{96}

THE WHITE HORSE, DORKING.
THE WHITE HORSE, DORKING.

The Mole owes its fame to the fact that it is so seldom seen, and several of the swallows or gullies into which it disappears at intervals along its chalky bed are at Burford, close to Dorking. The ponds which supplied the perch for that water-sousie which Dutch merchants came to eat at Dorking, are still to be seen in the fields under Redhill, and near them many an old timbered house and mill-wheel well worth painting.{97}

BETWEEN DORKING AND BETCHWORTH LOOKING WEST.
BETWEEN DORKING AND BETCHWORTH LOOKING WEST.

To-day Dorking is a quiet, sleepy little place, but its situation on the Stane Street, the great Roman road from Chichester to London, formerly made it a centre of considerable importance, and the size and excellence of the old-fashioned inns still bear witness to its departed grandeur. Whether, as seems most probable, the old road ran under the wall of Denbies Park, and across the gap now made by the Dorking lime works, or whether, as the Ordnance map indicates, it crossed the breezy{98} heights of Ranmore Common, pilgrims to Canterbury certainly crossed the Mole at Burford Bridge about half a mile from the town. The remains of an ancient shrine known as the Pilgrims’ Chapel are still shown in Westhumble Lane. The path itself bears the name of Paternoster Lane, and the fields on either side are called the Pray Meadows. From this point the path runs along under Boxhill, the steep down that rises abruptly on the eastern side of Dorking, and takes its name from the box-trees which here spring up so plentifully in the smooth green turf above the chalk. Boxhill is, we all know, one of the chief attractions which Dorking offers to Londoners. The other is to be found in the fine parks of Deepdene and Betchworth, immediately adjoining the town. The famous gardens and art collections of Deepdene, and the noble lime avenue of Betchworth, which now forms part of the same estate, have often been visited and described. The house at Deepdene is now closed to the public, but the traveller can still stroll under the grand old trees on the river bank, and enjoy a wealthy variety of forest scenery{99} almost unrivalled in England. A picturesque bridge over the Mole leads back to the downs on the opposite side of the valley, where the old track pursues its way along the lower slope of the hills, often wending its course through ploughed fields and tangled thickets and disappearing altogether in places where chalk quarries and lime works have cut away the face of the down. But on the whole the line of yews which mark the road is more regular between Dorking and Reigate than in its earlier course, and at Buckland, a village two miles west of Reigate, a whole procession of these trees descends into the valley.

ON “THE WAY” ABOVE BETCHWORTH.
ON “THE WAY” ABOVE BETCHWORTH.

All this part of the road is rich in Roman remains. Of these one of the most interesting was the building discovered in 1875, at Colley Farm, in the parish of Reigate, just south of the Way. Not only were several cinerary urns and fragments of Roman pottery dug up, but the walls of a Roman building were found under those of the present farmhouse. Some twenty years ago a similar building was discovered at Abinger, also in the immediate vicinity of the{100} track, but unfortunately it was completely destroyed in the absence of the owner, Sir Thomas Farrer. Another Roman house came to light in 1813, at Bletchingley, and one chamber, which appeared to be a hypocaust, was excavated at the time. Lastly, considerable Roman remains have been discovered and carefully excavated by Mr. Leveson-Gower in the park at Titsey. Of these the most important are a Roman villa, which was{101} thoroughly excavated in 1864, together with a group of larger buildings, apparently the farm belonging to the ancient house. These are only a few of the principal links in the chain of Roman buildings which lie along the course of this ancient trackway, and which all help to prove its importance as a thoroughfare at the time of the Roman occupation.

Another point of interest regarding this part of the Pilgrims’ Way is its connection with John Bunyan. When his peculiar opinions and open-air preachings had brought him into trouble with the authorities, he came to hide in these Surrey hills, and earned his living for some time as a travelling tinker. Two houses, one at Horn Hatch, on Shalford Common, the other at Quarry Hill, in Guildford, are still pointed out as having been inhabited by him at this time; and a recent writer[10] has suggested that in all probability the recollections of Pilgrimage days, then fresh in the minds of the people, first gave him the idea{102} of his “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Certainly more than one incident in the history of the road bears a close resemblance to the tale of Christian’s adventures. Thus, for instance, the swampy marshes at Shalford may have been the Slough of Despond, the blue Surrey hills seen from the distance may well have seemed to him the Delectable Mountains, and the name of Doubting Castle actually exists at a point of the road near Box Hill. Lastly, the great fair at Shalford corresponds exactly with Bunyan’s description of Vanity Fair, no newly erected business, but “a thing of ancient standing,” where “the ware of Rome and her merchandise is greatly promoted ... only our English nation have taken a dislike thereat.” In the days when Bunyan wrote, the annual fair had degenerated into a lawless and noisy assembly, where little trade was done, and much drinking and fighting and rude horseplay went on, as he may have found to his cost. The wares of Rome, in fact, were commodities no longer in fashion, and soon the fair itself came to an end and passed away, like so many other things that had been called into being by the Canterbury Pilgrimage.{103}

WINDMILL ON REIGATE COMMON.
WINDMILL ON REIGATE COMMON.

CHAPTER VII

REIGATE TO CHEVENING

ALTHOUGH the town of Reigate lies in the valley, it certainly takes its name from the Pilgrims’ Road to Canterbury. In Domesday it is called Cherchfelle, and it is not till the latter part of the twelfth century that the comparatively modern name of Rigegate, the Ridge Road, was applied, first of all to the upper part of the parish, and eventually to the whole town. In those days a chapel dedicated to the memory of the blessed{104} martyr, St. Thomas, stood at the east end of the long street, on a site now occupied by a market-house, built early in the last century, and part of the ancient foundations of this pilgrimage shrine were brought to light when the adjoining prison was enlarged some eighty or ninety years back. Another chapel, dedicated to St. Laurence the Martyr, stood farther down the street; and a third, the Chapel of Holy Cross, belonged to the Augustine Canons of the Priory founded by William of Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, in the thirteenth century. In Saxon days Reigate, or Holm Castle, as it was then termed, from its situation at the head of the valley of Holmesdale, was an important stronghold, and the vigour and persistence with which the incursions of the Danes were repelled by the inhabitants of this district gave rise to the rhyme quoted by Camden—

REIGATE COMMON.
REIGATE COMMON.

