He brake the stocks and ran away.
So went village life for Tandridge in the golden days. Few cottages have been added since Mr. Bostock Fuller used to ride to the assizes. He would see little change, perhaps, in the church, with the glorious oak beams that bear up its belfry, and little, too, in the mighty yew whose branches brush its tower. Over one gravestone he might be puzzled. It has been placed in the grass, I think since his day, near the south door, and is an ancient monument of hard sandstone with a cross carved on it. Legend says that it was brought from Tandridge Priory, but there are others like it at Oxted and Titsey which belong to an older date than the priory.
A Street in Oxted.
Oxted is north-east of Tandridge; but there are two Oxteds. One is the new village near the station, with new shops, a new inn, and the old church. The other is the old village, set apart from the railway; a little village clustered about a main street running up the hillside—a rustic Guildford, a main street with cottage fronts for Guildford house fronts, and an ancient timbered inn hanging out a golden bell instead of Guildford's clock. Guildford's houses should hold Kate Greenaway maidens and prim ladies with mittens: Oxted should have corduroys and aprons, brown children and sunbonnets. So Oxted has; and it has also, I think, more little inns than any Surrey village near its size. Each has its sign; the street holds out a gallery of signs: stone steps and raised alleys run to the cottage doorways, and the children play curious village games with chalk squares and knucklebones, safe in the doorways and on the pavement. There is a corner by the road crossing the main street which is the prettiest in east Surrey. Weatherbeaten, brick-and-timber cottages frame it: the Bell Inn, with its beams like letters of a big black alphabet, hangs out its gold bell; beyond, the road slopes to dim country greennesses and the hill of the downs.
Oxted Church.
Oxted church tower is noble and massive; a great content is about its quiet, solid battlements. Once it had a spire, and I wish I had never read that the spire was destroyed; now when I see it I am always wondering what the church was like with a spire. In the churchyard are two ancient tombstones, like the single stone at Tandridge; they, too, are far older than the church.
Other strange monuments are in the church. One is to the memory of Ann, wife of Charles Hoskins, who thus mourned her in 1651:—
LET THIS
PATTERNE OF PIETY
MAPP OF MISERY
MIRROUR OF PATIENCE
HERE REST