The pilgrims of old days seldom took more trouble than they could help, and their way lay below, near the foot of the Downs, where, after Chilworth, Albury is the next village in the Tillingbourne valley. There is much to be said, and something to be seen, at this old bury on the heath, to the south of which is the site of an ancient camp occupied by the Romans. The Way, after running along the north of a wooded swell in the valley, on the other side of which lies the village, enters Albury Park at an ornate pinnacled fane popularly known as the Irvingite Cathedral. For Albury was the cradle of the sect known to itself as the Catholic Apostolic Church, of which the eloquent enthusiast Edward Irving was not the only or the chief begetter. That distinction rather belonged to Henry Drummond, banker, squire, and Tory M.P., a curious amalgam of business ability and fanatical fancies. At his Albury mansion he was in the way of gathering like-minded friends for study of the Scriptures, and among them, by much brooding over the prophecies, was hatched the new communion that claimed to be a return to gifts and hopes of the Primitive Church. The parson of Albury in those days was the Rev. Hugh McNeile, afterwards well known at Liverpool as a champion of sound Evangelical teaching, who sympathised with the early efforts of the movement, but withdrew from it when it began to take shape apart from the Church as by law established; and poor Irving was deposed by his own Presbyterian Church, while he fell into some suspicion even among his brother sectaries. Through the marriage of his daughter, Drummond came to be represented by the Duke of Northumberland, a family that inherited his part as patron of the body, gathering humbler adherents in a neighbourhood where Cobbett had found fault with the number of its “meeting-houses” and the proportion of its people gone crazy through religion. The elaborate services of the “Cathedral” are said to be still well attended. The parish church, near the mansion, was turned into a mortuary chapel and mausoleum by Mr. Drummond, who built a new one on a site more convenient for the village, itself mainly transplanted by him to a site more aloof from his house. Through the groves of the park, past the house, with its famous yew hedge, terrace, and the gardens, originally laid out by John Evelyn, ran the Pilgrims’ track, here losing its common character as a lonely hillside lane.
Another notable resident of Albury was Martin Tupper, that once widely-read proverbial philosopher whose fame enacted the tragi-comedy of the rocket and the stick. His name hardly got fair-play in a generation when to sneer at it became a commonplace with every criticaster, a kind of gentry apt to follow Mr. Pickwick’s advice as to shouting with the crowd. But to this much-bleating rhymester, thus shorn of his glory, the wind of criticism was tempered by most robust self-applause, as amusingly appears in his literary memoirs, illustrated by rills of the torrents of prose and verse flowing from a truly fountain pen. Some of his verses, indeed, as John Bull’s address to Jonathan, deserve not to be forgotten; and, while he had no patience with his neighbours the Irvingites, he is always warmly on the side of Protestantism, patriotism, and heart-of-oak sentiments. He claims, with reason, to have been a precursor of the volunteer movement, not only by his dithyrambic tootlings but by the practical foundation of an Albury rifle club. He especially “fancied himself” as trumpeter of this Holmesdale Valley and its history, as set forth in his romance, Stephen Langton; and he was the vates sacer of Albury’s “Silent Pool,” as he christened the Sherbourne Pond of rustics, haunted by the spirit of a bathing maiden to whom King John played Actæon, with the effect of drowning that scared Diana.
This deep chalk basin of crystal water prettily set in a wooded dingle is now one of the lions of the place, yet so secluded that many seekers pass it by unseen. It lies at the foot of the Downs beside Sherbourne Farm, to the left of the road coming down from Newlands Corner and forking on the right for the Irvingite Church; just short of the fork a lane turns left to a cottage where the key of the enclosure may be had. It has been lately stated in the newspapers that the Silent Pool was being sucked dry by water-works on the Downs; but since then I found it deep and clear and cool as ever. Can it be that all we read in newspapers is not always true?
Past the Silent Pool, the road leads between the Downs and Albury Park to beautiful Shere, with its lime-tree avenue, its quaint cottages, whose gables, brackets, and barge-boards make such tempting “bits” for the sketcher, its good old “White Horse” inn, and its picturesque church on the bank of the Tillingbourne, which offers here the unusual village luxury of a small swimming-bath. This village is associated with memories of the county historian, Bray, and of Grote, the more famous historian of Greece. Its charming environs have been so attractive to artists that a “Shere School” is noted among them. There is a house hereabouts that made the home of three R.A.’s successively. Vicat Cole was one of the early discoverers, also Mr. B. W. Leader, who still lives at Burrows’ Cross a little way towards the sand ridge.
A short mile on from Shere is Gomshall, whose “Black Horse” stands close to the station for both villages, as for the more distant charms of Abinger and Holmbury St. Mary. From the Tillingbourne, here harnessed to industry, also giving a subject to art in an often-painted mill, the Pilgrims’ Way now mounted on to the Downs, looking across to the park of Wotton and the sloping woodlands of Leith Hill. I have usually left the reader to imagine for himself the views from these heights; but here I may quote the description by that expert Mr. Baddeley, which figures in more than one guide-book.