At the Conquest the manor was granted to William of Warrenne, and from that time the{105} castle became the most powerful fortress of the mighty Earls of Surrey. In the days of John it shared the fate of Guildford Castle, and was one of the strongholds which opened its gates to Louis VIII., King of France, on his march from the Kentish Coast to Winchester. The Fitzalans succeeded the Warrennes in the possession of Reigate, and in the reign of Edward VI., both the castle and the Priory were granted to the Howards of Effingham. Queen Elizabeth’s Lord High Admiral, the victor of the Invincible Armada, lies buried in the vault under the{106} chancel of Reigate Church. In Stuart times the castle gradually fell into decay, until it was finally destroyed by order of Parliament, during the Civil War, lest it should fall into the King’s hands. Now only the mound of the ancient keep remains, and some spacious subterranean chambers which may have served as cellars or dungeons in Norman times. The Priory has also been replaced by a modern house, and is the property of Lady Henry Somerset, the representative of the Earl Somers, to whom William III. granted Reigate in 1697.

Close to this ancient foundation is the hilly common known as Reigate Park, a favourite haunt with artists, who find endless subjects in the{107} fern-grown dells and romantic hollows, the clumps of thorn-trees with their gnarled stems and spreading boughs, their wealth of wild flowers and berries. The views over Reigate itself and the Priory grounds on one side, and over the Sussex Weald on the other, are very charming; but a still finer prospect awaits us on the North Downs on the opposite side of the valley, where the Pilgrims’ Road goes on its course. The best way is to climb Reigate Hill as far as the suspension bridge, and follow a path cut in the chalk to the summit of the ridge. It leads through a beechwood on to the open downs, where, if the day is clear, one of the finest views in the whole of England—in the whole world, says Cobbett—breaks upon us. The Weald of Surrey and of Sussex, from the borders of Hampshire to the ridge of East Grinstead, and Crowborough Beacon, near Tunbridge Wells, lies spread out at our feet. Eastward, the eye ranges over the Weald of Kent and the heights above Sevenoaks; westward the purple ridge of Leith Hill and the familiar crest of Hindhead meet us; and far away to the south are the Brighton downs and Chanctonbury Ring.{108}

LOOKING EAST FROM GATTON PARK.
LOOKING EAST FROM GATTON PARK.

The line of yew trees appears again here, and after keeping along the top of the ridge for about a mile, the Pilgrims’ Way enters Gatton Park, and passing through the woods near Lord Oxenbridge’s house, joins the avenue that leads to Merstham. Gatton itself, which, like Reigate, takes its name from the Pilgrims’ Road—Saxon, Gatetun, the town of the road—was chiefly famous for the electoral privileges which it so long enjoyed.{109} From the time of Henry VI. until the Reform Bill of 1832, this very small borough returned two members to Parliament. In the reign of Henry VIII. Sir Roger Copley is described as the burgess and sole inhabitant of the borough and town of Gatton, and for many years the constituency consisted of one person, the lord of the manor.

At the beginning of the present century there were only eight houses in the whole parish, a fact which naturally roused the ire of William Cobbett. “Before you descend the hill to go into Reigate,” he writes in one of his Rural Rides, “you pass Gatton, which is a very rascally spot of earth.” And when rainy weather detained him a whole day at Reigate, he moralises in this vein—“In one rotten borough, one the most rotten too, and with another still more rotten up upon the hill, in Reigate and close by Gatton, how can I help reflecting, how can my mind be otherwise than filled with reflections on the marvellous deeds of the collective wisdom of the nation?” These privileges doubled the value of the property, and when Lord Monson bought Gatton Park in{110} 1830, he paid a hundred thousand pounds for the place; but the days of close boroughs were already numbered, and less than two years afterwards the Reform Bill deprived Gatton of both its members. The little town hall of Gatton, where the important ceremony of electing two representatives to serve in Parliament was performed, is still standing, an interesting relic of bygone days, on a mound in the park, almost hidden by large chestnut trees.

GATTON TOWN HALL.
GATTON TOWN HALL.

{111}

Like so many of the churches we have already mentioned, like Seale and Wanborough, and the chapels of St. Katherine and St. Martha, like the old church at Titsey and the present one at Chevening, Gatton was originally a Pilgrims’ church. Now it has little that is old to show, for it was restored by Lord Monson in 1831, and adorned with a variety of treasures from all parts of the Continent. The stained glass comes from the monastery of Aerschot, near Louvain, the{112} altar-rails from Tongres, the finely carved choir-stalls and canopies from Ghent, and the altar and pulpit from Nuremberg. Like most of the mediæval wood-work and glass which has come to England from that “Quaint old town of toil and traffic, Quaint old town of art and song,” these last are said to have been designed by the great master of the Franconian city, Albert Dürer.

MERSTHAM CHURCH.
MERSTHAM CHURCH.

The Pilgrims’ Way, as has been already said, runs through Gatton Park, and brings us out close to Merstham, and through lanes shaded with fine oaks and beeches we reach the pretty little village, with its old timbered cottages and still older church buried in the woods. Local writers of the last century frequently allude to the Pilgrims’ Road as passing through this parish, although its exact course is not easy to trace. It seems, however, certain that the track passed near Lord Hylton’s house, and south of the church, which stands close by. In mediæval times, Merstham formed part of the vast estates held by the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, and was bestowed upon them by Athelstan, a son{113} of Ethelred the Unready, in the tenth century. There was a church here at the time of the Norman Conquest, but the only portion of the present building dating from that period is a fine old square Norman font which, like several others in the neighbourhood, is of Sussex marble. Of later date, there is much that is extremely interesting. The tower and the west door are Early English, and the chancel arch is adorned{114} with curious acanthus-leaf mouldings, while the porch and chancel are Late Perpendicular.

After passing Merstham Church the track is lost in a medley of roads and railway cuttings, but soon the line of yews appears again, climbing the crest of the hill, and can be followed for some distance along White Hill, or Quarry Hangers, as these downs are commonly called. The next object of interest which it passes is the War Camp, or Cardinal’s Cap, as it is sometimes termed, an old British earthwork on the face of the chalk escarpment. Then the path turns into a wood, and we leave it to descend on Godstone. This is a fascinating spot for artists. The low irregular houses are grouped round a spacious green and goose-pond, shaded by fine horse-chestnuts, and there is a charming inn, the White Hart or Clayton Arms, with gabled front and large bay-windows of the good old-fashioned type. “A beautiful village,” wrote Cobbett, ninety years ago, “chiefly of one street, with a fine large green before it, and with a pond in the green;” and he goes on to speak of the neatness of the gardens and of the double violets,{115} “as large as small pinks,” which grew in the garden of this same inn, and of which the landlady was good enough to give some roots. Happily for his peace of mind, he adds, “The vile rotten borough of Bletchingley, which lies under the downs close by, is out of sight.”

