Highways and Byways in Surrey

by Eric Parker

In another memorial you may trace the history of an extremely large family. John Aldersey "haberdas^hr and m'chant ventoror of London" died in 1616, aged seventy-five, "and had ysue 17 childeren." The whole seventeen are represented in marble accompanying, and from their dress and different sizes you may guess what happened to them. There are ten sons and seven daughters; of the ten sons, six are bearded men, who grew up, perhaps, and were men like their father: three are younger, just ordinary sons, and one is a baby—I suppose died as a baby. Of the seven daughters, two are babies, and the five that wear caps you may imagine to be girls who grew up and were married and lived happily.

In Barrow Green House, an admirable building, perhaps more Georgian than Jacobean, once lived Grote, the historian. He lies in Westminster Abbey; his widow, as we saw, is buried in Shere churchyard. Barrow Green Farm, close by, is all that an old farmhouse should be, complete with barns, an oasthouse, and a fascinating front to the road. Oasthouses begin here, near the Kent border. Surrey grows few hops; only at Farnham and near Oxted, I think. In the west Hampshire encourages her, and here she takes heart from Kent.

Limpsfield is the other side of the railway. The centre is unlike old Oxted, for it is the church; but you cannot get a picture of Limpsfield as separate and self-contained as of old Oxted. Oxted sets itself on its hillside more charmingly than any village of the Surrey weald; you get the picture from halfway up the road to the station, and you should look at it when the sun is setting. Then the white ricks in the foreground loom larger, and the huddled roofs and gables age into another century; the blue smoke of wood fires drifts in the wind across the hill. But you cannot hold Limpsfield at such a pleasant distance; you must come into the village street close to the old cottages, and close too, to a large house with a noble frontage on the roadway; great houses are seldom set so near to cottages and the road. But Limpsfield, with all its attractive antiquities of timber and gables, somehow strikes a modern note. Detilens is the name—a name one vaguely tries to scan for a Latin verse—of a little, hidden house of great age, in the village street. But it is the common, not Detilens or neighbouring roofs, which marks Limpsfield, and on the common are golf links and the huge red-brick buildings of a school.

A century ago Limpsfield held an author and a critic. He was the author of a tiny book, Lympsfield and its Environs, which was republished in 1838 with an introduction by a friend, who signs himself "H.G." and dates his preface from Westerham. At Westerham, too, the curious little republication was issued. It is illustrated by George Cruikshank and with pleasant prints of old pencilled drawings, and besides a poem, contains a number of descriptions of the chief houses of the neighbourhood. Here is one of them:—

"Chart's Edge.

On inquiring of a native, we were told that this place was the residence of "Mr. Antiquary Streatfeild." We doubt, however, if he has any just pretensions to that designation, a divine across the border assuring us that he is skilled in glamoury, and illustrating his account by stating that 'where there was a hill, there he would have a hollow, where there was a dell, there we should find a mound'; and, indeed, we ourselves experienced the delusion, for the spot which we had known for many years as a bleak desert, appeared sheltered and decorated with thriving plantations, a house new from the kiln, cheated us with its Elizabethan air; neither was the spell broken when we found ourselves in the interior; there we saw, or thought we saw, one of Raphael's loveliest easel pictures, one of Rembrandt's deep toned yet brilliant interiors, and a goodly row of ancestors in flowing wigs and ample ruffles; whilst, in fact, the former were no more than a foxy Italian copy of the divine Urbino, and a modern English attempt to mimic the glorious Fleming, and the latter, Cockneys and Kentish Yeomen."

Such a concatenation of studied insults might be supposed to have finished with a libel action. But it is the only description of a neighbouring house which has a hint of raillery, and a pencilled note in a copy I found of the little old book adds the explanation. Chart's Edge belonged to the author of Lympsfield and its Environs. I imagine, also, that Mr. Antiquary Streatfeild was the author of The Old Oak Chair, republished in the same volume by his friend "H.G.," and described as a ballad "sung at an anniversary dinner of the Westerham Amicable Benefit Society, to which the author has proved a steady friend." This is the ballad of The Old Oak Chair:—

My good sire sat in his old oak chair,
And the pillow was under his head,
And he raised his feeble voice, and ne'er
Will the memory part
From my living heart
Of the last few words he said.
"When I sit no more in this old oak chair,
And the green grass has grown on my grave,
And like armed men, come want and care,
Know, my boys, that God's curse
Will not make matters worse,
How little soever you have.
"The son that would sit in my old oak chair,
And set foot on his father's spade,
Must be of his father's spirit heir,
And know that God's blessing
Is still the best dressing,
Whatever improvements are made."
And he sat no more in his old oak chair;
And a scape-thrift laid his hand
On his father's plough, and he cursed the air,
And he cursed the soil,
For he lost his toil,
But the fault was not in the land.
And another set in his father's chair,
And talked, o'er his liquor, of laws,
Of the tyranny here and the knavery there,
'Till the old bit of oak
And the drunkard broke,
But the times were not the cause.
But I have redeemed the old ricketty chair,
And trod in my father's ways;
Have turned the furrow with humble prayer
To profit my neighbours,
And prosper my labours;
And find my sheaves with praise.

Cruikshank draws the scape-thrift roystering over punch and churchwardens' pipes. The careful and thrifty farmer is in another picture. He has no pipe, and he talks kindly to his wife, and dandles his son on his knee. There is a large ale-jug on the table, and he has had a capital dinner.

Titsey, a mile and a half away under the downs, is not a village at all; just a modern church outside Titsey Park, and a cottage opposite the church which was once an inn, and could swing a sign now if it wished; the frame is there. Once the church stood inside the park. That was when Titsey Place belonged to the Greshams, the ancestors of its later owners, the Leveson-Gowers. Sir John Gresham, looking one day in 1776 at the old church, decided that it was too near his house: it was only thirty-five feet distant. With the insolence of the day, he knocked it down, and the modern church stands obediently outside the gates. But Titsey Park has made amends. When the late Mr. Granville Leveson-Gower was at Titsey he brought to light, and described in the Surrey Archæological Collections, the foundations of a Roman villa discovered in the Park, almost touching the old road used by the pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. The foundations were interestingly complete, and from the ground near were dug coins, pottery, and a bronze mask. To-day the villa may be visited, but it is overgrown by weeds and elder bushes, and the visible remains are of scanty walls and tumbled pillars; rabbits, I think, see most of it.