Cycle Rides Round London

by Charles G. Harper

The two miles between Erith and Crayford need detain no one. Half the distance is an ascent, and the rest goes steeply down to the valley of the Cray, where Crayford, the first of the series of villages whose names derive from that little stream, is situated. With all the good-will in the world it is difficult, if not impossible, to say anything in favour of Crayford, which appears to afford congenial harbourage to all the tramps who pervade that peculiarly tramp-infested highway, the Dover road. “A townlet of slums” sums up the place. But note the long rhyming epitaph to Peter Isnell, parish clerk, on the south side of the hilltop church—

“The life of this clerk was just threescore and ten,
Nearly half of which time he had sung out ‘Amen!’
In his youth he was married, like other young men,
But his wife died one day, so he chanted ‘Amen!’”

and so forth.

ON THE THAMES, NEAR ERITH.

The first turning out of the dusty high road to the right, and then to the left, for Bexley (not Bexley Heath, which is quite another and a very squalid place) leads to a pleasant road following the river. From it, on the left hand, within a mile, a glimpse is gained of Hall Place, a beautiful old Tudor mansion built in chequers of stone and flint. An excellent view of it may be had by dismounting and looking through the wrought-iron entrance gates. Then comes the long street of Bexley and its curious spire, and a brick bridge by which we cross the Cray, turning sharply to the left, and soon afterwards as sharply to the right. Very pretty is the river scenery just by Bexley Bridge; millhouse and weir and tall clustered trees making a rare picture. North Cray, the next village of The Crays, as the group is locally known, is one mile ahead. Before entering it notice the long avenue on the left leading to Mount Mascal, and then the lengthy, low white house on the right at the beginning of the village. This is the house where Lord Castlereagh committed suicide in 1822. At the interval of another mile is Foot’s Cray, where the road from Farningham to Sidcup, Eltham, and London crosses our route at right angles. The village chiefly lies at the side, along the London road, and the unpretending old church at the back.

A short interval of country road, and then the outlying houses of St. Paul’s Cray, which, with the adjoining town of St. Mary Cray, forms one long street for the length of over a mile and a half, or, including Orpington, which practically joins on, of more than two miles and a half. They make paper on a large scale at St. Paul’s and St. Mary Cray, and the mills are very prominent objects. Much too prominent at St. Mary Cray is a hideous Congregational temple with a verdigris-coloured dome, and just as prominent and as ugly is the railway viaduct that straddles at a great height over the absurdly narrow street.