Highways and Byways in Surrey

by Eric Parker

CHAPTER IX

THE VILLAGES OF THE TILLINGBOURNE

Chilworth.—Gunpowder and Banknotes.—Cashier for fifty years.—The Evelyns' Powdermills.—Albury's chimneys.—A Yew hedge quarter of a mile long.—Sherborne ponds: the Silent Pool.—King John and Sabrina drowned.—Trout fed on Sandwiches.—Shere.—The prettiest village of all.—The Tillingbourne.—William Bray, aged 97.—A Yeoman's Will.—Shere Registers.—From Ann to Carbetia.—Gomshall.—Starving a Retainer.

Four villages and a group of powdermills stand on the banks of the Tillingbourne, which runs its short race of clear spring water from the northern slopes of Leith Hill to the Wey by Shalford. There are scarcely a dozen miles of the Tillingbourne altogether, but it runs through the prettiest string of villages in the county. Friday Street is at its source; Abinger Hammer, with two large millponds, is next; Gomshall lies a mile to the west of Abinger Hammer, Shere a mile to the west again, and Albury beyond Shere. Chilworth stands last on the bright little stream, hardly a village; not much more than a station, some powdermills, and reedy ponds.

The quickest road from Guildford to Chilworth is the railway. The best road is over the downs. The road which Cobbett took when he came from Kensington was over Merrow Downs to Newlands Corner, and it is worth while to climb up Newlands Corner to look at the view as Cobbett saw it, with the pale distances of eight counties on his horizon, and the dark, tall chimneys of the powdermills he detested smoking below him. "Here we looked back over Middlesex," he writes, "and into Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, away towards the north-west, into Essex and Kent towards the east, over part of Sussex to the south, and over part of Hampshire to the west south-west." He might have added Oxfordshire. Nothing in Surrey delighted Cobbett more than "the narrow and exquisitely beautiful vale of Chilworth," at which he used to gaze from these downs. Only Hawkley Hanger, just over the Hampshire border, filled him with greater pleasure. But the Chilworth powdermills goaded him to fury:—

"This valley," he writes, white hot, "which seems to have been created by a bountiful providence, as one of the choicest retreats of man; which seems formed for a scene of innocence and happiness, has been, by ungrateful man, so perverted as to make it instrumental in effecting two of the most damnable of purposes; in carrying into execution two of the most damnable inventions that ever sprang from the minds of man under the influence of the devil! namely, the making of gunpowder and of bank-notes! Here in this tranquil spot, where the nightingales are to be heard earlier and later in the year than in any other part of England; where the first bursting of the bud is seen in spring, where no rigour of seasons can ever be felt; where everything seems formed for precluding the very thought of wickedness; here has the devil fixed on as one of the seats of his grand manufactory; and perverse and ungrateful man not only lends him aid, but lends it cheerfully! As to the gunpowder, indeed, we might get over that. In some cases that may be innocently and, when it sends the lead at the hordes that support a tyrant, meritoriously employed. The alders and the willows, therefore, one can see, without so much regret, turned into powder by the waters of this valley; but, the Bank-notes! To think that the springs which God has commanded to flow from the sides of these happy hills for the comfort and the delight of man; to think that these springs should be perverted into means of spreading misery over a whole nation and that, too, under the base and hypocritical pretence of promoting its credit and maintaining its honour and its faith! There was one circumstance, indeed, that served to mitigate the melancholy excited by these reflections; namely, that a part of these springs have, at times, assisted in turning rags into Registers! Somewhat cheered by the thought of this, but, still, in a more melancholy mood than I had been for a long while, I rode on with my friend towards Albury up the valley."

The papermills which called down Cobbett's curses were probably originally powdermills, and were turned to their new uses first in the reign of Queen Anne. The Bank at first issued no notes of smaller value than £20; ten-pound notes were first issued in 1759, and five pound notes in 1793, and one and two pound notes four years later. Local tradition, for an explanation of the name Newlands Corner, has decided that it must have been called after Abraham Newland, who was chief cashier of the Bank of England for fifty years till 1807, and whose name, therefore, would be as familiar to King George's subjects, as is May or Owen to a later day. But local tradition is mistaken. The name occurs on Bowen's map of the county, dedicated to Richard, third Baron Onslow, in 1749, when Newland was an unknown boy of nineteen.

