Although so quiet a little village to-day, the neighbourhood of Ockley has seen some wild doings. Holmbury Hill, to the north, was once one of the principal settlements of the "Heathers," or broom squires, who still survive, a more respectable and a weaker folk, under Hindhead and elsewhere. Here one of their chief occupations was smuggling; indeed, the range of hills round Ewhurst and Holmbury Common served as a kind of halfway house for the gentlemen who were riding with silk and brandy from the Sussex seaboard to London. It was a Burwash mother who used to put her child to bed with the injunction, "Now, mind, if the gentlemen come along, don't you look out of the window"; doubtless the text which inspired Mr. Kipling's delightful verses. But there must have been many a Ewhurst and Ockley mother who knew "the gentlemen" by sight, and counselled confiding children to hold their tongues and look in the proper direction as the Burwash woman bids her child in Mr. Kipling's song:—
"If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red,
You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.
If they call you 'pretty maid,' and chuck you 'neath the chin,
Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been
If you do as you've been told, likely there's a chance,
You'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,
With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood—
A present from the Gentlemen, along o' being good!
Five and twenty ponies
Trotting through the dark—
Brandy for the Parson,
'Baccy for the Clerk.
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie—
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!"
The memory of smuggling under Leith Hill has, indeed, lasted into the last decade. Mr. H.E. Malden, the Surrey historian to whom all Surrey writers and readers owe so much, tells us in a paper on Holmbury Hill and its neighbourhood that he personally knew an old man, a native of Coldharbour, who had actually seen the game going on. He was born, it is true, in 1802, but he lived to be a hundred years old, and to talk to Mr. Malden discreetly about what he had seen. In his conversation Mr. Malden remarks with proper tranquillity "he indicated this and that respectable neighbour. Well, he said, his grandfather, and his grandfather and so on, knew something about the smuggling. He, of course, had done nothing in that way, but he remembered his father holding open the gate at the end of Crocker's Lane, Coldharbour, for a body of men on horseback, each with a keg of brandy behind him, to ride through. A man with whom he had worked told him how he was witness of a scene when a bold gatekeeper refused to open his turnpike gate to a body of armed men on horseback, who, after threatening him in vain, turned aside across the fields." Relics of the past still remain in the district. Under Holmbury Hill there is a cottage of which the cellars run right back into the hill; tradition has placed kegs of brandy in them. A naval cutlass was picked up some thirty years ago in a field by Leith Hill—possibly it was used in a smugglers' fray with King George's men. Nor was it long ago that a trackway which runs from Forest Green, two miles to the west of Ockley, through Tanhurst over Leith Hill, was known as the Smuggler's Way.
Surrey yeomen come nowhere of better stock than the oldest Ockley families. Aubrey tells a story of one of the Eversheds of Ockley, who, when the heralds made their visitation, was urged to take a coat of arms. "He told them that he knew no difference between gentlemen and yeomen, but that the latter were the better men, and that they were really gentlemen only, who had longer preserved their estates and patrimonies in the same place, without waste or dissipation; an observation very just." Aubrey adds, as examples of yeomen families who had land at the Conquest, the names of Steere, Harpe, Hether, and Aston. Steere, like Evershed, is a name that occurs over and over again in the Registers, both at Ockley and Capel.
Ockley's Parish Account Books, from which Mr. Alfred Bax—one of the oldest of Ockley names—has made some most interesting transcripts in the Surrey Archæological Collections, furnish some quaint glimpses into the life and customs of a Surrey village in old days. I make the following extracts, of which the first is noticeable particularly as evidence that a post office existed at Ockley at least as early as 1722:—
Dec ye 29 day 1722. Then John ffanne And Mr John Pratts Clarke of the post offis ffanne is a Vitler at the Cox, corner of Sherban Lane Cox sid of the post house? boath bound In A bond of A hundred pound for the parish of Ockley to pay one pound for the bewrall of William Drew In case he dy In bed lam and Ly wise to pay the Surgant for Cure of his sore Legs and Lychwise to tack Drew out when cured which sayed Drew was put In by Henry Worsfold and Edward Bax overseers this year 1722.
