EARLY ENGLISH DOORWAY, STONE CHURCH.
It is not possible to ride round Stone Church to Greenhithe. The lane leading to it must be retraced, and the Dover road followed until turnings right and left appear. To the left lies the little port of Greenhithe, and on the right the road leads up again to our route for Rochester.
INTERIOR, STONE CHURCH.
Hasting from the scarred, chalky hillsides and the industries of Stone and Greenhithe, one appreciates more fully the quiet of this fine road; and coming in two miles to Springhead, the Saturday or Sunday cyclist will find that there are others equally appreciative, for the watercress beds and the picnic inns and tea-gardens of Springhead have been famous in all Cockaigne during at least the last seventy years, and the watercresses have by no means lost their freshness nor the place its charm in that space of time. This week-end Arcadia, where the succulent prawn, the cooling cress, and the poetic periwinkle are partaken of in vast quantities, is still in great esteem. The manners and customs of its clients are frank, if unrefined, and their appetites robust, even though their methods be not particularly nice. To see ’Arriet extracting periwinkles from their shells with a hairpin is a lesson in resourcefulness not a little trying.
It is a long climb up to the village of Shinglewell, which rejoices in having an alias; for on all maps you will find the incertitude of cartographers as to what it really should be called proved by the legend “Shinglewell, or Ifield.” Still uphill, we come to a turning that will take us off to the right into Cobham village; the retreat of Tracy Tupman and his wounded love, where, in the “clean and commodious alehouse,” he was discovered by Mr. Pickwick, discussing with a great appetite and a mournful air a not very sentimental meal composed of “roast fowl, bacon, ale, and et ceteras.”
The Leather Bottle is the sign of the inn, and it is to-day, perhaps, the best known among Dickens landmarks. It is still the old-fashioned country inn it was when the great novelist knew and described it, but filled now with Dickens’ relics of every kind. A painted sign hangs out from the front proclaiming this to be “Dickens’ Old Pickwick Leather Bottle,” with a picture of that eminent personage in his “shorts” and gaiters in the inevitable attitude of declamation. In the low-ceiled parlour are many prints and portraits having reference to Dickens and his works. An old “grandfather” clock stands in one corner and a stuffed trout in his glass case (an object without which no country inn is completely furnished) occupies a place of honour.