THE WHITE HART, GODSTONE.
THE WHITE HART, GODSTONE.

OLD HOUSE IN OXTED.
OLD HOUSE IN OXTED.

From Godstone it is a pleasant walk over the open commons, along the top of the ridge, looking over the Weald of Sussex and across{116} the valleys of Sevenoaks and Tunbridge to the Kentish hills. Once more we track the line of the Pilgrims’ Way as it emerges from the woods above the Godstone quarries and, passing under Winder’s Hill and by Marden Park, reaches a wood called Palmers Wood. The name is significant, more especially since there is no record of any owner who bore that name. Here its course is very clearly defined, and when, in the autumn of 1890, pipes for carrying water out of the hill were laid down, a section of the old{117} paved road was cut across. A little farther on, at Limpsfield Lodge Farm, just on the edge of Titsey park, it formed the farm road till 1875. At this point the path was ten feet wide, and the original hedges remained. Before entering the park of Titsey, the way runs through part of Oxted parish, where a spring still bears the name of St. Thomas’s Well, and then reaches Titsey Place.

OXTED CHURCH.
OXTED CHURCH.

Few places in this part of Surrey are more attractive than this old home of the Greshams. The purity of the air, praised by Aubrey long{118} ago for its sweet, delicate, and wholesome virtues, the health-giving breezes of the surrounding downs and commons, the natural loveliness of the place, and the taste with which the park and gardens have been laid out, all help to make Titsey a most delightful spot. Its beautiful woods stretch along the grassy slopes of Botley Hill, and the clump of trees on the heights known as Cold-harbour Green is 881 feet above the sea, and marks the loftiest point in the whole range of the North Downs. Wherever the eye rests, one ridge of wooded hill after the other seems to rise and melt away into the soft blue haze. Nor is there any lack of other attractions to invite the attention of scholar and antiquary. The place is full of historic associations. A whole wealth of antiquities, coins, urns, and pottery, have been dug up in the park, and some remains of Roman buildings were discovered there a few years ago, close to the Pilgrims’ Way. After the conquest Titsey was given to the great Earls of Clare, who owned the property at the time of the Domesday Survey. In the fourteenth century it belonged{119} to the Uvedale family, and two hundred years later was sold to Sir John Gresham, an uncle of Sir Thomas Gresham, the illustrious merchant of Queen Elizabeth’s court, and the founder of the Royal Exchange. A fine portrait of Sir Thomas himself, by Antonio More, now hangs in the library of Titsey Place. Unfortunately the Greshams suffered for their loyalty to Charles I., and after the death of the second Sir Marmaduke Gresham in 1742, a large part of the property was sold. His son, Sir John, succeeded in partly retrieving the fortunes of the family, and rebuilt and enlarged the old manor-house, which had been allowed to fall into a ruinous state. But the Tudor arches of the east wing still remain, as well as much of the fine oak panelling which adorned its walls; and the crest of the Greshams, a grasshopper, may still be seen in the hall chimney-piece. The present owner, Mr. Leveson-Gower, is a lineal descendant of the last baronet, and inherited Titsey from his great-grandmother Katherine, the heiress of the Greshams. The fourteenth-century church was unluckily pulled down a hundred years ago,{120} because Sir John Gresham thought it stood too near his own house, but an old yew in the garden and some tombstones of early Norman date still mark its site. The course of the Pilgrims’ Way through the Park is clearly marked by a double row of fine ash trees, and the flint stones with which the road itself is paved may still be seen under the turf. Further along the road is a very old farmhouse, which was formerly a hostelry, and still bears the name of the Pilgrims’ Lodge. From Titsey the Way runs along the side of the hills, under Tatsfield Church, which stands on{121} the summit of the ridge, and about a mile above the pretty little towns of Westerham and Brasted. Here the boundary of the counties is crossed, and the traveller enters Kent. Soon we reach the gates of Chevening Park, where, as at Titsey, the Pilgrims’ Way formerly passed very near the house, until it was closed by Act of Parliament in 1780.

BRASTED.
BRASTED.

The manor of Chevening, originally the property of the See of Canterbury, was held in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the family of Chevening, from whence it passed to the Lennards, who became Barons Dacre and Earls of Sussex. In the last century it was bought by General Stanhope, the distinguished soldier and statesman, who, after reducing the island of Minorca, served King George I. successively as Secretary of State and First Lord of the Treasury. Inigo Jones built the house for Richard Lennard, Lord Dacre, early in the seventeenth century, but since then it has undergone such extensive alterations that little of the original structure remains, and the chief interest lies in a valuable collection of historical{122} portraits, including those of the Chesterfields, Stanhopes, and the great Lord Chatham. The last-named statesman, whose daughter Hester married Charles, Lord Stanhope, in 1774, was a frequent visitor at Chevening, and is said to have planned the beautiful drive which leads through the woods north of the house to the top of the downs. The little village of Chevening lies on the other side of the park, just outside Lord Stanhope’s gates and close to the old church of St. Botolph, which was one of the shrines frequented by the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. There are some good Early English arches in the nave and chancel, and a western tower of Perpendicular date. The south chapel contains many imposing sepulchral monuments to the different lords of the manor. Amongst them are those of John Lennard, who was sheriff of the county and held several offices under the crown in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, and of his son Sampson, who with his wife Margaret, Lady Dacre in her own right, reposes under a sumptuous canopy of alabaster surrounded by kneeling effigies of their children. There is{123} also a fine black marble monument to the memory of James, Earl of Stanhope, the prime minister of George I., who was buried here with great pomp in 1721. He was actually in office at the time of his death, and was taken ill in the House of Lords, and breathed his last the next day. But the most beautiful tomb here is Chantrey’s effigy of Lady Frederica Stanhope sleeping with her babe in her arms, and an expression of deep content and peace upon her quiet face.

