Through East Anglia in a Motor Car

by James Edmund Vincent

Essex byways—and yet the road from Chelmsford to Tilbury ferry was hardly a byway in those days—are not quite so bad as this to-day, but emphatically they are not good, and in this particular district they are clearly not likely to improve. Arthur Young's long series of chalk-laden wagons, stuck fast in the mire and clay until such time as the combined teams were strong enough to extricate them one by one, are a thing of the past. But the joint evidence of Mr. Sidney Stallard and of Mr. Seymour Williams, who were chosen to represent the Rural District Councils Association before the recent Royal Commission, contains an interesting piece of information on this point, and on one general point of great importance. These gentlemen, engineers of considerable experience and officially familiar with the road question, do not think that light motors cause any considerable damage to roads, but they hold a very different opinion as to heavy motors. "At Billericay, which is an agricultural district, steam motors are used, and they cause damage there to the extent of £700." Obviously this is a very large annual expense for a district like that of Billericay, where the great farms of Arthur Young's day do not, in modern conditions and with modern prices, produce anything approaching to the profits of days gone by. It seems to follow that, at present at any rate, it would be unreasonable to hope for any great improvement in the byways of Essex, and more prudent to expect deterioration.

One word I would fain say of Arthur Young's complaint, because it is one often made now and, receiving a great deal of attention, is a menace to one of the most precious and characteristic beauties of England. He complains of the trees that overshadow the road, "so that it is totally impervious to the sun, except at a few places." So do County Surveyors complain and, since they have certain legal rights in this matter, they insist from time to time that trees overshadowing the road and hedges by the side of the road shall be cut down. To this process, within reasonable limits, those who value the silvan greenery of England would be unreasonable to object. High hedges near cross roads or at sharp turns of the road are a source of danger; the surface of roads much overshadowed by trees is far more difficult to preserve than that of roads in the open, because the shaded surfaces are seldom thoroughly dried. The drip and the shade combined are too much for the sun and the wind. On the other hand such stretches of road are rarely dusty, and that is assuredly something gained. It would be easy, if somewhat invidious, to point out instances in which County Surveyors, without exceeding their authority, have caused roadside trees to be hewn down and roadside hedges to be levelled to the ground, without sufficient justification, from the standpoint of a regard for the public safety, and with no justification at all, if the value of beautiful landscapes is to be taken into account. Let us beware lest, in making travel over the face of our England easy, we deprive it of half its charm.

After Billericay our next point is Horndon on the Hill, concerning the view from which "over the rich land of Essex and along the Thames" "Murray" speaks. The view from Horndon is not, however, to be compared with that from Langdon Hill, climbed six miles to the south of Billericay, which is 385 ft. high against the 128 of Horndon. It was of this hill, doubtless, that Arthur Young raved in the annexed passage: "I forgot to tell you," he wrote from the "King's Head," Tilbury, on 24 June, 1767, "that near Horndon, on the summit of a vast hill, one of the most astonishing prospects to be beheld, breaks almost at once upon one of the dark lanes. Such a prodigious valley, everywhere painted with the finest verdure, and intersected with numberless hedges and woods, appears beneath you, that it is past description; the Thames winding through it, full of ships, and bounded by the hills of Kent. Nothing can exceed it, unless that which Hannibal exhibited to his disconsolate troops, when he bade them behold the glories of the Italian plains! If ever a turnpike should lead through this country, I beg you will go and view this enchanting scene, though a journey of forty miles is necessary first. I never beheld anything equal to it in the West of England, that region of landscape."

Some hyperbole there is here, perhaps, but not much of it, for the view of land and sea is very fine and, best of all, it is hardly necessary to have the car in order to secure it. The difference between the aspect of the river, as it presents itself to us, and that which it presented to Arthur Young is all to our disadvantage. For him an out-going ship was always a sailing vessel; for us the sailing vessels are few and far between, and those of large size which still use the Thames must needs rely on a fussy, black-smoked tug to tow them down the tortuous channel. Our many steamers are not so picturesque in themselves as the tall ships making for the open sea of his day were, when the wind was favourable. Our steamers, too, belch forth clouds of smoke, befouling the air and obscuring the landscape. Still, as J. M. W. Turner and others, but Turner most of all, have proved to us, there is a weird beauty of smoke if we will but open our eyes to see it, and the Rochester barges, floating low on the water and carrying their delicious brown sails, were of Young's days no less than they are of ours. Father Thames from a height is still a sight for appreciative eyes.

Two ways to Grays are open from Horndon. By the first, turning to the right at Horndon, Orsett is reached, and then a left turn brings one to Chadwell. For the second, one keeps on straight through Horndon and, turning to the right just before reaching Stanford-le-Hope, and then turning to left a couple of miles on, one also reaches Chadwell. There is nothing to choose between the routes. One is dreary as the other. We go to Chadwell simply in order to attain Little Thurrock, a mile or so from Grays to the eastward, and just behind Tilbury Docks. In either case we pass through Chadwell, which has a certain interest in connection with the past, if none in the present, for here Daniel Defoe lived for some years, as secretary of brick and pantile works, became prosperous a second time, kept his coach, and even launched out into a pleasure boat. During this period, too, he lived at Tilbury, in "a house near the water's edge," but house and brickworks are alike gone.

We are now close to the object of our quest, "Hangman's Wood" or "Hairy Man's" Wood. "Murray" says the latter; the local gentlemen who called my attention to its strange contents certainly said the former. If the former be the correct name the explanation is obvious. Our ancestors used the noose freely, for all kinds of offenders, and displayed a partiality for hanging offenders, especially highwaymen, in a conspicuous place, which was often called in accordance with its gruesome use. Many examples might be found; the first that comes to mind is Gallows Point on the Menai Straits, about a mile on the Menai Bridge side of Beaumari. This wood, clothing a gentle eminence between Grays and Tilbury, having a road on either side of it, would have suited admirably the accomplishment of the highwayman's designs on the public in the first place, and the public's punishment of the highwayman later. He would be hanged, like a rook over sprouting wheat, conspicuously at the place of his misdeeds, to serve as an example to evildoers.

