It is a pretty spot, and made romantic by its ancient story. You find it by tacking round the Gasworks, for which we need not claim any romance, and thence by a group of melancholy pines, where—at a point which was a junction of roads before this short two hundred yards’ stretch of the Way was stopped up—a mound marks the site of “Chunk Harvey’s Grave.” One cannot look upon this more or less tragical spot with reverence, for Harvey’s grotesque name and the discarded boots and battered tin cans of the town that decorate his legendary resting-place forbid. “Legendary” is written advisedly, for not the most diligent of delvers into the past shall succeed in reducing Chunk Harvey to cold dates and exact records. But his story has a distinctly moral tone, and may be recounted as a warning to any would-be pirates now trembling on the brink of a lawless life under the Jolly Roger. According, then, to the received legend, Chunk Harvey was a sea-rover who, by strict attention to his piratical profession and by a prudent and saving disposition, managed early in life to secure a large fortune. He retired to Thetford, and might have become a churchwarden and died in every circumstance of comfortable piety had it not been for a former acquaintance who had cut many a throat with him in bygone days on the high seas, but now, reduced to his last stiver, came tramping through Thetford. By a cursed (or fortunate) chance, just according to how your sympathies lie, this broken-down bandit met his old comrade, and in the result blackmailed him long and successfully until his victim could endure it no more. When at last he refused to be bled any longer, the man betrayed him, and—to cut the story short—Chunk Harvey was convicted and hanged. He was buried here, amid the rejoicings of a virtuous populace, who—if you like to share the children’s belief—were granted a Bank holiday and wound up the festivities with a display of fireworks.
THE “NUNS’ BRIDGES” ON THE ICKNIELD WAY, THETFORD.
A little stretch of common land leads on to the “Nuns’ Bridges.” Thetford town is hidden as you approach, by the dense trees of the Spring Walk and by others on either side, growing luxuriant by favour of the water, and thus forming the strongest and the most grateful of contrasts with Thetford’s situation amid wild heaths, bare and treeless, or planted only with the melancholy pine, and dotted here and there with gnarled hawthorns.
When this, now a side route into Thetford, was supplemented by that of the present main road over the “St. Christopher’s,” or Town Bridge, must be a matter of conjecture. We must not suppose, because that bridge was built only in 1697, there was no bridge or road up to the river and into the town before that time. Morden’s map of Norfolk in 1695 does not mark one; but it is incredible that there should have been no direct communication across a not very broad stream between these Suffolk suburbs and the chief part of the town. On the other hand, the fact that a ducking-stool was erected on the “Nuns’ Bridge” in 1578 would seem to prove that this was certainly then the chief approach, for the practice was to make the head-over-ears ducking of the scolds and shrews as public an exhibition of their shame as possible.
XXXV
The most prominent hostelry at Thetford in coaching days was the “Bell,” and it still occupies that geographical pre-eminence, even though its commercial importance has decayed. The “Bell,” in fact, has never recovered from the blow dealt it in 1846, when the coaches ceased to run, and overhangs the narrow street, its great courtyard a world too large for the diminished traffic.
Lord Albemarle has a good deal to say of the “Bell” in his book of reminiscences. As a young man, travelling about 1810 between London and Elveden Hall, then in the possession of his family, he sometimes, in common with the sporting youngsters of that age, had the opportunity of driving the Mail for a stage or two. It was not always, indeed, an opportunity desired by the passenger who shared the box-seat with the coachman, for those who sought that glorious elevation, paying rather heavily for the privilege in the form of a tip to the yard-porter who reserved the seat and in a series of drinks to the successive Jehus who drove, were, much more often than is generally supposed, quite content to let the coachman do the driving. Comparatively few were ever to be found skilled in the difficult art of guiding four horses, and not every box-seat passenger was eager to “take the ribbons.” The coachmen, on any quiet stretch of road, were generally more keen to make the offer of “taking ’em for a bit” than their passengers to accept, for those professional occupants of the box were, in the well-known etiquette of coaching, always sure of half a sovereign as a tip from the sportsman who “took ’em,” and when, from sheer timidity, their offer was not accepted, they were indignant, especially if some one who would have “taken ’em,” and tipped accordingly, was elsewhere on the coach. Under such harrowing circumstances a coachman generally felt himself to be defrauded. “What are you ’ere for, then?” asked such an one of his box-seat passenger who had declined the honour and glory—and the danger; and when, after a halt for refreshment, the passengers resumed their places, this one who would not have distinction thrust upon him found his place taken by a dashing fellow who, a few miles down the road, landed them all into a ditch and most of them into hospital.
THE “BELL INN,” THETFORD, AND ST. PETER’S CHURCH.