CHEVENING CHURCH.
CHEVENING CHURCH.

{125}

OTFORD CHURCH.
OTFORD CHURCH.

CHAPTER VIII

OTFORD TO WROTHAM

WE have followed the Pilgrims’ Way over Hampshire Downs and Surrey hills and commons, through the woods which Evelyn planted, and along the ridge where Cobbett rode. We have seen the track become overgrown with tangled shrubs and underwood, and disappear altogether in places. We have lost the road at one point in the fields, to find it again half a mile further; we have noted the regular lines of yews climbing{126} up the hill-side, and the lonely survivors which are left standing bare and desolate in the middle of the corn-fields. The part of the ancient road on which we are now entering differs in several important respects from its earlier course. From the time the Pilgrims’ Way enters Kent its track is clearly marked. Already we have followed its line through Titsey and along the downs as far as Chevening, where the path, now closed, may be traced through Lord Stanhope’s Park. A group of magnificent old yew trees arrests our attention just beyond Chevening, before the road from Sevenoaks to Bromley is crossed. Then the Way descends into the valley of the Darent, an excellent trout-stream which flows north through this chalk district to join the Thames near Dartford, and after crossing the ford over that river, regains the hills at Otford. From this place it runs along under the hill in one unbroken line all the way to Eastwell Park, between Ashford and Canterbury. It is a good bridle-way, somewhat grass-grown in places, in others enclosed by hedges, and still used by farmers for their carts. Before toll-bars were{127} abolished there was a good deal of traffic along this part of the Pilgrims’ Road, which, running as it does parallel with the turnpike road along the valley to Ashford, was much used as a means of evading the payment of toll. This cause is now removed, and excepting for an occasional hunting-man who makes use of the soft track along the hill-side, or a camp of gipsies sitting round their fire, waggoners and ploughmen are the only wayfarers to be met with along the Pilgrims’ Road. But the old name still clings to the track, and as long as the squires of Kent have any respect for the traditions of the past, any particle of historic sense remaining, they will not allow the Pilgrims’ Way to be wiped out.

In actual beauty of scenery this portion of the Way may not equal the former part. We miss the wild loveliness of Surrey commons, the rare picturesqueness of the rolling downs round Guildford and Dorking, but this Kentish land has a charm of its own, which grows upon you the longer you know it. These steep slopes and wooded hollows, these grand old church towers and quaint village streets, these homesteads with{128} their vast barns of massive timber and tall chimney-stacks overshadowed with oaks and beeches, cannot fail to delight the eyes of all who find pleasure in rural scenes. And all along our way we have that noble prospect over the wide plains of the dim blue Weald, which is seldom absent from our eyes, as we follow this narrow track up and down the rugged hill-side. In historic interest and precious memorials of the past, this part of the Pilgrims’ Way, we need hardly say, is surpassingly rich. Endless are the great names and stirring events which these scenes recall: battlefields where memorable fights were fought in days long ago, churches and lands that were granted to the Archbishops or Abbots of Canterbury before the Conquest, manor-houses which our kings and queens have honoured with their presence in the days of yore. All these things, and many more of equal interest and renown, will the traveller find as he follows the Pilgrims’ Way along the chalk hills which form the backbone of Kent.

The first resting-place which the pilgrims would find on this part of their route would be{129} the Archbishop’s manor-house at Otford. There were no less than fifteen of these episcopal residences in different parts of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, and of these, three lay along the Kentish portion of the Pilgrims’ Way. The palace at Otford possessed an especial sanctity in the eyes of wayfarers journeying to the shrine of St. Thomas, as having been a favourite residence of the martyred Archbishop himself. The manor was originally granted to the See of Canterbury in 791, by Offa, king of Mercia, who defeated Aldric, king of Kent, at Otford in 773, and conquered almost the whole province.

More than two hundred years later, Otford was the scene of another battle, in which Edmund Ironside defeated the Danes under Knut, and to this day bones are dug up in the meadow which bears the name of Danefield. From the tenth century the Archbishops had a house here, and Otford is described in the Domesday Survey as Terra Archiepi Cantuariensis. So it remained until Cranmer surrendered the palace, with many other of his possessions, to Henry VIII. The mediæval Archbishops seem to have had an{130} especial affection for Otford, and spent much of their time at this pleasant country seat. Archbishop Winchelsea entertained Edward I. in 1300, and was living here at the time of his death thirteen years later, when his remains were borne by the King’s command to Canterbury, and buried there with great state. Simon Islip enclosed the park, and Archbishop Deane repaired the walls; but the whole was rebuilt on a grander scale by Warham, who spent upwards of thirty thousand pounds upon the house, and received Henry VIII. here several times in the first years of his reign.

After Otford had become Crown property, the Archbishop’s manor-house passed into the hands of the Sydneys and Smyths, who dismantled the castle, as it was then commonly called, and allowed the walls to fall into ruin. Two massive octagonal towers of three stories, with double square-headed windows, and a fragment of a cloister, now used as farm stables, are the only portions remaining. These evidently formed part of the outer court, and are good specimens of fifteenth-century brickwork. The tower was considerably{131} higher a hundred years ago, and Hasted describes the ruins as covering nearly an acre of ground. The stones of the structure were largely used in the neighbouring buildings, and the Bull Inn contains a good deal of fine oak wainscoting, and several handsome carved mantelpieces, which originally belonged to the castle. Two heads in profile, carved in oak over one of the fireplaces, are said to represent Henry VIII. and Katherine of Aragon. A bath, or chamber, paved and lined with stone, about thirty feet long, and ten or twelve feet deep, not far from the ruins, still bears the name of Becket’s Well. Tradition ascribes the birth of the spring which supplies it to St. Thomas, who, finding no water at Otford, struck the hill-side with his staff, and at once brought forth a clear stream, which since then has never been known to fail. Another legend tells how the Saint one day, being “busie at his prayers in the garden at Otford, was much disturbed by the sweete note and melodie of a nightingale that sang in a bush beside him, and in the might of his holinesse commanded all birds of this kind to be henceforth silent,” after which{132} the nightingale was never heard at Otford. But with the decay of the palace and the departure of the Archbishops, the spell was broken; and the Protestant Lambarde, when he was at Otford, takes pleasure in recording how many nightingales he heard singing thereabouts.

