XXIV
THE “CHEQUERS,” TONBRIDGE.
The general impression of Tonbridge (which elects to spell its “ton” with an “o,” in contradistinction from the “u” of Tunbridge Wells) is one of meanness and squalor. There is the fine Grammar School at the entrance to it, and handsome estates surround the town, but that impression lasts, and seems rather to be intensified by the gradual widening of the High Street and the replacing of the picturesque old houses by flashy modern buildings. That highly sketchable old inn, the “Chequers,” remains, and so does the so-styled “Old Ivy House,” or “Old Toll House,” in East Street, a fine gabled timber-and-plaster building of the fifteenth century, where the Portreeve’s duties, or tolls on cattle and goods entering the town, were paid.
Very observant persons, too, may notice the queer weathervane over the old shop of a firm of furnishing ironmongers, representing an old-fashioned sportsman out with his dog, partridge-shooting. I will not swear it is partridge; it may be grouse, or perhaps even pigeon; but any one will declare it is not a pheasant.
A SPORTING WEATHER-VANE.
The way out of Tonbridge lies over the railway bridge, past the station, where the banging of trucks and the screaming of whistles are continuous, and South-Eastern trains are, like practical jokers, for ever pretending to go off, just to flurry and excite nervous passengers, and then coming back and casually shunting up and down the sidings when they ought to be miles distant on their journeys; so while away the hours.
Contemplative persons will notice with delight as they pass that the lamp over the station door says “Railway-station.” It is a lesson in the obvious, information for the already fully informed, as little needed as a label on the parish church.
At a very acute angle right and left the roads respectively to Pembury and Tunbridge Wells leave Tonbridge and proceed immediately to climb steep hills out of the Vale of Medway. On the right goes the road to “the Wells,” up Quarry Hill, and to the left, up Somerhill, ascends the Hastings Road. At the summit of this very considerable eminence, where a road on the right-hand leads to Tunbridge Wells, once stood the toll-house, known (incorrectly) as Wood’s Gate. Its real name was Woodgate, the spot where that early traveller, Mr. Samuel Jeake, lost himself so effectually on that January night of long ago.