Cycle Rides Round London

by Charles G. Harper

But it will not do to linger at Waltham Abbey, however great the inclination may be to do so. So we retrace our course, and passing the station again, come to Waltham Cross, where the Eleanor Cross, tinkered by restorers, but still lovely, stands in midst of the road beside the old “Four Swans,” whose sign, straddling across the highway, bears the wooden effigies of those fowls. Turning to the right at this point, and wheeling through the village of Waltham Cross, a railway bridge spans the road, and the supremely ugly new station of “Theobalds Grove” appears. Just beyond this, on the left-hand side, is a turning which, leading off as it does through gates, looks like a private road into a park. A park, indeed, it is—that of Theobalds—but there is a right of way. And it is a most beautiful road, or rather lane, with the best of gravel surface to cycle along, and the most gracious of foliage overhead. Half a mile of this, and then comes the most delightful of surprises; nothing less, indeed, than that dear friend of olden days in London City—Temple Bar.

TEMPLE BAR.

The story of Wren’s beautiful, but inconvenient, entrance to the City of London is a romantic one. Long used as a Golgotha on whose topmost cornice to display the heads of decapitated traitors, it remained at the Fleet Street entrance to London until the increasing traffic necessitated its removal in 1877. The stones were all numbered and stored away in the City stone-yard for some eight years, and meanwhile the City authorities offered them as a gift to several persons or public bodies, without finding anyone to accept the gift. The Benchers of the Temple, who had the opportunity of securing the relic for one of their quiet courts, incredible though it may seem, refused it; but at last the old Bar was accepted by Sir Henry Meux, and re-erected here as an entrance lodge. It is the old familiar Temple Bar, cleaner than of yore, and more easily studied in this quiet spot than of old, in the roaring traffic of Fleet Street; but that it should thus be banished from its native London and be in private ownership seems pitiful. Why not, in these days when it has been proposed to restore the Elgin marbles to Athens—why not agitate for its restitution and re-erection in some quiet City lane?

And now for Gough’s Oak. There are more ways than one of reaching Goff’s (or Gough’s) Oak from here. Let us take the turning to the left, and, avoiding a further turn in the same direction, go by Love Grove, along a series of country lanes. The original Gough was Sir Theodore Godfrey, who “came over with the Conqueror,” as the musty old phrase goes; and on what used to be Cheshunt Common he planted the still existing tree, which fully bears out Dryden’s lines—

“The Monarch Oak, the Patriarch of the Trees.
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees;
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state, and in three more decays.”

It may flourish for another hundred years if it is only left alone, although the giant trunk is quite hollow and full of holes, so that it is hooped and banded round like a barrel to keep it together. The hamlet that takes its name from this venerable relic is a thoroughly rural one of farms and dairies, and quite off the beaten tourist track.