THE PORCH, KEMSING CHURCH.
THE PORCH, KEMSING CHURCH.

From Otford the Pilgrims’ Way runs along the edge of the hills about half a mile above the villages of Kemsing and Wrotham, and passes close to St. Clere, a mansion built by Inigo Jones, where Mrs. Boscawen, the witty correspondent of Mrs. Delany and the friend of Johnson and Boswell, was born. Kemsing still retains its old church and well, both consecrated to the memory of the Saxon Princess, St. Edith, whose image in the churchyard was, during centuries, the object of the peasants’ devout veneration. “Some seelie bodie,” writes Lambarde, who visited these shrines in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and delights in pouring contempt on the old traditions of these country shrines, “brought a peche or two, or a bushelle of corne, to the churche after praiers made, offered it to the image of the saint. Of this offering the priest used to toll the greatest{133} portion, and then to take one handful or little more of the residue (for you must consider he woulde bee sure to gaine by the bargaine), the which, after aspersion of holy water and the mumbling of a fewe words of conjuration, he first dedicated to the image of Saint Edith, and then delivered it backe to the partie that brought it; who departed with full persuasion that if he mingled that hallowed handfull with his seede corne, it would preserve from harme and prosper in growthe the whole heape that he should sowe, were it never so great a stacke.”

WROTHAM CHURCH.
WROTHAM CHURCH.

Wrotham was the site of another of the Archbishops’ manor-houses, and rivalled Otford in antiquity, having been granted to the See of Canterbury by Athelstan in 964. Wrotham was never as favourite a residence with the Archbishops as Otford, but they stopped here frequently on their progresses through Kent, until, in the fourteenth century, Simon Islip pulled down the house to supply materials for the building of his new palace at Maidstone. A terrace and some scanty remains of the offices are the only fragments now to be seen at Wrotham, but{135} the charming situation of the village in the midst of luxuriant woods, and the beauty of the view over the Weald from Wrotham Hill, attract many visitors. The church has several features of architectural interest, including a handsome rood-screen of the fourteenth century, and a watching-chamber over the chancel, as well as a curious archway under the tower, which was probably{136} used as a passage for processions from the Palace. It contains many tombs and brasses, chiefly of the Peckham family, who held the manor of Yaldham in this parish for upwards of five hundred years. Below the church is Wrotham Place, a fine old Tudor house with a corridor and rooms of the fifteenth century, and a charming garden front bearing the date 1560. Fairlawn, the ancestral home of the Vanes, also lies in a corner of Wrotham parish, and a terrace, bordered with close-clipped yew hedges, and surrounded by sunny lawns, where peacocks spread their tails over the grass, is still pointed out as a favourite walk of that stout old regicide, Sir Harry Vane. Ightham, with its famous Mote, so perfect a picture of an old English house, is close by, within a walk of Wrotham station, but lies, unluckily, on the opposite side from the line of hills along which our path takes us.{137}

THE MOTE, IGHTHAM
THE MOTE, IGHTHAM

WROTHAM, LOOKING SOUTH.
WROTHAM, LOOKING SOUTH.

CHAPTER IX

WROTHAM TO HOLLINGBOURNE

THE Pilgrims’ Way continues its course over Wrotham Hill and along the side of the chalk downs. This part of the track is a good bridle road, with low grass banks or else hedges on either side, and commands fine views over the rich Kentish plains, the broad valley of the Medway, and the hills on the opposite shore. The river itself glitters in the sun, but as we draw nearer the beauty of the prospect is sorely marred by the ugly chimneys and dense smoke of the Snodland limestone works.{138}

THE BULL, WROTHAM.
THE BULL, WROTHAM.

The Way now runs past Pilgrims’ house, formerly the Kentish Drovers’ Inn, above the old church and village of Trottescliffe (Trosley) and the megalithic stones known as Coldrum circle, one of the best preserved cromlechs along the road. Further on a short lane leads south to Birling Place, the ancient home of the Nevills, who have owned the estate since the middle of the fifteenth century, while in a group of old farm buildings at Paddlesworth (formerly Paulsford) we find the remains of a Norman Pilgrims’{139} Chapel, with a fine Early English arch. The track now crosses a large field and enters Snodland, an old town containing many Roman remains, and an interesting church, but sadly disfigured by cement works and paper factories.

TROTTESCLIFFE.
TROTTESCLIFFE.

Here the pilgrims left the hills to descend into the valley below. Twice before, at Shalford and Dorking, they had crossed the rivers which make their way through the chalk range; now they had reached the third great break in the downs, and the broad stream of the Medway lay{141} at their feet. They might, if they pleased, go on to Rochester, three miles higher up, and join the road taken by the London pilgrims along the Watling Street to Canterbury—the route of Chaucer’s pilgrimage. But most of them, it appears, preferred to follow the hills to which they had clung so long.

FORD PLACE, NEAR WROTHAM.
FORD PLACE, NEAR WROTHAM.

The exact point where they crossed the river has been often disputed. According to the old maps it was by the ford at Cuxton, where the{142} river was shallow enough to allow of their passage. From Bunker’s Farm, immediately above Birling, a road diverges northwards to Cuxton and Rochester, and was certainly used by many of the pilgrims. At Upper Halling, on this track, we may still see the lancet windows of a pilgrims’ shrine formerly dedicated to St. Laurence, which have been built into some cottages known as Chapel houses. The Bishops of Rochester, who held this manor from Egbert’s days, had “a right fair house” at Lower Halling, on the banks of the Medway, with a vineyard which produced grapes for King Henry III.’s table. This pleasant manor-house on the river was the favourite summer residence of Bishop Hamo de Hethe, who built a new hall and chapel in the reign of Edward I., and placed his own statue on a gateway which was still standing in the eighteenth century. Another interesting house, Whorne Place, lies a little higher up, on the banks of the Medway, where the grass-grown track leading from Bunker’s Farm joins the main road to Cuxton and Rochester. This fine brick mansion formerly{143} belonged to the Levesons, and the quarterings of Sir John Leveson and his two wives are to be seen above the central porch.

THE FRIARY, AYLESFORD.
THE FRIARY, AYLESFORD.

