XV
The tramway terminus at Purley Corner is now a busy place. Those are only the “old crocks” who can remember the South Eastern railway-station of Caterham Junction and the surrounding lonely downs; and to them the change to “Purley” and the appearance in the wilderness of a mushroom town, with its parade of brilliantly lighted shops, its Queen Victoria memorial, its public garden and penny-squirt fountain, and—not least—its hideous waterworks, are things for wonderment. “How strange it seems, and new,” as Browning—not writing of Purley—remarks. Even the ghastly loneliness of the long straight road ascending the pass of Smitham Bottom is no more, for little villas, with dank little dungeons of gardens, line the way, and tradesmen’s carts calling for orders compete with the motorists who shall kill and maim most travellers along the highway.
The numerous railway-bridges, embankments, cuttings, and retaining-walls that disfigure the crest of Smitham Bottom are chiefly the results of latter-day activities. The first bridge is that of the Chipstead Valley Railway—now merged in the South Eastern and Chatham—from South Croydon to Chipstead and Epsom, 1897-1900, with its wayside station of “Smitham.” This is immediately followed by the London, Brighton, and South Coast’s station of Stoat’s Nest, a transformed and transported version of the old station of the same name some distance off, and beyond it are the bridges and embankments of the same company’s works of 1896-8; themselves almost inextricably confused, to the non-technical mind, with the adjoining South Eastern roadside station of Coulsdon.
The chapters of railway history which produced all this unlovely medley of engineering works are in themselves extremely interesting, and have an additional interest to those who trace the story of the Brighton Road, for they are concerned with the solution of the old problem which faced the coach proprietors—how best and quickest to reach Brighton.
RAILWAY POLITICS
Few outside those intimately concerned with railway politics know that although the Brighton line was opened throughout in 1842, it was not until 1898 that the company owned an uninterrupted route between London and Brighton. The explanation of that singular condition of affairs is found in the curious reluctance of Parliament, two generations ago, to give any one railway company the sole control of any particular route. Few in those times thought the increase of population, and still more the increase of travelling, would be so great that competitive railways would be established to many places; and thus to sanction the making of a railway to be owned by one company throughout seemed like the granting of a perpetual monopoly.
Following this reasoning, a break was made in the continuity of the Brighton Railway between Stoat’s Nest and Redhill, a distance of five miles, and that stretch of territory given to the South Eastern Railway, with running powers only over it granted to the Brighton Company. Similarly, between Croydon and Stoat’s Nest, the South Eastern had only running powers over that interval owned by the Brighton.
In 1892 and 1894, however, the Brighton Company approached Parliament and, proving the growing confusion, congestion, and loss of time at Redhill Junction, owing to this odd condition of things, obtained powers to complete that missing link by the construction of an entirely new railway between Stoat’s Nest and a point just within a quarter of a mile of Earlswood Station, beyond Redhill, and also to double the existing line between East and South Croydon and Purley. The works were completed and opened for traffic in 1898, when for the first time the Brighton Railway had a complete and uninterrupted route of its own to the sea.
The hamlet of Smitham Bottom, which paradoxically stands at the top of the pass of that name, in this ancient way across the North Downs, can never have been beautiful. It was lonely when Jackson and Fewterel fought their prize-fight here, before that distinguished patron of sport the Prince of Wales and a more or less distinguished company, on June 9th, 1788; when the only edifice of “Smith-in-the-Bottom,” as the sporting accounts of that time style it, appears to have been the ominous one of a gibbet. The Jackson who that day fought, and won, his first battle in the prize-ring was none other than that Bayard of the noble art, “Gentleman Jackson,” afterwards the friend of Byron and of the Prince Regent himself, and subsequently landlord of the “Cock” at Sutton. On this occasion Major Hanger rewarded the victor with a bank-note from the enthusiastic Prince.