The Roman Road at Ockley.
CHAPTER XXXII
UNDER LEITH HILL
The Battle of Ockley.—The Stone Street.—The prettiest green in Surrey.—Sweethearts and Roses.—When the Gentlemen went by.—An engaging family history.—Oakwood: a forest chapel.—Capel quiet.—Newdigate bells.—Martins in September.
Battlefields are not very numerous in Surrey. The Parliamentary wars shed a little military glory on the North and the West, and attacks on London from the Surrey side—its invulnerable side—belong to almost every century of London's history. But the great Surrey battle, which belongs to Ockley under Leith Hill, is of the battles of long ago, dim and hazy in the mist of centuries, fearful with legends of blood in rivers, and warriors laid in swathes like mown corn. Even now, country tradition asserts, the rain that sweeps down Leith Hill sends the rainpools red in the plain below. The great battle of Ockley was fought when the Danes came two hundred and fifteen years before Harold fell at Hastings. They had sailed across to Kent, the historian says, with three hundred and fifty large ships, and had driven in Ethelstan, who was king of Kent, Sussex, Essex, and Surrey, under his father Ethelwulf. They sacked Canterbury, and went up the Thames to London; there they beat in Beorhtwulf, king of the Mercians, and before them lay but one great town, Winchester, unsacked. Down they swept over the Thames, and out of his own country, Ethelwulf, of Wessex, overlord of the beaten Ethelstan and Beorhtwulf, came to meet them. Up the great Stone Street, the Roman road that runs as straight as a die from Chichester, he marched, and lay across the front of his enemy, clear of the deep forest that spread south of Ockley. The Danes came on. Perhaps they rested a night in the old British camp on Anstiebury Hill, perhaps they swept straight on: battle was joined "hard by Ockley wood." Local tradition, always apt to associate notable deeds with easily marked places, makes the scene of the battle Ockley Green; but the armies could not have seen each other on the low ground, which must have been half swamp, half undergrowth. They fought, no doubt, on the higher ground near Leith Hill. The slaughter was prodigious; "blood stood ankle deep," and the day ended with the great body of the Danes dead on the hills, and the rest flying where they could along the roads and through the woods. Probably not a Dane got away alive. It was a wonderful victory.
To-day the peace that broods over Ockley is born of wooded parks and sunlit spaces. Ockley Green must be one of the largest in Surrey, and I think is the prettiest of all. Along its western side runs a row of noble elms, bordering the road, and under the shade of the elms an old inn. This road is actually part of the Stone Street up which Ethelwulf marched against the Danes; and it would be hardly possible to devise a prettier road, as it passes under the Ockley elm trees, or a more tranquil outlook for an inn. Low-roofed cottages edge the grass, warm and sheltered; a drinking fountain on the green level suggests summer games and thirsty cricketers; though I think Ockley has contributed no great cricketers to the game. Beyond the green lie stretches of pasture and rich and smiling woodland.
The church stands nearly a mile from the green, and to its quiet acre belongs one of the prettiest traditions of bygone Surrey—the planting of rose-trees over the graves of betrothed lovers. It was still a custom in Aubrey's time:—
"In the churchyard are many red rose-trees planted among the graves, which have been there beyond man's memory. The sweetheart (male or female) plants roses at the head of the grave of the lover deceased; a maid that had lost her dear twenty years since, yearly hath the grave new turfed, and continues yet unmarried."
Rose-trees still grow in the churchyard, though perhaps the planting of them does not go back beyond man's memory.