COLCHESTER TO THE EXTRAORDINARY "DENE-HOLES" AT GRAYS, ESSEX
Early rising a mistake—Fine weather and misty mornings—Bound for Grays, near Tilbury—To Chelmsford—Great Baddow and Clare College, Cambridge—Galleywood Common—A wide prospect—Billericay—Origin of name an enigma—Arthur Young on the country and roads—Same roads to-day—Effect of heavy motors—A plea for overhanging trees—Horndon on the Hill—Langdon Hill a fine view—Arthur Young rhapsodizes—Defoe at Chadwell—Little Thurrock—Hangman's Wood or Hairyman's Wood?—If the latter, possible connection with Peter the Wild Man—His story—Defoe's interest in him—The "Dene-holes"—An antiquary who gave no help—Enigmas not solved by designatory titles—The shafts—The groups of chambers—Dimensions—Uniformity of shape—Groups all separate—Absence of Orientation—Known to Camden—Neglected till 1884 and 1887, then again—No suggestive remains found—Cannot be chalk wells—Hardly flint mines as at Brandon—Legend of "King Cunobelin's Gold Mines"—Conceivably granaries—Not very likely—Why not refuges from the Danes, small at first and enlarged later?—Harmless speculation at any rate—Suggestion for return to Colchester—To Clacton by motor-boat, thence by train—Take glance at Burnham on Crouch—Quaint and hospitable.
Now doubts arise, and I hover between two opinions. Dinner and rest are supposed to have intervened before we carry on our little tour or series of tours. That is a small thing to demand. A playwright thinks nothing of an interval of years between two acts. The difficulty is that our imaginary tour of to-day is one of fully one hundred miles, and is much more likely to stretch out into one hundred and twenty, for few motorists will take the advice, honestly given, to retrace their wheelmarks for some fifty miles. That, really, is not half so bad as it sounds, for the eye of the most practised motorist does not observe so quickly while passing in one direction that nothing remains to be noticed about the same objects when passed from another direction. Still there are at least a hundred miles to go, some of them over familiar roads about which no further observations are necessary, to see a sight of mysterious interest which has, to all appearances, not obtained a tenth of the notice it richly deserves. Shall we, then, rise early in the morning, so that we may have leisure to proceed quietly and to enjoy "the clear morning air"? The suggestion is declined without thanks by the wise woman or man. The pleasures of early-rising and of the cool morning air are a fond delusion of the ancients; just as the idea that it is virtuous to get up early belongs to a state of opinion in which actions were believed to be virtuous if they were decidedly unpleasant. Now that this state of opinion has vanished the one consolation of rising early has disappeared also. Early-rising, especially in hotels, is a hollow fraud. It means reluctant relinquishment of the comfort of bed, futile attempts to eat breakfast served by sulky and half-awakened waiters, at a time when the body is not ready for that breakfast. Men quarry their food and crush it at these ghastly hours, but they do not really feed, and they are none the better for their effort so to do. Motoring loses half its joy when it is done at the cost of sleep, for it certainly may be held truth with a nameless poet, who sung that he had tried all the pleasures of this world,
And Love it was the best of them,
But Sleep worth all the rest of them.
Besides, even when the glass is set fair, and the day proper is going to be all that the heart can desire, the cool, clear, and beautiful air of the morning by no means always comes up to expectation. The prelude to a really fine day is very often a dense mist, sure forerunner of heat, from dawn until seven or eight o'clock; and in a dense mist no man can travel at a reasonable pace or with any pleasure at all. Moreover, the days when one gets up early for pleasure, especially in August, September, and October, are precisely the days on which the tricksy spirit of the mist chooses to make herself manifest.
Our destination is Grays, a squalid little town near Tilbury, on the estuary of the Thames, to which no sane person would think of going on pleasure for its own sake. There is a ferry from Tilbury across the Thames estuary, forgotten when I wrote earlier of the isolation of East Anglia, but little used by motorists. Grays is about fifty miles off by our route, which seems the best, and it will be time enough to explain why Grays has been chosen when we foregather round the luncheon table there. Better still, for although I secured a good luncheon in a house of public entertainment at Grays once the circumstances were exceptional, will it be to take a well-stocked luncheon basket and to lunch, not at Grays, but at Hangman's Wood, a mile or two to the east of Grays. We will not start before 9.30 a.m. and it will be bad luck indeed if we cannot reach it by 1.30 p.m. It is to be feared, however, that there may be some difficulty in inducing intelligent members of the party to leave Hangman's Wood so early as 3.30. So, having roused curiosity in the manner familiar to writers of serial stories, that is to say by breaking off at a critical moment, let us proceed in a leisurely way.