| Reliefs and Accidentall Charges 1718. | |
| £. s. d. | |
| Thomas Rapley when his children had ye measles and his wives lying in | 00 05 06 |
| Thomas Rapley more by Vestry Order | 02 06 |
| Thomas Rapley relief at a Vestry | 00 02 00 |
| Paid for Laying forth Randall's Daughter | 00 01 00 |
| Paid for Bread and Cheese at Randal's daughter's Buriall | 00 05 02 |
| Wood delivered to ye Poor, 1718. | |
| Paid Richard Bax for Rapley Last year | 00 04 00 |
| 1719. | |
| Mr Smith for Lying Dead in his house | 00 01 00 |
| Reliefs and Accidental Charges 1721. | |
| 8ber 29th Paid Tho. Rapley to buy Tire | 00 06 00 |
| 7ber ye 11 Drink to Henry Warren | 00 01 00 |
| Paid for a pair of Garters for Jnō Hide | 00 00 01½ |
| Wood Delivered to ye Poore In ye yeare 1722. | |
| Thomas Rapley tow hundred of fagot by Richard Bax of brock, fagot | 00 10 00 |
| 1723. | |
| 8ber 30th. To Rapley to buy a pair of Shoes | 00 02 00 |
| To Edwd Bax to get rid of a Boy from Jn. Coles | 00 12 00 |
| 1726. | |
| 7ber ye 4. Paid for airing and Cleansing Tho. Worsfold after the Small Pox | 01 10 00 |
| ffeb. 19. Relief to Tho. Worsfold after he had the small-pox | 00 01 00 |
| 1727. | |
| Allowed Tho. Amey toward ffatting his Hog | 01 00 00 |
| To Tho. Raply for Sparr timber and Matrs for ye almshouse | 00 01 00 |
| [July the 10th]. The same Day Paid for a pair of Leading Strings | 00 00 06 |
| 7ber ye 4th. Allowed to Goodwife Cole to fface Jnō. Songhursts Girl's Boddice and to graft her Petty coate | 00 01 06 |
| December 26. Paid Thomas Simmonds and Robt Lisney for killing a fox In ye parish Customary | 00 03 04 |
| March 18. Paid for Bread and Cheese and Bran [funeral of Rd Bashford] | 00 05 06½ |
| Paid for 7 Galls. and ½ of Beer | 00 07 06 |
| 1729. | |
| Sepr 1. Paid Francis Heathfield for Brandy Boundwalking | 00 04 00 |
| 1731. | |
| Paid Goody Rapley on account of ayring and cleansing her Daughter of the Small Pox | 00 14 00 |
| 1739. | |
| Expenses carrying Sarah Rapley to Limpsfield | 01 05 0½ |
| Paid for four Horses and a Side Saddle | 00 13 00 |
| Paid for a Warrant for Sarah Rapley | 00 01 00 |
| Paid for a Marriage Licence for Do Rapley | 01 08 00 |
| Paid for her Wedding Ring | 00 06 00 |
| Paid Horsehire to Dorking for Do Rapley | 00 01 00 |
| Paid Tho. Rapley's wife for nurseing Sarah Rapley's child this month | 8 |
| 1740. | |
| Paid the Clark's Fee at Sarah Rapley's Marriage | 00 02 06 |
| Paid Mr Pearson for marrying Sarah Rapley and burying Jno. Lipscomb ye blind man | 00 11 00 |
| 1745. | |
| Expences having Henry Rapley to ye Sea when bitt by a Mad Dog (Paid to Richard Rapley) | 00 12 06 |
How many village families could show so long a written history as that of the Rapleys, or so engaging a record? The entries of 1739 and 1740 are a perfect climax of hopes and fears, ending, it is impossible to doubt, in the enjoyment by Sarah Rapley of every conceivable happiness. But the joys hidden under the cold print of the last Rapley entry are only dimly to be imagined. Henry Rapley's return from the sea, cured of his dog-bite, must have brought out the whole village.
Two miles south-west of Ockley, a short way off the Stone street, stands the lonely little chapel of Oakwood. It is one of the old forest chapels, and dates back to the thirteenth century, but was enlarged in the fifteenth, the happy result of an accident. Sir Edward de la Hale was hunting wild boar with his son in the forest hard by. They had wounded a boar, the boy was thrown from his horse, and the boar charged down. His father spurred forward, too late to save him, when suddenly an arrow whizzed through the trees and the boar fell dead. In his joy, the father vowed on the spot an offering to the service of God, and Oakwood chapel was restored and endowed. The little building lies apart, sequestered in cornfields and deep woods, the quietest treasure of sudden discovery for the stranger walking idly by country lanes.
Beyond the railway to the east of Ockley, approached by quiet oak-shaded roads, lies the little village of Capel, not much more than a half-mile of main street lined with cottages. Capel instils a pleasant restfulness. Almost its chief buildings are the admirably designed almshouses built in memory of Mr. Charles Webb of Clapham Common. In an age when "improvements" generally mean the destruction of something old, and "additions" to village housing accommodation mean yellow brick boxes and slate lids, it is a pleasure to set eyes upon a modern building instinct with the spirit of country places. Capel people have long had proper views as to the right rate of progress through the business of life. They are skilled, or some of them, in topiary, and when the garden of a tiny, red-tiled cottage contains a shaven yew tree recognisable as a fair-sized bird, the tenour of village life must be agreeably even.