In the thirteenth century a great number of pilgrims seem to have stopped at Maidstone, where, in 1261, Archbishop Boniface built a hospital for their reception on the banks of the Medway. The funds which supported this hospital, the Newark—New-work, Novi operis, as it was called—were diverted by Archbishop Courtenay, a hundred and forty years later, to the maintenance of his new college of All Saints, on the opposite side of the river, but a remnant of the older foundation is still preserved in the beautiful Early English Chancel of St. Peter’s Church, which was originally attached to Boniface’s hospital, and is still known as the Pilgrims’ Chapel. By the time that Archbishop Courtenay founded his college, the stream of pilgrims had greatly diminished, and the hostel which had been intended for their resting-place was rapidly sinking into a common almshouse. Maidstone, too, no doubt, lay considerably out of the pilgrims’ course, and the great majority naturally preferred{144} to cross the Medway by the ferry at Snodland. Others again might choose Aylesford, which lay a mile or two below. At this ancient town, the Eglesford of the Saxon Chronicle, there was a{145} stone bridge across the river, and a Carmelite Priory founded in 1240 by Richard de Grey, on his return from the Crusades, where the pilgrims would be sure to find shelter. But even if they did not cross the Medway at this place, where the old church stands so picturesquely on its high bank overhanging river and red roofs, the pilgrims certainly passed through the parish of Aylesford. For on the opposite banks of the ferry at Snodland the familiar line of yew trees appears again, ascending the hill by Burham church, and runs through the upper part of Aylesford parish, close to the famous dolmen of Kits Coty House. This most interesting sepulchral monument, Kêd-coit—Celtic for the Tomb in the Wood—consists of three upright blocks of sandstone about eight feet high and eight feet broad, with a covering stone of eleven feet which forms the roof, and is one of a group of similar remains which lie scattered over the hill-side and are locally known as the Countless Stones. We have here, in fact, a great cemetery of the Druids which once extended for many miles on both sides of the river. Deep pits dug out in the{146} chalk, filled with flints and covered with slabs of stone, have been discovered on Aylesford Common, and a whole avenue of stones formerly connected this burial place with the cromlechs at Addington, six miles off. Here, if the old legend be true, was fought the great battle which decided the fate of Britain, and gave England into the hands of the English. For at this place, the old chroniclers say, about the year 455, the Saxon invaders stopped on their march to the Castle of Rochester, and turning southwards met the Britons in that deadly fray, when both Kentigern and Horsa were left dead on the field of battle. Ancient military entrenchments are still visible on the hill-side near Kits Coty House, and a boulder on the top was long pointed out as the stone on which Hengist was proclaimed the first king of Kent.

About a mile from this memorable spot, in the plains at the foot of the downs, was a shrine which no pilgrim of mediæval days would leave unvisited, the Cistercian Abbey of Boxley, then generally known as the Abbatia S. Crucis de Gracias, the Abbey of the Holy Rood of Grace.{147}

AYLESFORD BRIDGE
AYLESFORD BRIDGE

KITS COTY HOUSE.
KITS COTY HOUSE.

Not only was Boxley, next to Waverley Abbey, the oldest Cistercian house founded on this side of the Channel, the filia propria of the great house of Clairvaux, but the convent church rejoiced in the possession of two of the most celebrated wonder-working relics in all England. There was the image of St. Rumbold, that infant child of a Saxon prince who proclaimed himself a Christian the moment of his birth, and after three days spent in edifying his pagan hearers,{148} departed this life. This image could only be lifted by the pure and good, and having a hidden spring, which could be worked by the hands or feet of the monks, was chiefly influenced by the amount of the coin that was paid into their hands. And there was that still greater marvel, the miraculous Rood, or winking image, a wooden crucifix which rolled its eyes and moved its lips in response to the devotees who crowded from all parts of England to see the wondrous sight. The clever mechanism of this image, said to have been invented by an English prisoner during his captivity in France, was exposed by Henry VIII.’s commissioners in 1538, who discovered “certayn ingyns of old wyer with olde roten stykkes in the back of the same,” and showed them to the people of Maidstone on market-day, after which the Rood of Grace was taken to London and solemnly broken in pieces at Paul’s Cross. The Abbey of Boxley owned vast lands, and the Abbots were frequently summoned to Parliament, and lived in great state. Among the royal guests whom they entertained was King Edward II., whose visit was made memorable by the letter which{149} he addressed from Boxley Abbey to the Aldermen of the City of London, granting them the right of electing a Lord Mayor. At one time their extravagance brought them to the verge of ruin, as we learn from a letter which Archbishop Warham addressed to Cardinal Wolsey; but at the dissolution the Commissioners could find no cause of complaint against the monks, excepting the profusion of flowers in the convent garden, which made them comment on the waste of turning “the rents of the monastery into gillyflowers{150} and roses.” The foundations of the church where the Cistercians showed off their “sotelties” may still be traced in the gardens of the house built by Sir Thomas Wyatt on the site of the abbey. Here some precious fragments of the ruins are still preserved. The chapel of St. Andrew, which stood near the great gateway, has been turned into cottages, and the noble “guesten-house,” where strangers were lodged, is now a barn. The old wall remains to show the once vast extent of the Abbey precincts. Now these grey stones are mantled with thick bushes of ivy, and a fine clump of elm trees overshadows the red-tiled roof of the ancient guest-house in the meadows, but we look in vain for poor Abbot John’s gillyflowers and roses.

LOOKING WEST FROM ABOVE BOXLEY ABBEY.
LOOKING WEST FROM ABOVE BOXLEY ABBEY.

Between Boxley Abbey and Maidstone stretches the wide common of Penenden Heath, famous from time immemorial as the place where all great county meetings were held. Here the Saxons held their “gemotes,” and here in 1076, was that memorable assembly before which Lanfranc pleaded the cause of the Church of Canterbury against Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, Earl{151} of Kent, the Conqueror’s half-brother, who had defrauded Christ Church of her rights, and laid violent hands on many of her manors and lands. Not only were the Kentish nobles and bishops summoned to try the cause, but barons and distinguished ecclesiastics, and many men “of great and good account,” from all parts of England and Normandy, were present that day. Godfrey, Bishop of Coutances, represented the King, and Agelric, the aged Bishop of Chester, “an ancient man well versed in the laws and customs of the realm,” was brought there in a chariot by the King’s express command. Three days the trial lasted, during which Lanfranc pleaded his cause so well against the rapacious Norman that the see of Canterbury recovered its former possessions, and saw its liberties firmly established.

