Cycle Rides Round London

by Charles G. Harper

It was this rector who had an incorrigible habit of transposing portions of words; quite unconsciously, of course, but with the most grotesquely laughable results. Local gossip still keenly relishes the recollection of his announcing a hymn, “Kinkering congs their titles take,” and a little later, in his sermon, saying, “My friends, we all of us have our little bits of cuppiness.” It was presumed from the context of his discourse that he really meant “cups of bitterness.” The story goes that this habit became contagious, and that a lady, finding a stranger in her pew, exclaimed, “Excuse me, but you’re occupewing my pie!”

In those days there was no church organ but only a barrel instrument with twenty mechanical tunes, not so tuneful as they might have been had some of the cogs not been missing off the wheels. Being missing, they gave rather a weird twist to the “Old Hundredth” and the others that made up the repertoire.

The interior of the building was then greatly neglected, and the lighting was accomplished by the aid of candles stuck on pieces of tin nailed to the ends of the pews. The church in those days possessed no font, and when the question of providing one came up at a vestry meeting, it was resolved that one be not ordered, “because there are never any christenings for the parishioners of Perivale, nor likely to be any.” In after years, on renovating the church, the ancient font was discovered among some rubbish. It is inscribed, “The gift of Simon Coston, gent., 1665.”

The pretty little church is now well cared for. Notice the very, very ancient and massive timbering of the belfry, also weather-boarded outside, and looking a very curiously un-ecclesiastical object across the meadows. The rectory is also a timber-framed structure of the fifteenth century.

Having thus recounted the short and simple annals of little Perivale, we will take the first road to the left after passing the church, and, crossing the Brent, turn to the right. This is a remarkably pretty road, with the river on one side, fringed with rushes and pollard willows. Little humpbacked bridges carry the road over it, and the wayside is marked with white posts, graduated up to seven and nine feet, to mark the depth of the floods prevalent here in winter. Now come the beginnings of Greenford—properly called “Greenford Magna,” to distinguish it from “Parva” we have just left, down the road. A sharp rise leads past a left-hand turning, immediately followed by one on the right, where Greenford village will be found scattered sparsely along the sides of a steep descent. At the foot of this, just before coming to the rustic little weather-boarded church, there is a lane on the left for Northolt, a mile and a quarter distant. Northolt, despite its somewhat severely sounding name (which, however, merely signifies “north wood,” just as Southall, originally “Southholt,” stands for a woodland once standing to the south), is one of the prettiest and most delightful villages in Middlesex; if it is, indeed, large enough to be called a village at all. Broad selvedges of common line the road where its scattered cottages do not form a street, and the exquisitely weathered and stained and patched little church stands away on a grassy bank, overlooking the scene from amidst a cluster of windy elms. The church is just in the picturesque condition the artist loves and the restorer wants to sweep and garnish into newness.

PINNER.

A long road of three and a half miles runs straight across from Northolt to Eastcote, undulating all the way. Reaching the cross-roads, turn right for Eastcote, which is a hamlet of Ruislip. Here are ups and downs along a tree-shaded hamlet of a few park-like residences and pretty cottages, the road bordered by the lazy waters of the Colne, lying listless, like a moat. Observe, on the right, the queer, old-fashioned, timber-framed cottage that serves the hamlet for a post-office.

Bear to the right at the fork in the road for Pinner, entered by a cluster of cottages and “villas,” built since the opening of the Metropolitan Extension to Harrow and Aylesbury a few years ago. Pinner is a large village in process of being spoiled by its railway facilities. A very broad street, lined with old-fashioned (and some new-fashioned) houses, leads up to the imposing church, which has a singular tall cross on the summit of its tower. Note on the way the “Queen’s Head Inn,” its sign a contemporary (and very bad) portrait of Queen Anne, dated 1705.