One ramble of two or three hours to be suggested is by a chain of old-world villages, such as often surprise one in this populous county, as do quaint, tumbledown cottages here and there preserved like flies in the amber of a spick-and-span suburb. But how long will these hamlets keep their rusticity, now that they are threaded by the Metropolitan branch to Uxbridge, not to speak of the new Great Central and Great Western joint line to Wycombe? Before the foul breath of London has blighted them, let my client, by one of two or three ways, make for Eastcote, a most rustic straggling of cottages a mile or two south-west from Pinner. When he has got to the end of this village on the road to Ruislip, a bridge on the right shows him where to take a field-path along a brook, then under the edge of the large Park Wood, in which is set Ruislip Lake, another of those canal reservoirs that make such a fine show in Middlesex. It lies to the west side of the wood, through which a way to it might be found from Pinner Green or from the “Ship” of Eastcote.
The village of Ruislip stands to the south of Park Wood, where the Church shows its flint tower set on a rise among fat farms, beside the course of the brook we have followed from Eastcote. This low height marks a watershed, for the brook wanders on by Ickenham and Hillingdon to the Colne, whereas the streams on the other side unite to make the Crane. Ruislip Church is dedicated to St. Martin, as may be guessed from a niched figure on the west front representing that charitable soldier in the act of dividing his cloak; and from its size one may understand how it was no ordinary parish church, but connected with a monastic community, whose land here passed into the hands of a Cambridge college. It ranks among the finest village churches in the county, the parish itself being larger and more populous than appears from the picturesque knot of houses clustered about this central point. The churchyard commands a pleasant prospect over swells of wood and meadow, that fall to duller aspects, cut off by the Metropolitan branch passing to the south of the village.
By a passage beside the picturesque old “Swan,” opposite the Church, there is a way across Ruislip Park, on whose privacy the builder has set seals of doom. This leads into the road for Ickenham, about a mile off, beyond the Great Western Railway station for both villages, each of them having an adjacent “halt” of the Metropolitan line, that begins to sow suburban villas on the fields it has ploughed up, where as yet real cottages bear their crop of ruddy cheeks and hobnailed boots. Ickenham seems a still quieter and quainter hamlet than Ruislip; and its old Church’s shingled spire, set among time-weathered tombs, makes a better match with the surroundings than does the baronial pump by the pond opposite. This, like a true country village, lies under the squirely shadow of Swakeleys, the best-preserved seventeenth-century manor-hall left in Middlesex, if Holland House be put out of account. It was built by a city father shortly before the Civil War, soon after which, when in the hands of another Lord Mayor, it came to be visited with due admiration by Mr. Pepys, who saw there one odd sight, the body of a black boy which his master had dried to keep in a box. The only fault the garrulous diarist had to find with the place was as “not very modern in the garden nor house, but the most uniform in all that ever I saw.”
Swakeleys may be brought to sight by taking a footpath opposite the parsonage, beyond Ickenham Church, which leads into the park. After crossing several stiles, one can follow the right branch of the path into the drive, passing along the course of a stream that here forms an artificial sheet of water, across which the mansion shows its mellowed front. On coming out of the park, one finds a rising footway on the left, marked “Uxbridge,” which in a mile or so leads to the east end of the town by a road coming over the high ground of Uxbridge Common; or Belmont Road, diverging on the right, would emerge near the west end, passing the Metropolitan Station. Instead of making for Uxbridge from the gate above mentioned, one might turn back by a track through Swakeley Park, giving an excellent view of the mansion from the south-west, well seen also, when the leaves are off, from the lodge on the road between Ickenham and Uxbridge, into which this path leads. A branch of the same road takes one through the Hillingdon Parks to the Uxbridge tram-line, struck a mile or so short of the town, at what is the most Arcadian reach of this rather useful than ornamental highway.
Ruislip and Ickenham may also be gained from Northwood, the next station on the Metropolitan main line, three miles beyond Pinner, where London has again sown a thicket of suburban avenues among patches of wild wood and banks of sand. By the golf-links, to the left of the high-road, a path leads past Ruislip Lake and its woods to an outlying hamlet visited by modest tea-feasters, from which it is a short mile to Ruislip Church; or just beyond Northwood Church, further on, one can take a road to Ickenham or Uxbridge, passing over Duck’s Hill, through reaches of wood, then almost touching the lake at the hamlet above mentioned, where, by its “Six Bells,” goes off to the right a path for Harefield. On old maps one observes how large a stretch of this leafy ground is Ruislip Common, and it may be as well not to ask how so much of it came to be enclosed as game preserves and such-like.