LONDON LANE, NEWPORT: WHERE CHARLES THE SECOND’S ROUTE TO NEWMARKET JOINED THE HIGHWAY.
The church has a treasure of sorts in the musty, dusty old theological library, stored away in the parvise chamber, over the porch. It is a treasure not likely to be greatly coveted, nor are its constituent volumes frequently read, consisting, as they do, of dull black-letter discourses on just those religious matters in which the learned are of necessity as ignorant as the veriest clod. Not even the best-equipped of those disputants could pierce the veil that hides from us the other world, and now they are gone hence and acquired that knowledge, or just become extinct, they cannot enlighten ourselves. All they could do was to raise cloudy disputations, and the dust one bangs out of their ponderous folios is typical of their useless labours.
A more desirable treasure is the ancient muniment-chest kept jealously under lock and key in the vestry. It is a weighty affair, covered with gilt lead, in perforated patterns, and secured with five locks. Inside the heavy lid are barbarically coloured paintings of the Crucifixion, the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. John, St. Peter, and St. Paul.
An early morning bell-ringing custom of immemorial antiquity is still maintained at Newport, but happily not with all its old-time severity. It was not until 1875 that the local revolt broke out, and the four o’clock-in-the-morning bell-ringing during the winter was modified, and replaced by an eight in the morning peal in the months between Michaelmas and Lady Day. Bell-ringing at Newport was wont to be greatly favoured, for there was a nightly curfew, followed by a number of strokes corresponding with the day of the month. Then there was the “gleaners’ bell,” at harvest-time, rung to tell the poor the corn had been carried and they might go into the fields and glean. But modern agricultural machinery leaves nothing to be gathered up, and so gleaning is a lost chance
XIII
Among the many points of interest in Newport, the still-surviving “Newport Toll” is certainly not least. In these latter days, when traffic fares the road unhindered, all public roads are toll-free—except the road through Newport. Pedestrians and cyclists in general, and the whole of the traffic from certain specified neighbouring villages are exempt; but waggons from elsewhere pay 2d. each, forwards and backwards; higglers’ horses, ½d. each; and sheep and all other cattle, 4d. per score. The exempted places are: Newport, Wicken, Saffron Walden, Great and Little Chesterford, the Wendens, Quendon, and Widdington.
How comes it, then, that this one toll survives when others have been abolished? That is a long story, but one that may readily be summarised here. It seems, then, up to some two hundred years ago the little stream which even now runs across the highway, and is known variously as Wicken Water and the Granta, was unbridged, and crossed only by a ford. Neither the county nor the parish would be at the expense of building a bridge, and at last the lord of the manor obtained an Act of Parliament which conferred upon him the right of building, and authorised the levying of those tolls which are collected to this day. The tolls are still vested in the lord of the manor, but are not very strictly enforced, and as the gate has not, for many years past, been closed, and is, indeed, half buried in the ground and nearly rotted away, a good many waggons and many cattle must, especially at night, escape paying. It was a Smith, of Shortgrove, who obtained the Act and built the bridge, and, although Shortgrove Park has been let, these rights are still in the family. The toll has often been disputed, and was once, indeed, some thirty years since, the subject of a law-suit, when the uncle of the present Smith asserted his rights, and won.
Before railways had come, to clear the roads of most of the cattle and the waggons, the income of this toll-gate was considerable, but in these days it is not worth the while of the owner of these petty rights to collect the small gains, and the toll-house has been let as an ordinary cottage, but, in consideration of the tolls, at a rent slightly above its value as a dwelling. The occupier is, therefore, in a rather sporting position, and, by strict attention to business and by keeping sleepless vigils, might stand to gain quite a respectable trifle of pocket-money out of sheep that pass in the night, or from waggons that creak and rumble by in the early hours of morn, before the day is well aired. But it is an elderly occupant, and many a fourpence and a twopence go unchallenged into the darkness. Only the slow-going vehicles and the flocks and herds of daytime find themselves intercepted. One of the most humorous things in connection with this quaint survival was an incident that came under the notice of the present writer, when a huge furniture-removing van—one of the kind that goes at a two-and-a-half miles an hour pace—was stopped, and, much to the amazement of the driver (who, in common with the world at large, thought all tolls to be things of the past), made to pay.
It is the most insignificant of streams that causes all this pother, and the smallest of bridges, but it can still be seen, where the road dips, how awkward the old ford must have been.