A much greater Surrey industry than paper-making is the manufacture of gunpowder. Indeed, whenever England was at war, from the days of Elizabeth to those of the Parliament, the control of the Surrey powder works was a vital point in the struggle. The first gunpowder manufactory seems to have been established at Rotherhithe, where Henry Reve had a mill in 1554. We were then getting a considerable quantity of our gunpowder from abroad, and that was a state of affairs which continued till the coming of the Armada. When the Armada came, England was dangerously unprepared for war. It was lucky that Howard's and Drake's fireships ended the fleet so quickly, for anything like a prolonged sea campaign would have been out of the question. We had not enough powder. Accounts made up in the year 1600 show that up to the day when the Armada sail was sighted, there was never more than twenty or thirty lasts (a last was about a ton) of English powder delivered yearly into the Queen's stores. After the Armada, the Queen's Ministers set to work to put the gunpowder supply on a proper basis, and it was then that Surrey and a great Surrey family became inseparably associated with the making of explosives.

George Evelyn (grandfather of a more famous grandson, John Evelyn of Wotton) and John, his son, were first licensed in 1589 to dig saltpetre in Great Britain and Ireland, and set up their first powdermills on the little Hogsmill River, which joins the Thames at Kingston. Later, George Evelyn retired, and John, having transferred his mills to Godstone, took his brother Robert and three others into partnership and started on a contract by which they supplied the Queen with a hundred lasts of powder yearly at 7d. the pound. In 1604 the firm was practically reduced to John and Robert Evelyn, and a partner named Hardinge, the others being dead or doing no work. The firm was now employing a thousand hands, and was given twenty-one years' contract to supply 120 lasts yearly at 8d. per pound—nearly £10,000 worth of powder. But James I soon broke this contract, and after three years the contract was given to the Earl of Worcester; though whether the Earl ever made any powder, or what he did with his contract, nobody knows. The progress of the manufacture of gunpowder now becomes very obscure, though probably John Evelyn kept his mills running at Godstone, making reduced quantities. It is not till 1621 that we find John Evelyn making another large contract with the Government, but after that date the contracts were renewed every two or three years, until the Evelyns in 1636 ceased to supply the Government altogether. Their difficulties must have been almost intolerable. John Evelyn and his son, also named John, who succeeded him in 1627, appear to have been always punctual and trustworthy in supplying the powder required, but the King would not or could not pay for it. The history of each contract is always the same; for a few months all goes swimmingly, then comes the Crown's inability to pay up; next stoppage of supplies; eventually, settling up and a new contract. The Evelyn mills made the last pound of powder for the King in 1636, and then under protest. Charles was used to protests.

So far very little powder had been made at Chilworth. The Evelyn mills were at Godstone—possibly near Wotton also. But it was the Chilworth powdermills which broke the Evelyns' business. Immediately on coming to the throne Charles I gave leave to the East India Company to set up powdermills on the skirts of Windsor Park; but the mills frightened the deer and were moved to Chilworth. Here, apparently, Sir Edward Randyll owned or built a large number of mills, which he leased to the Company, and it was the competition of the Company which silenced Evelyn's mills. But the Company was equally unsuccessful in keeping the business. Charles I was struck with the idea of turning shopkeeper himself, and gave the sole Government contract to one Cordwell, from whom he bought powder at 7½d. the pound and sold it to the lieges at eighteenpence. That did not last long. The Long Parliament assembled in 1641, and the monopoly was abolished. From that date anybody might make gunpowder, and Surrey ceased to be the single centre of the industry. But the Chilworth mills still did a great deal of business—sometimes bad business. Sir Polycarpus Wharton, who had a twenty-one years' lease under Charles II, James II and William III, is said to have lost £24,000 over the mills, simply because he could not get paid by the Government, and actually went to a debtor's prison. Fifty years ago the industry had declined almost to a vanishing point. It revived in 1880, when experiments were made in new powders for heavy guns, and to-day the Chilworth Mills make cordite, without the miserable consequences which befel Sir Polycarpus Wharton.