Still, information obtained by word of mouth may always be misheard, and it seemed worth while to think who could the Hairy Man be? Surely none other than "Peter the Wild Boy," who afterwards became "Peter the Wild Man," for he was, to all appearances, twelve or thirteen when he was found in 1724, and he lived until 1785. Peter was found in a field near Hamelin, the Pied Piper's Hamelin, naked, brownish, and very hairy, in the act of sucking a cow; and quite unable to speak. He was brought to England—as the time was that of our first Hanoverian King this was quite in the natural course of things—and the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, took an interest in him. He was placed in a hospital, very possibly in the neighbourhood of Tilbury, for safety; the name Peter was given to him, and after the efforts of many teachers had proved futile, he was handed over to the care of a farmer living near Berkhampsted, where, wearing a collar with an inscription to the effect that any person bringing him back would be rewarded, he lived to the end of his life. That he was of a roaming disposition the inscription on his collar proves, but I have no evidence to suggest that he ever wandered into this particular wood. On the other hand there is a faint suspicion that he may have done so, for Defoe, who doubtless knew the wood intimately, was interested in Peter, visited him, and made him the peg upon which to hang a pamphlet on education, including much satire on the men and manners of his time, and a savage attack on his old enemy Swift.

Hangman's Wood, or Hairy Man's Wood, call it which you will, contains something very much more interesting than Peter the Wild Man is to us now, in the shape of what are called locally the "Dene Holes," or sometimes "King Cunobelin's Gold Mines"; for Peter is dead long since, his enigma perished with him, and when all is said and done the chances are that he was neither more nor less than an idiot boy, who grew into an idiot man. On the other hand, these Dene Holes are with us still, and nobody has succeeded in reading their enigma. I obtained an entry to them two or three years ago, having journeyed to Grays for the purpose, simply because the proprietor of the principal hotel in Grays was anxious that some writing person should see and describe these very peculiar excavations, which certainly have not secured anything approaching to adequate notice in recent years from the learned. The hotel-keeper's motives may not have been purely altruistic; altruism, indeed, is not the most conspicuous quality of the average hotel-keeper. He may have suspected that, if the existence of this curiosity were more generally known, visitors would come to Grays, and to his hotel, requiring refreshment and conveyance to Hangman's Wood, both of which he might provide to his profit. To the philosophical mind that makes no difference. The things are either worth seeing, at the expense of some trouble, or they are not. My firm conviction is that they are very well worth seeing indeed, and an attempt shall be made to justify it by describing that which I saw and that which, no doubt, anybody else may see upon applying at this hotel, the name of which has escaped memory. That again does not matter, for once at Grays, there will be no difficulty in finding the hotel that is interested in the Dene Holes.

Let a word of preliminary warning be given. Not long after this expedition to Grays, and before its results had appeared in print, it was my fortune to meet as a fellow-guest an eminent member of the Society of Antiquaries, an official, I fancy, of that august body, to whom it seemed right that I should mention these holes in the ground of Hangman's Wood (of which, indeed, my mind was very full) and describe them to the best of my ability. He listened patiently, with an appearance of interest, and then observed that the holes were "dene-holes," and that there were similar cavities in many other parts of England. The answer was really rather disappointing, not because it seemed to prick my little bubble of interest, but because it was what I had found in a good many books, written by persons who were in no way to blame, because the chance of seeing these particular holes had not been open to them, and because, judging by descriptions, the other dene-holes were not in the least identical with those of Hangman's Wood. I felt very much in the position of the questioner who, on asking what the duties of an archdeacon might be, received the sterile and stereotyped reply that an archdeacon performs archidiaconal functions. An enigma is not explained by giving a name to it. It is worth while to read an account at first hand of the dene-holes of Hangman's Wood, even though you are under the impression that you know all about dene-holes, unless indeed you have seen these particular holes. If so you cannot have failed to be deeply interested in them.

On the occasion under notice we drove about a mile or a mile and a half from Grays to the nearest corner of this wood, where the road forks to Orsett and to Chadwell. From an article written when the scene was fresh in memory it appears that this wood left the impression on me that it was not a recent and artificial plantation, that it might even be primeval. In this wood are some fifty shafts, some of which had been opened at the time of my visit, while others remained overgrown with brushwood but easily traceable. Attention had, indeed, been directed towards these shafts not long before by the horrid discovery of the decaying body of a man at the bottom of one of them. It was, indeed, a singular thing that traces of more such catastrophes were not discovered when examination was made of the holes. It was a consequence, perhaps, of the very unpleasant way upon which the holes had forced themselves upon public attention that a windlass and cage had been rigged up over the mouth of one of them—the apparatus was clearly meant to be permanent—for the purposes of descent and ascent. The cage was but small—big enough to accommodate one passenger only—for though the mouths of the shafts are funnel-shaped, because if they were not the gravel sides would fall in, the shafts become cylindrical so soon as they enter the coherent Thanet sand, and are of such a width that a man of middle height may place his back against one side and ascend, or descend, without much difficulty by the aid of footholes cut on the other side. After the gravel the shaft passes through the Thanet sand for some twenty feet more and for a very short space, after the Thanet sand ends, through the chalk. Then at last the cage feels the bottom of the shaft. The passenger emerges, and can see dimly that he is in a vaulted chamber of chalk.