Cycle Rides Round London

by Charles G. Harper

THE LITTLE CHURCH OF WOTTON.

At Abinger Hammer and Gomshall, the trickling streams that have followed the valley are dammed up into “hammer ponds,” where, “once upon a time,” iron was forged. But it is nearly two hundred years since the last furnace was blown out and the final hammer rang upon the ultimate anvil at Abinger. The days when iron-ore was dug and smelted in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey are long forgot.

Shiere succeeds to Gomshall in half a mile. Shiere and picturesqueness are synonymous and interchangeable terms; a place composed of a narrow street with queer cottages all tumbled together, as though for warmth, or as if land were scarce and dear.

Now, along a winding but excellent road, we come to Albury; the famous “Silent Pool” lying a little way off to the right, on a fork of the road leading to Newlands Corner. It was the egregious Martin Tupper who made the “Silent Pool” famous, but, truth to tell, it is but a pretty lakelet, whose real name was Sherbourne Pond. Its remarkably clear waters swarm with trout, whose extraordinary tameness is perhaps due to the many visitors, who feed them for the pleasure of seeing them spring out of the water for their food.

Coming to Albury, we enter upon the loveliest section of the whole journey. The long, scattered village, with picturesque old houses and modern cottages, built with rare good taste, leads to Albury Park, the Surrey home of the Duke of Northumberland. The partly ruined church in the park, with the modern Irvingite transept and the curiously domed roof of the central tower, is worth seeing and sketching, as also is the romantically situated St. Martha’s Chapel, crowning one of the most conspicuous hills of the North Downs.

“St. Martha’s” Chapel may really have been “sancti martyris” originally, and dedicated to the “holy blisful martyr,” St. Thomas of Canterbury. It was built in the late twelfth century and was a chapel on the old Pilgrims’ Way. The corruption of the name into “St. Martha’s” can readily be understood.

POSTFORD PONDS.

On the way to Chilworth, Postford Ponds skirt the roadside and form a pretty grouping of water, woodlands, and old farmhouses, with St. Martha’s in the distance. Chilworth, whose not very accessible parish church St. Martha’s Chapel is, lies on the little stream that forms this chain of ponds. But hear what old Cobbett says: “This valley, which seems to have been created by a bountiful Providence as one of the choicest retreats of man, which seems formed for a scene of innocence and happiness, has been, by ungrateful man, so perverted as to make it instrumental in effecting two of the most damnable of purposes; in carrying into execution two of the most damnable inventions that ever sprang from the mind of man under the influence of the Devil! namely, the making of gunpowder and of banknotes.” The banknotes are no longer made at Chilworth, but the manufacture of “villainous saltpetre” still proceeds.