magnificent parish church of Croydon; its n.o.ble tower of the Perpendicular period, its body of the same style, but a restoration, after the melancholy havoc caused by the great fire of 1867. It is one of the few really satisfactory works of Sir Gilbert Scott; successful because he was obliged to forget his own particular fads and to reproduce exactly what had been destroyed. Another marvellous replica is the elaborate monument of Archbishop Whitgift, copied exactly from pictures of that utterly destroyed in the fire. Archbishop Sheldon's monument, however, still remains in its mutilated condition, with a scarred and horrible face calculated to afflict the nervous and to be remembered in their dreams.

The vicars of Croydon have in the long past been a varied kind. The Reverend William Clewer, who held the living from 1660 until 1684, when he was ejected, was a "smiter," an extortioner, and a criminal; but Roland Phillips, a predecessor by some two hundred years, was something of a seer. Preaching in 1497, he declared that "we" (the Roman Catholics) "must root out printing, or printing will root out us." Already, in the twenty years of its existence, it had undermined superst.i.tion, and was presently to root out the priests, even as he foresaw.

[Sidenote: THE ARCHBISHOP'S PALACE]

Unquestionably the sight best worth seeing in Croydon is that next-door neighbour of the church, the Archbishop's Palace. Comparatively few are those who see it, because it is just a little way off the road and is private property and shown only by favour and courtesy. When the Archbishops deserted the place it was sold under the Act of Parliament of 1780 and became the factory of a calico-printer and a laundry. Some portions were demolished, the moat was filled up, the "minnows and the springs of Wandel" of which Ruskin speaks, were moved on, and mean little streets quartered the ground immediately adjoining. But, although all those facts are very grim and grey, it remains true that the old palace is a place very well worth seeing.

It was again sold in 1887, and purchased by the Duke of Newcastle, who made it over to the so-called "Kilburn Sisters," who maintain it as a girls' school. I do not know, nor seek to inquire, by what right, or with what object, the "Sisters" who conduct the school affect the dress of Roman Catholics, while professing the tenets of the Church of England; but under their rule the historic building has been well treated, and the chapel and other portions repaired, with every care for their interesting antiquities, under the eyes of expert and jealous anti-restorers. The Great Hall, chief feature of the place, still maintains its fifteenth century chestnut hammerbeam roof and armorial corbels; the Long Gallery, where Queen Elizabeth danced, the State bedroom where she slept, the Guard Room, quarters of the Archbishops' bodyguard, are all existing; and the Chapel, with oaken bench-ends bearing the sculptured arms of Laud, of Juxon, and others, and the Archbishops' pew, has lately been brought back to decent condition. Here, too, is the exquisite oaken gallery at the western end, known as "Queen Elizabeth's Pew."

That imperious queen and indefatigable tourist paid several visits to Croydon Palace, and her characteristic insolence and freedom of speech were let loose upon the unoffending wife of Archbishop Parker when she took her leave. "Madam," she said, "I may not call you; mistress I am ashamed to call you; and so I know not what to call you; but, however, I thank you." It seems evident that the daughter of Henry the Eighth had, despite her Protestantism, an historic preference for a celibate clergy.

XIII

Down amid what remains of the old town is a street oddly named "Pump Pail." Its strange name causes many a visit of curiosity, but it is a common-place street, and contains neither pail nor pump, and nothing more romantic than a tin tabernacle. But this, it appears, is not an instance of things not being what they seem, for in the good old days before the modern water-supply, one of the parish pumps stood here, and from it a woman supplied a house-to-house delivery of water in pails. The explanation seems too obvious to be true, and sure enough, a variant kicks the "pail" over, and tells us that it is properly Pump Pale, the Place of the Pump, "pale" being an ancient word, much used in old law-books to indicate a district, limit of jurisdiction, and so forth.

[Sidenote: JABEZ BALFOUR]

The modern side of all these things is best exemplified by the beautiful Town Hall which Croydon has provided for itself, in place of the ugly old building, demolished in 1893. It is a n.o.ble building, and stands on a site worthy of it, with broad approaches that permit good views, without which the best of buildings is designed in vain. It marks the starting point of the history of modern Croydon, and is a far cry from the old building of the bygone Local Board days, when the traffic of the High Street was regulated--or supposed to be regulated--by the Beadle, and the rates were low, and Croydon was a country town, and everything was dull and humdrum.

It was a little unfortunate that the first Mayor of Croydon and Liberal Member of Parliament for Tamworth, that highly imaginative financier Jabez Spencer Balfour, should have been wanted by the police, a fugitive from justice brought back from the Argentine, and a criminal convicted of fraud as a company promoter; but accidents will happen, and the Town Council did its best, by turning his portrait face to the wall, and by subsequently (as it is reported) losing it. He was sent in 1895, a little belatedly, to fourteen years' penal servitude, and the victims of his "Liberator" frauds went into the workhouse for the most part, or died. He ceased to be V 460 on release on licence, and became again Jabez Spencer Balfour, and so died, obscurely.

The Liberal Party in the Government had, over Jabez Balfour, one of its several narrow escapes from complete moral ruin; for Balfour was on extremely friendly terms with the members of Gladstone's ministry, 1892-94, and was within an ace of being given a Cabinet post. Let us pause to consider the odd affinity between Jabez Balfour and Trebitsch Lincoln and Liberal politics.

