The Norwich Road: An East Anglian Highway

by Charles G. Harper

XXII

BIRTHPLACE OF SPURGEON.

Coaching times and coaching inns have long kept us at the very threshold of Kelvedon, which has a modern claim to notice of which it is not a little proud. Spurgeon was born here. Although the figure of that great wielder of homely and untutored pulpit oratory is but one among several preachers in the same family, there is only one possible Spurgeon when that name is mentioned. Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born in a house still pointed out, on June 19, 1834; the eldest son of the Rev. John Spurgeon. The old cottage is now the "Wheatsheaf" beer-house and has had a bay window and a brick frontage added since that time. Close by is a now highly respectable and not a little dignified private residence known still as the "Tommy shop," although almost seventy years have passed since it was used as a kind of restaurant and canteen for the navvies then working on the construction of the Great Eastern Railway, which runs at the rear.

The oldest house in Kelvedon is doubtless the "Sun," which dates from the middle of the fifteenth century and has within recent years had its carved woodwork, long covered with plaster, once more exposed to view. It stands, almost the last house in the town, by the bridge over the Blackwater, on the way to Gore Pit.

Gore Pit is generally said to be the site of a battle. What battle, however, historians do not and cannot specify; and indeed this name, bloody though it may sound to modern ears, has, despite the popular legend of the derivation of Kelvedon from "Kildane," perhaps no such sanguinary association, and is probably a contraction of the old word "coneygore," or rabbit warren.

It is, despite its name, a pretty and a peaceful hamlet, with a blacksmith's shop and a roadside horse-pond, and surrounded by the fruit-farms of a great jam-making company. The church of Feering can be seen across the flat fields, on the other side of the railway. Messing lies a mile away, in the other direction.

Let the idle wayfarer, curious as to the name of Gore Pit, speak to the blacksmith on the subject, and he will be told, with the seriousness of implicit belief, of the fighting of a great battle here, and that the blood ran down into "that there horse-pond." Moreover, that at Kelvedon—"Killdane they used to call it—they killed the Danes; at Feering they feared 'em, and at Messing they made a mess of it"; which seems to very correctly reflect the views of the neighbourhood on local history in ancient times, as reflected in place-names!

Rural Essex, in the aspect of its fields and meadows, is revealed along these miles in its most characteristic form. It is, in many respects, unlike other counties. In some ways the unhappy industry of farming has fared worse here than elsewhere, and many holdings have for years past gone uncultivated, and the dock, the thistle and other lusty weeds have resumed an evil possession of fields once kept clean and trim. But in the smaller operations of husbandry Essex has always been, and in some districts still is, remarkably successful; while, although the farmer protests that it does not pay to grow any kind of grain, the yellowing seas of autumnal cornfields are still a prominent feature of the landscapes of Essex and of its neighbouring Suffolk. Essex and Suffolk are old-world, far beyond the rest of England, and in growing wheat in these times, when a cornfield is a rare sight in other parts of the country and when "our daily bread" is chiefly compounded of grain grown in North America, Russia, or the Argentine, they maintain their singularity. It does the heart good to see the ripening wheatfields of East Anglia, to see the gathered stooks in the reaped perspectives, and to hear the hum of the threshing machine; for the sights and sound seem to carry us back to that England of a bygone age, when Constable painted such fields, and when they were numerous enough throughout the land to feed the population. Here and there one may still find fields of that famous grain, the "Essex Great Wheat," which grows at least two feet higher than the ordinary varieties, and is greatly prized for the length and stoutness of its straw; but it is a few miles to the north-eastward, in the light lands around Harwich, that the Great Wheat may be found. Seed and herb-growing are the most prominent industries between the Blackwater and the Colne, and the roadside fields are striped to wonderment in summer with the rainbow colours of the seedsman's trial-grounds. The heavy perfume of stocks and mignonette, the claret colour of that gorgeous flower, the "sops-in-wine," the gay and varied displays of asters, marguerites, marigolds and a hundred others make a midsummer fairyland of the levels that loom so drear and misty in the long months of winter. Nor is it only for the flower-garden that the Essex seedsman labours. With the sights and scents of the flaunting beauties of the garden are mingled the homelier ones of mint, grey-green sage and other dowdy kitchen herbs, together with the subtle beauty and piercing odour of wide-spreading, blue-grey lavender-fields. Even the unromantic mangold, running to seed in bush-like shape, sends forth a sweet and pleasing aroma, while the yellow mustard contributes its share.