CHAPTER V
SHALFORD TO ALBURY
THE line of the Pilgrims’ Way may be clearly followed from the banks of the Wey up the hill. It goes through Shalford Park, up Ciderhouse Lane, where the ancient Pesthouse or refuge for sick pilgrims and travellers, now called Ciderhouse Cottage, is still standing, and leads through the Chantrey Woods straight to St. Martha’s Chapel.
The district through which it takes us is one{76} of the wildest and loveliest parts of Surrey. “Very few prettier rides in England,” remarks Cobbett, who repeatedly travelled along this track, and the beauty of the views all along its course will more than repay the traveller who makes his way on foot over the hills from Guildford to Dorking. One of the most extensive is to be had from St. Martha’s Hill, where the prospect ranges in one direction over South Leith Hill and the South Downs far away to the Weald of Sussex and the well-known clump of Chanctonbury Ring; and on the other over the commons and moors to the crests of Hindhead and the Hog’s Back; while looking northward we have a wide view over the Surrey plains and the valley of the Thames, and Windsor Castle and the dome of St. Paul’s may be distinguished on clear days.
The ancient chapel on the summit, which gives its name to St. Martha’s Hill, was originally built in memory of certain Christians who suffered martyrdom on the spot, and was formerly dedicated to all holy martyrs, while the hill itself was known as the Martyrs’ Hill, of which, as Grose{77} remarks,[8] “the present name is supposed to be a corruption.” In the twelfth century it became peculiarly associated with the Canterbury pilgrims, and a new chancel was built for their use, and consecrated to St. Thomas à Becket in the year 1186. In 1262 this chapel was attached to the Priory of Newark, an Augustinian convent near Ripley, dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury by Ruald de Calva in the reign of Richard Cœur de Lion. The Prior already owned most of the hill-side, and the names of Farthing Copse and Halfpenny Lane, through which the pilgrims passed on their way to St. Martha’s Chapel, remind us of the tolls which he levied from all who travelled along the road. We have already seen how in the earlier portions of the Way the Prior of Newark disputed the rights of the Abbot of Waverley. Here he reigned supreme. A priest from Newark Priory served St. Martha’s Chapel, and is said to have lived at Tyting’s Farm, an old gabled house with the remains of a small oratory close to the Pilgrims’ Way. In latter days a colony of monks{78} from Newark settled at Chilworth, where the present manor-house contains fragments of monastic building, and the fishponds of the friars may still be seen near the terraced gardens. During the troubled times of the Wars of the Roses the Chapel of St. Martha fell into ruins, and owed its restoration to Bishop William of Waynflete, who in 1463 granted forty days’ indulgence to all pilgrims who should visit the shrine and there repeat a Pater Noster, an Ave, and a Credo, or contribute to its repair. After the dissolution of the monasteries both Newark Priory and St. Martha’s shrine fell into ruins, and the chapel was only restored of late years. At Chilworth, south of St. Martha’s Hill, lies the once fair valley which has been defaced by the powder-mills, first established there three centuries ago by an ancestor of John Evelyn, and now worked by steam. This is the place which Cobbett denounces in his “Rural Rides” with a vigour and eloquence worthy of Mr. Ruskin himself:
“This valley, which seems to have been created by a bountiful Providence as one of the choicest{79} 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 mind 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 budding of the buds is seen in spring; where no rigour of season 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 this grand manufactory; and perverse and ungrateful man not only lends his aid, but lends it cheerfully. To think that the springs which God has commanded to flow from the sides of these happy hills for the comfort and delight of man—to think that these springs should be perverted into means of spreading misery over a whole nation!”{80}
One of these “inventions of the devil” has been removed. The paper-mills which made the bank-notes in Cobbett’s time are silent now, but the powder-mills are in full activity, and Chilworth, with its coal-stores and railway-crossing, has a blackened and desolate look which not all the natural beauties of its surroundings can dispel.