And first we spin along the familiar Roman road to Chelmsford, enjoying, be it hoped, the kind of weather invoked for "poor Tom Bowline," and making the most of good and straight going. The chances are that before the day ends we shall have to "put up with" something worse in the way of surface, and it is certain that we shall not have to lament monotonous straightness later on. In the heart of Chelmsford we ask for the Great Baddow road, and a short couple of miles takes us to a big Essex village, attractive to the eye, but not calling imperatively for a halt. The fact that this village was the birthplace of Richard de Badow, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, in the time of Edward II, may be assimilated en voyage. University Hall, Cambridge, was founded by de Badow and the University conjointly. The Hall exists no longer, had indeed a very brief existence, for it was one thing to found it, and quite another to keep it going; and some time before 1360, when Elizabeth de Clare (who was granddaughter to Edward I) died after founding Clare College, University Hall had been merged in the college founded by this wealthy heiress of that "illustrious family of Clare" which has come to the fore in an earlier drive from Colchester. Great Baddow, therefore, has a connection, and that a distinct connection, with the college which was nursing mother to Latimer, whose most celebrated sermon is still part of the literary groundwork of every cultivated Englishman's style; to Cudworth, whose words used to be read by aspirants for honours in Greats at Oxford, and may still be so read; to Tillotson, whose sermons are familiar by name in the literature of the past; and lastly, if one among the moderns may be named, to Mr. Owen Seaman, editor of Punch and genial castigator of the weaknesses of all sorts and conditions of men.
At Great Baddow we turn to the right and then climb to the upland known as Galleywood Common, and already seen; and after that we climb again, a hundred feet as nearly as may be in a mile, to a nameless point of the road two miles west of West Manningfield. The air grows fresher, more invigorating, and if there be a suspicion of easterly direction in the breeze the breath of the sea will be recognized. Prospect, to use the expressive word beloved of the ancient topographer, is wider and more comprehensive than that to which we have been accustomed of late, for most of the country between us and the estuary of the Thames is very flat indeed, and in such a country a hill of 314 feet gives a very wide survey. Nine miles or thereabouts, mostly on a downward gradient, takes us to Billericay, but this ancient town itself stands on a hill. Why Billericay? Of a truth it is not possible to say, for the etymologies suggested are purely conjectural and not at all convincing, and all we know is that it was known as Billerica in the latter part of the fourteenth century. This is rather annoying, for most place-names are either susceptible of some explanation or of such a simple character that there seems to be no particular reason why they should not exist. "Billericay," on the other hand, is an etymological puzzle, and, at the same time, much too odd a title to have come into existence casually.
Billericay was one of the places visited by Arthur Young on his Six Weeks' Tour, and his description of the country is quoted both for the sake of variety and because it contains a useful reference to our destination of the day. He had been to Chelmsford, which he considered a pretty, neat, and well-built town, and he had remarked that all the cart-horses he saw from Sudbury to Chelmsford were of a remarkably large size. "From the latter town I proceeded to Billericay; the country very rich, woody, and pleasant, with abundance of exceeding fine landscapes over extensive valleys. The husbandry, I apprehend, not equal to that in use about Chelmsford; for their principal course is fallowing for wheat, then sowing oats and laying down with clover and ray-grass, which is a very faulty custom on land which, like this, lets in general from 15s. to 20s. an acre; nor did I see many good crops. The principal manure they use about Billericay is chalk, which they fetch in waggons from Grays, and costs them generally by the time they get it home 5-1/2d. or 6d. a bushel. They seldom use it alone, but mix it with turf, fresh dug, and farmyard dung, and then lay it on for wheat, now and then for turnips, which are however seldom sown in this neighbourhood. All this manure is sometimes spread at the expense of £10 an acre."
From Billericay to Tilbury, pretty much our route, Arthur Young was principally interested by the "prodigious size of the farms," a matter of no present concern. But he has something to say later which is very much to our purpose. "Of all the roads that ever disgraced our kingdom, in the very ages of barbarism, none ever equalled that from Billericay to the King's Head at Tilbury. It is for near twelve miles so narrow that a mouse may not pass by any carriage. I saw a fellow creep under his waggon to assist me to lift, if possible, my chaise over a hedge. The ruts are of an incredible depth, and a pavement of diamonds might as well be fought for as a quarter" [sic, meaning?]. "The trees everywhere overgrow the road, so that it is totally impervious to the sun, except at a few places. And to add to all the infamous circumstances which concur to plague a traveller, I must not forget eternally meeting with chalk-waggons; themselves frequently stuck fast, till a collection of them are in the same situation, that twenty or thirty horses may be tacked to each, to draw them out one by one. After this description, will you—can you believe me when I tell you, that a turnpike was much solicited by some gentlemen to lead from Chelmsford to the ferry at Tilbury Fort, but opposed by the bruins of this country—whose horses are worried to death while bringing chalk through these vile roads? I do not imagine that the kingdom produces such an instance of vile stupidity; and yet in this district are found numbers of farmers who cultivate above £1000 a year. Besides those already mentioned we find a Skinner and a Tower, who each rent near £1500 a year, and a Read almost equal; but who are all perfectly well contented with their roads."