The village and church of Boxley (Bose-leu in Domesday), so called from the box trees that grow freely along the downs, as at Box Hill, are about a mile and a half beyond the Abbey, and lie on the sloping ground at the foot of the hills, close to the Pilgrims’ Way. Old houses and timbered barns, with lofty gables and irregular{152} roofs, are grouped round the church, which is itself as picturesque an object as any, with its massive towers and curious old red-tiled Galilee porch. Next we reach Detling, a small village, prettily situated on the slope of the hills, with a church containing a rare specimen of mediæval wood-work in the shape of a carved oak reading-desk, enriched with pierced tracery of the Decorated period. We pass Thurnham, with the foundations of its Saxon castle high up on the downs, and then enter Hollingbourne. As Boxley reminds us of the box trees on the hill-side, and Thurnham of the thorn trees in the wood, so Hollingbourne owes its name to the hollies on the burn or stream which runs through the parish. William Cobbett, whose memory has followed us all the way from the Itchen valley, describes how he rode over Hollingbourne Hill on his return from Dover to the Wen, and from the summit of that down, one of the highest in this neighbourhood, looked down over the fair Kentish land, which in its richness and beauty seemed to him another Garden of Eden.{153}

COTTAGE AT BOARLEY, NEAR BOXLEY
COTTAGE AT BOARLEY, NEAR BOXLEY

CHAPTER X

HOLLINGBOURNE TO LENHAM

THE village of Hollingbourne lies at the foot of the hill, and an old inn at the corner of the Pilgrims’ Road, now called the King’s Head, was formerly known by the name of the Pilgrims’ Rest. The history of Hollingbourne is full of interest. The manor was granted to the church at Canterbury, “for the support of the monks,” by young Athelstan, the son of Æthelred II., in the year 980, and was retained by the monastery when Lanfranc divided the lands belonging to Christ Church between the priory and the see. It is described in Domesday as Terra Monachorum Archiepi, the land of the monk and the Archbishop; in later records as Manorium Monachorum et de cibo eorum, a manor of the monks and for their food. The Priors of Christ Church held{154} their courts here, and the convent records tell us that Prior William Sellyng greatly improved the Priory rooms at Hollingbourne. Their residence probably occupied the site of the present manor-house. This handsome red-brick building, rich in gables and mullions, in oak panelling and secret hiding-places, was built in Queen Elizabeth’s reign by the great Kentish family of the Culpepers, who at that time owned most of the parish. More than one fragment of the earlier house, encased in the Elizabethan building, has been brought to light, and a pointed stone archway of the thirteenth century, and an old fireplace with herring-bone brickwork, have lately been discovered. Many are the interesting traditions which belong to this delightful old manor-house. The yews in the garden are said to have been planted by Queen Elizabeth on one of her royal progresses through Kent, when she stayed at Leeds Castle, and was the guest of Sir Henry Wotton at Boughton Malherbe. According to another very old local tradition, Katherine Howard, whose mother was a Culpeper, spent some years here as a girl, and the ghost of that unhappy{155} queen is said to haunt one of the upper chambers of the house. Another room, called the Needle-Room, was occupied during the Commonwealth by the daughters of that faithful loyalist, John Lord Culpeper, Frances, Judith, and Philippa, who employed the weary years of their father’s exile in embroidering a gorgeous altar-cloth and hangings, which they presented to the parish church on the happy day when the king came back to enjoy his own again. The tapestries, worked by the same deft fingers, which once adorned the chambers of the manor-house, are gone, and the hangings of the reading-desk in the church have been cut up into a frontal, but the altar-cloth remains absolutely intact, and is one of the finest pieces of embroidery of the kind in England. Both design and colouring are of the highest beauty. On a ground of violet velvet, bordered with a frieze of cherub heads, we see the twelve mystic fruits of the Tree of Life—the grape, orange, cherry, apple, plum, pear, mulberry, acorn, peach, medlar, quince, and pomegranate. The richest hues of rose and green are delicately blended together, and their effect{157} is heightened by the gold thread in which the shading is worked. The lapse of two centuries and a half has not dimmed the brightness of their colours, which are as fresh as if the work had been finished yesterday. A needle which had been left in a corner of the altar-cloth all those long years ago was still to be seen sticking in the velvet early in the last century, but has now disappeared.

HOLLINGBOURNE HOUSE.
HOLLINGBOURNE HOUSE.

This goodly manor-house was only one of several seats belonging to the Culpepers in this neighbourhood. They had a mansion at Greenway Court, which was burnt down in the last century, and another of imposing dimensions where Grove Court now stands. In the seventeenth century the Lords Culpeper also owned Leeds Castle, that noble moated house, a mile to the south, which was once a royal park, and is still one of the finest places in Kent. But the second Lord Culpeper died without a male heir in 1688, and this famous house passed by marriage into the Fairfax family. The Hollingbourne branch of the Culpepers died out in the course of the last century, and at the present time no member{158} of this illustrious family is known to exist in England, although persons bearing this ancient name are still to be found in America. The church at Hollingbourne contains a whole series of Culpeper monuments. The most remarkable is the white marble altar-tomb, which bears the recumbent effigy of Elizabeth Lady Culpeper, who died in 1638, and is described in the inscription on her monument as Optima Fœmina, Optima Conjux, et Optima Mater. This lady was the heiress of the Cheney family, whose arms, the ox’s hide and horns, appear on the shield at the foot of the tomb, and are repeated in the stained glass of the chapel window. Tradition says that Sir John Cheney had his helmet struck off, when he fought by the victor’s side on Bosworth Field, and fixed a bull’s horns on his head in its place. Afterwards Henry VII. gave him this crest, when he made him a Baron and a Knight of the Garter, in reward for his valour on that hard-fought field. A monument on the north wall of the chancel records the memory of John Lord Culpeper, who was successively Chancellor of the Exchequer, Master of the Rolls, and Privy Councillor to{159} Charles I. and Charles II. “For equal fidelity to the king and kingdome,” says the epitaph on his tomb, “he was most exemplary.” He followed the last-named king into exile and remained there until the Restoration, when “with him he returned tryumphant into England on the 29th of May, 1660,” only to die six weeks afterwards, “to the irreparable losse of his family.” Another descendant of the Culpepers is buried under the altar in this church, Dame Grace Gethin, a great grand-daughter of Sir Thomas Culpeper, and wife of Sir Richard Gethin, of Gethinge Grott, in Ireland, whose learning and virtues were so renowned that monuments were erected in her honour both at Bath and in Westminster Abbey. This youthful prodigy, who died at the age of twenty-one, is here represented kneeling between two angels, and holding in her hand the commonplace book which she filled with extracts from her favourite authors, and which was afterwards published under the title of “Reliquiæ Gethinianæ.” Her piety was as great as her personal charms, and the inscription on her monument records how, “being adorned with all the Graces and{160} Perfections of mind and body, crowned them all with exemplary Patience and Humility, and having the day before her death most devoutly received the Holy Communion, which she said she would not have omitted for Ten Thousand Worlds, she was vouchsafed in a miraculous manner an immediate prospect of her future Blisse, for the space of two hours, to the astonishment of all about her, and being, like St. Paul, in an unexpressible Transport of joy, thereby fully evincing her foresight of the Heavenly Glory, in unconceivable Raptures triumphing over Death, and continuing sensible to the last, she resigned her pious soul to God, and victoriously entered into rest, Oct. 11th, anno ætatis 21, D’ni: 1697. Her dear and affectionate Mother, whom God in mercy supported by seeing her glorious end, erected this monument, she being her last surviving issue.”