The Town Hall--ahem! Munic.i.p.al Buildings--stands on the site of the disused and abolished Central Croydon station, and the neighbourhood of it is glimpsed afar off by the fine tower, 170 ft. in height. All the departments of the Corporation are housed under one roof, including the fine Public Library and its beautiful feature, the Braithwaite Hall. The Town Council is housed in that munic.i.p.al splendour without which no civic body can nowadays deliberate in comfort, and even the vestibule is worthy of a palace. I take the following "official" description of it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROYDON TOWN HALL.]

"On either side of the vestibule are rooms for Porter and telephone.

Beyond are the hall and princ.i.p.al staircase, the shafts of the columns and the pilasters of which are of a Spanish marble, a sort of jasper, called Rose d'Andalusia; the bases and skirtings are of grand antique. The capitals, architrave, cornices, handrails, etc., are of red Verona marble; the bal.u.s.ters, wall-lining and frieze of the entablature of alabaster, and the dado of the ground floor is gris-rouge marble. The flooring is of Roman mosaic of various marbles, purposely kept simple in design and quiet in colouring. One of the windows has the arms of H.R.H.

the Prince of Wales, and the other the Borough arms, in stained gla.s.s.

Above the dado at the first floor level the walls are painted a delicate green tint, relieved by a powdering of C's and Civic Crowns. The doors and their surroundings are of walnut wood."

[Sidenote: THE RATEPAYER'S HOME]

Very beautiful indeed. Now let us see the home of one of Croydon's poorer ratepayers:

On one side of the hall are two rooms, called respectively the parlour and the kitchen. Beyond is the scullery. The walls of the staircase are covered with a sort of plaster called stucco, but closely resembling road-sc.r.a.pings: the skirtings are of pitch-pine, the bal.u.s.ters of the same material. The floorings are of deal. The roof lets in the rain. One of the windows is broken and stuffed with rags, the others are cracked. The walls are stained a delicate green tint relieved by a film of blue mould, owing to lack of a damp-course. None of the windows close properly, the flues smoke into the rooms instead of out of the chimney-pots, the doors jam, and the surroundings are wretched beyond description.

Electric tramways now conduct along the Brighton Road to the uttermost end of the great modern borough of Croydon, at Purley Corner. Here the explorer begins to perceive, despite the densely packed houses, that he is in that "Croydene," or crooked vale, of Saxon times from which, we are told, Croydon takes its name; and he can see also that nature, and not man, ordained in the first instance the position and direction of what is now the road to Brighton, in the bottom, alongside where the Bourne once flowed, inside the fence of Haling Park. It is, in fact, the site of a prehistoric track which led the most easy ways across the bleak downs, severally through Smitham Bottom and Caterham.

Beside that stream ran from 1805 until about 1840 the rails of that long-forgotten pioneer of railways in these parts, the "Surrey Iron Railway." This was a primitive line constructed for the purpose of affording cheap and quick transport for coals, bricks, and other heavy goods, originally between Wandsworth and Croydon, but extended in 1805 to Merstham, where quarries of limestone and beds of Fuller's earth are situated.

This railway was the outcome of a project first mooted in 1799, for a ca.n.a.l from Wandsworth to Croydon. It was abandoned because of the injury that might have been caused to the wharves and factories already existing numerously along the course of the Wandle, and a railway subst.i.tuted. The Act of Parliament was obtained in 1800, and the line constructed to Croydon in the following year, at a cost of about 27,000. It was not a railway in the modern sense, and the haulage was by horses, who dragged the clumsy waggons along at the rate of about four miles an hour. The rails, fixed upon stone blocks, were quite different from those of modern railways or tramways, being just lengths of angle-iron into which the wheels of the waggons fitted: |_ _|. Thus, in contradistinction from all other railway or tramway practice, the f.l.a.n.g.es were not on the wheels, but on the rails themselves. The very frugal object of this was to enable the waggons to travel on ordinary roads, if necessity arose.

From the point where the Wandle flows into the Thames, at Wandsworth, along the levels past Earlsfield and Garratt, the railway went in double track; continuing by Merton Abbey, Mitcham (where the present lane called "Tramway Path" marks its course) and across Mitcham Common into Croydon by way of what is now called Church Street, but was then known as "Iron Road." Thence along Southbridge Lane and the course of the Bourne, it was continued to Purley, whence it climbed Smitham Bottom and ran along the left-hand side of the Brighton Road in a cutting now partly obliterated by the deeper cutting of the South Eastern line. The ideas of those old projectors were magnificent, for they cherished a scheme of extending to Portsmouth; but the enterprise was never a financial success, and that dream was not realised. Nearly all traces of the old railway are obliterated.

The marvel-mongers who derive the name of Waddon from "Woden" find that Haling comes from the Anglo-Saxon "halig," or holy; and therefrom have built up an imaginary picture of ancient heathen rites celebrated here.

The best we can say for those theories is that they _may_ be correct or they may not. Of evidence there is, of course, none whatever; and certainly it is to be feared that the inhabitants of Croydon care not one rap about it; nor even know--or knowing, are not impressed--that here, in 1624, died that great Lord High Admiral of England, Howard of Effingham.