Highways and Byways in Surrey

by Eric Parker

In those jealous days, an archbishop was not forgiven an accident. Bishops refused to be consecrated by a prelate with blood upon his hands. A free pardon was granted him; but he never recovered his spirit, and fasted once a month on Tuesday for the rest of his life. Peter Hawkins's widow was by no means so disconsolate. The Archbishop settled an annuity of £20 upon her, and she got another husband at once.

The Archbishop's great legacy is the Hospital. Unlike Whitgift's Hospital at Croydon, it has charming surroundings; like it, it is quiet and old and solid, of good dark red brick, with mullioned windows and latticed panes, four turrets over the entrance gate, and the most graceful chimneys that ever carried up smoke from pensioners' fireplaces. There are many delightful groups of chimneys in Surrey villages and on Surrey mansions, but Guildford's chimneys are best of all.

In summer, the quadrangle is bright with geraniums, and through a passage opposite the entrance is a glimpse of a simple kitchen garden. In it, as one of the pensioners, a white-haired, blue-eyed old man, told me, vegetables are grown for the inmates of the hospital. I gathered that they were not allowed to manage the garden themselves, but that the garden produce was divided. But they cook for themselves. The pride of the hospital, however, is not the garden, but the old oak of the staircases and dining hall and board room, the settle and table, the copper caldron and the windows with their punning legend "Clamamus Abba Pater." I am not sure if my old pensioner could read it, but he pointed it out to me, and when I read it, approved. In the chapel, where there are a number of Latin verses telling the story of the painted windows, it was easier for him; he handed me a written explanation. But the explanation matters very little; the real thing is the superb colour. The story, which is of Jacob, Esau and Laban, is told on two windows, with nine lights. There are purples and greens in those windows at which you might gaze through a dozen sermons; but there is one robe of burning, translucent orange that would light a cathedral.

The history of these windows would be worth knowing. They were evidently not wholly made for the tracery, though parts of them may have been. According to one account, they were purchased by Archbishop Abbot from the Dominican Friary which used to stand at the end of Guildford North Street, and which was converted into a Manor House after the dissolution of the monasteries. But the glass belongs to more than one period, and some of it was evidently added by the Archbishop, for among the heraldic devices above the Jacob and Esau lights are the Abbot arms impaling the Canterbury arms. Also—a point which the antiquarians have no doubt noticed, but I can find no reference to it in any book—the initials S.R., which appear in the centre top opening of the north window under the date 1621, are evidently part of another inscription. On the left side of the S is part of a V or U, as if the end of a Latin word ending in "us" had had its tail chopped off. The letters must have been selected from the original inscription for some definite reason; what can it have been?

Archbishop Abbot's bones lie opposite his hospital, in the church of Holy Trinity. Of the three churches which stand on the High Street, Trinity Church is the highest up the hill, and was called the Upper Church in the days when Puritanism preferred not to mention dedications. It is, comparatively speaking, a modern building, red-brick and heavy; it was built after the old church fell down in 1740. An admirable calm must have pervaded the citizens of Guildford on that occasion. Russell, one of Guildford's historians, observes that the inhabitants, "desirous of improving" the church, had recently repaired it at a cost of £750. He then adds, reflectively, that "As the arches and pillars which supported the steeple were then taken away, it was soon after supposed to be in a very ruinous condition." On April 18, 1740, an order was given for the church to be inspected. On the 19th it was inspected, and the steeple was reported to be very unsafe. On the 20th, therefore, which was Sunday, service was performed for the last time. On the 23rd the steeple fell in and took the roof with it; the workmen had left the church a few minutes before. Even then there was at least one untroubled soul in Guildford. The verger was told that the steeple had fallen. "That cannot be," he replied, "I have the key in my pocket."

The vault in which the archbishop lies was accidentally opened in 1888, when the church was being repaired, and some brickwork fell away. Through the gap, it is said, the coffin could be seen on the floor; the form of the body was distinct, and the beard was still there. The vault was sealed again; it had been unopened for more than two hundred and fifty years. It was during these alterations that the cenotaph standing over the vault was removed further east to where it now stands. It is a typical piece of Renaissance work, florid, intricate, insistent on the ghastliness of death. The effigy of the archbishop, stern and noble, lies on its marble bed supported by stacks of gilt-clasped books; underneath, a grating reveals a medley of human bones, carved with the minutest detail. The artist evidently enjoyed the work. But it is better worth looking at, for all that, than the monument on the other side of the church, where the recumbent form of Sir Arthur Onslow is apparently giving vague directions to an imaginary audience. Wrapped in a Roman toga, he waves a sleeveless right arm; his left is propped by a set of Journals of the House of Commons. It is a relief to pass beyond such tawdry pomposities into the solemn little chapel, sacred to one of the great regiments of the Army, the Queen's, the old Second of the Line. Their badge, the Lamb and Flag, and their name they get from Katherine of Braganza, Charles the Second's queen. Later, as Kirke's Lambs, they added to a dreadful fame at Sedgmoor; but rebellion breeds brutality, and Kirke was probably no more ferocious than others who have had to deal with insurgents. Since Sedgmoor, the Queen's, or to give them their other and less distinctive name, the Royal West Surrey Regiment, have served in practically every important campaign in which the Army has been engaged. Their tattered banners, with the broken, proud inscriptions of campaigns and battles, droop above long lists of dead.

Of the two other great Guildford churches, the lower, or Church of St. Nicholas, stands at the bottom of the High Street on the far side of the Wey. Probably it is the fourth church that has stood on this site; there are at all events, records of three previous demolitions, though each demolition has left one feature standing—the Loseley Chapel, belonging to the Mores of Loseley Park. With the exception of this chapel, with its brasses and monuments, dating back to the fourteenth century memorial of Arnold Brocas of Beaurepaire (surely a name of names!), the church is chiefly interesting as being a really satisfying piece of modern architecture. It was built in 1875, and, though the interior, with its modern glass and high colouring, has none of the quiet of age, it dulls to the right tone at dusk.

St. Mary's Church, Guildford.

The Middle Church, St. Mary's, is the most interesting of the three. The tower was built before the Conquest, possibly originally for defence: at all events, there are two windows looking north and south which are doubly splayed, after Saxon fashion, a good deal above the ground level. The rest of the church has been built at different times, beginning with the chancel, which is pure Norman, and there are actually three levels to the floor, which gives rather an odd effect. The proportions of the church have been spoiled by the cutting off of the apse of the chancel—an entirely unwarrantable piece of destruction. The history of the mutilation is characteristic of the days of the Regency. George, Prince of Wales, used to drive down to Brighton, and perhaps his coach stuck in Quarry Street, which must have been horribly narrow, between the apse of St. Mary's and the town gaol opposite. He swore as a Georgian prince should, offered the town a good round sum to have the street widened, and the Corporation, who could have sliced something off the gaol and harmed nobody, preferred to cut at the church. They never got a penny of George's money.