XXII
The road to Hastings, or to Rye, was the beneficiary of a bequest left in 1526 by James Wilford, a successor of those “pious benefactors” who from the earliest times, for the good of their souls less than for love of their kind, had been wont to repair highways, build bridges and causeways, and perform the like services, either by direct gifts or through the intermediary of the Church.
Of the practical piety of James Wilford I think there can be little doubt. In the times when he lived, Reformation was in the air. The religious houses were moribund, and had Henry the Eighth not disestablished and suppressed them, another would have done so. People rather scoffed at the idea of purchasing salvation by bequests, just as you in modern times insure against fire. Wilford, therefore, in that he does not appear to have left his money with any ulterior object of saving his soul, was really more pious than he knew, and perhaps saved it the more certainly. Let us trust he is enjoying the full credit of his good deed.
This public benefactor, a “rippier” of Rye, and said to have been an alderman of London, in his will of 1526 stated that he had actually made the road from River Hill to Northiam church, a length of some twenty-six miles; and for the perpetual repair of the ruinous parts he left an annuity of £7, charged upon the “Saracen’s Head,” Friday Street, Cheapside, belonging to the Merchant Taylors’ Company.
There had been sufficient reasons in his lifetime for him to make or amend this road; for by the term “rippier” a fish-carrier was meant, and James Wilford would appear to constantly have travelled it in his business of supplying London with fish, carried on horseback in panniers. That it should have been possible to convey fish this distance in the early part of the sixteenth century so expeditiously that it arrived in good condition is a somewhat striking testimony to the enterprise of an age commonly thought to have been ignorant of speedy communications.
The Merchant Taylors were by the terms of this will to pay the £7 annually to the executors and relatives bearing the name of Wilford, and after their death were to make payment to the vicar and churchwardens of Rye. In the event of those authorities neglecting their duty of applying the money for the benefit of the road, the annuity was to be paid to the vicar and churchwardens of Northiam; and, should they default, was then to devolve upon Newenden.
These cautious provisions seem to have been prophetic, for Rye did actually at some uncertain time lose the money, which was then received by Northiam until Midsummer, 1799, when, from some dereliction of duty, it passed, as directed, to Newenden. Disputes then appear to have arisen, for in 1804 the Merchant Taylors, not quite sure of their position, refused any longer to pay the amount until a legal decision was arrived at. The whole matter then remained in abeyance, as probably being too small a sum to worry about, until 1819. By that time the twenty years’ accumulation was worth having, and the inhabitants of Rye, Northiam, and Newenden accordingly joined forces and petitioned the Merchant Taylors, praying them to disburse the money to Rye, which was done, the vicar and churchwardens of that town in turn handing it over to the commissioners of the turnpike road from Flimwell to Rye. The sum of £140 was then paid over, from which the Land Tax authorities sweated £28, twenty years’ land-tax, at 28s. a year.
Flimwell is the point where the road to Rye branches from the Hastings Road. Nineteen and a half miles of road, therefore, appear by this decision to have been cut off from these small mercies.
The trifling sum now trickles into the revenue of the Kent County Council.
River Hill was once—in the days of inefficient brake-power—a terror to cyclists. A terror with reason, for it is three-quarters of a mile long, and not straight; and it has notoriously been the scene of many accidents at the two sharp turns in its course—one left and one right. A joint C.T.C. and N.C.U. danger-board at the beginning is supplemented by the notice that it is unrideable without a brake; but that is as may be. When the first chapter of cycling was being enacted, an early wheelman rode it, quite inadvertently, and lived to tell the tale, in picturesque fashion.
In the ancient days of cycling, when it had not long ceased to he “velocipeding” and was still in the intermediate stage of “bicycling,” this greatly daring person decided to ride from Greenwich to Burwash—some fifty miles—on what was then, with the most exquisite appropriateness, called a “bone-shaker.” It was so unusual and adventurous a thing to do that he wrote an account of it, and it duly appears in the records of that time. He thought how splendid a thing it would be to run hundreds of miles about the country at “a speed of from ten to fourteen miles an hour,” as in the advertisements, and so purchased what he thought to be a very camelopard of a machine, with 45-in. wheels.
In two days he had so mastered this fearsome contrivance that he decided to start, and did so, in the evening. He had not gone more than a mile or two when he met a butcher standing in the middle of the road, who continued to stand there until he was run into, when both were upset. The bicyclist was pitched over the handles and cut his knee, and the butcher abused him until the cyclist—I mean the bicyclist—showed fight, when he made off.
By the time this early wheelman had reached Bromley he was almost exhausted, and realised that he, at any rate, was not a fourteen-mile-an-hour rider. There was also, he discovered, an undue proportion of hills to be climbed—a discovery still being re-discovered daily by thousands of his descendants in straddling two wheels.
RIVER HILL AND THE KENTISH WEALD
At Bromley he rested and refreshed; and again, at 9 p.m. at Sevenoaks, where his exertions had given him such an appetite that, when he had finished discussing the cold beef, he dared not look at the waiter. At River Hill—even in these days to be descended with extra caution—the rough road broke his primitive brake, and then at last—oh, happiness!—he found himself going fourteen miles an hour—and a bit over. There was no stopping, and the only thing to be done was to keep in the middle of the road, continually shouting, and in the hope nothing was in the way. Not even nowadays would a cyclist care to descend River Hill in this manner, in the dark, brakeless; but this adventurous one found the level, and, passing through Tunbridge Wells, at last reached his destination with only an incidental attack upon him by a foxhound on the way.
The view from River Hill is delightful, ranging across the wooded valley of the Medway to the heights where Tunbridge Wells is situated. So wooded is it that even Tonbridge itself, near at hand, is invisible, and the little village of Hildenborough—with scarcely more houses to it than there are letters in its name—might be non-existent.
A green, smiling woodland vale: just that. Not a profound, romantic depth, but a widespread, all-embracing view of meadows, corn-fields, parks, and hop-gardens: suave, well-ordered, appealing even more to the farmer than to the landscape-painter. Such is the Weald of Kent. Remote from the vulgar herd, who—
“Gawblimee!”
“What was that? Hark! there it is again.”
“’Strewth! ’Fyaint leff me blooming pipe beyine.”
“Leavyer bloomined beyine nex’ time, fatted.”
“Garn, fatted yer bloomin’ self.”
Hop-pickers, tramping and quarrelling their way down to the Kentish hop-gardens. And not always quarrelling, for their moods are even as those of an April day, wherein sunshine and clouds are for ever alternating. Listen to them as they go “piping down the valley wild, singing songs of pleasant glee”:
Skoylork, skoylork, upin ther skoy so oi,
If ermong ther aingils muvver you should see,
Awsk ‘er if she’ll come dahn agine
To pussy, daddy, an’ me.
Here are your true sentimentalists.
At the foot of the hill lies Hildenborough, a tiny hamlet with a modern church, until comparatively recent years figuring merely as Hilden, or Hilden Green. The meaning of “Hilden” is obvious here. It is simply descriptive of the situation of the place: in the dene, or valley, beneath River Hill.
Borough, as commonly understood, is a ridiculous misnomer in this place, but it appears to have been brought into use as some way of indicating the existence here of a manor separate from, and independent of, Tonbridge, whose suburban houses now begin to mingle with it.