Soon after leaving Hollingbourne, the Pilgrims’ Way enters the grounds of Stede Hill, and passes through the beech-woods that spread down the grassy slopes to the village and church of Harrietsham—Heriard’s Home in Domesday—in the{161} valley below. An altar-tomb, to the memory of Sir William Stede, who died in 1574, and several other monuments to members of the same family, may be seen in the south chapel of the church, a fine building of Early English and Perpendicular work, with a good rood-screen, standing in an open space at the foot of the Stede Hill grounds. The rectory of Harrietsham was formerly attached to the neighbouring Priory of Leeds, but was granted by Henry VI. to Archbishop Chichele’s newly founded College of All Souls, Oxford, which still retains the patronage of this living. The manor was one of many in this neighbourhood given to Odo of Bayeux after the battle of Hastings, and afterwards formed part of the vast estates owned by Juliana de Leyborne, called the Infanta of Kent, who was married three times, but died without children, leaving her lands to become crown property.

A mile farther the Pilgrims’ Way enters the town of Lenham. This parish contains both the sources of the river Len—the Aqua lena of the Romans—which flows through Harrietsham and by Leeds Castle into the Medway, and that of the{162} Stour, which runs in the opposite direction towards Canterbury. Lenham has held a charter, and enjoyed the privileges of a town from mediæval times. The bright little market-square, full of old houses with massive oak beams, and quaint corners jutting out in all directions, hardly agrees with Hasted’s description of Lenham as a dull, unfrequented place, where nothing thrives in the barren soil, and the inhabitants, when asked by travellers if this is Lenham, invariably reply, “Ah, sir, poor Lenham!” The picturesqueness of its buildings is undeniable, and its traditions are of the highest antiquity. The manor of Lenham was granted to the Abbey of St. Augustine at Canterbury by Cenulf, king of Mercia, more than a thousand years ago, and in the twelfth century the church was appropriated to the Refectory of St. Augustine; that is to say, the rectorial tithes were made to supply the monks’ dinners. Some fragments of the original Norman church still exist, but the greater part of the present structure, the arcade of bays, the fine traceried windows of the aisle, and most of the chancel, belong to the Decorated period, and were rebuilt after the great{163} fire in 1297, when not only the church, but the Abbot’s barns and farm buildings were burnt to the ground by an incendiary. So great was the sensation produced by this act of wanton mischief, that Archbishop Winchelsea himself came to Lenham to see the ravages wrought by the fire, and fulminated a severe excommunication against the perpetrators of the wicked deed. The sixteen oak stalls for the monks, and an arched stone sedilia, of the fourteenth century, which served the Abbot for his throne when he visited his Lenham estates, are still to be seen in the chancel. Here, too, is a sepulchral effigy let into the north wall in a curious sideways position, representing a priest in his robes, supposed to be that of Thomas de Apulderfelde, who lived at Lenham in the reign of Edward II., and died in 1327. Both the western tower and the north chancel, dedicated to St. Edmund, and containing tombs of successive lords of East Lenham manor, are Perpendicular in style, and belong to the fourteenth or early part of the fifteenth century. Fragments of the fourteenth-century paintings, with which the walls of the whole church were once adorned,{165} may still be distinguished in places. Among them are the figures of a bishop, probably St. Augustine, and of St. Michael weighing souls, with devils trying to turn the balance in their favour, on one side, and on the other the crowned Virgin throwing her rosary into the scale which holds the souls of the just. The church was dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, and her image formerly occupied the niche in the timbered porch which, with the old lych-gate, are such fine specimens of fifteenth-century wood-work. The beautiful Jacobean pulpit was given by Anthony Honywood in 1622, and is charmingly carved with festoons of grapes and vine-leaves. The Honywoods also built the almshouses, with carved bargeboards and door-posts, in the street at Lenham, and an inscription in the chancel floor records the memory of that long-lived Dame, Mary Honywood, who before her death in 1620 saw no less than three hundred and sixty-seven of her descendants!

MARKET-PLACE, LENHAM.
MARKET-PLACE, LENHAM.

Close to the church are the great tithe barns, built after the fire in the fourteenth century by the Abbots of St. Augustine. The largest{166} measures 157 feet long by 40 feet wide, and, saving the low stone walls, is built entirely of oak from the forests of the Weald. The enormous timbers are as sound and strong to-day as they were six hundred years ago, and for solidity of material and beauty of construction, this Kentish barn deserves to rank among the grandest architectural works of the age. The monks are gone, and the proud Abbey itself has long been laid in ruins, but these buildings give us some idea of the wealth and resources of the great community who were the lords of Lenham during so many centuries. They could afford to lend a kindly ear to the prayer of the poor vicar when he humbly showed the poverty with which he had to contend, and the load of the burden that he had to bear. The Abbot, we are glad to learn, granted his request, and agreed to give him a roof over his head and to allow his two cows to feed with the monks’ own herds in the pastures at Lenham, during the months between the feast of St. Philip and St. James and Michaelmas.{167}

IN CHARING VILLAGE.
IN CHARING VILLAGE.