The Skirts of the Great City

by N. D'Anvers

Sydenham

Although the fame of its college and gallery has long since eclipsed that of its spa, Dulwich was at one time much frequented by the wealthy citizens of London, who resorted there to drink the waters of a spring near the Green Man Inn, the site of which was later occupied by the private school of Dr. Glennie, pulled down in its turn in 1825, in which Lord Byron was a pupil for two years. There was a rival well in the neighbouring hamlet of Sydenham that was even more popular, but all traces of both are now lost, and there is absolutely nothing about the densely populated neighbourhood dominated by the Crystal Palace, to recall the days when Campbell lived in the old house still standing on Peak Hill, where he wrote 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' 'O'Connor's Child,' and the 'Battle of the Baltic.' The view from the terrace of the palace itself is of course much the same in its general features as that upon which the poet looked down, but the forest in which he used to wander, that gave its name to Forest Hill, is replaced by a sea of villas with no special character about them. Fortunately the palace, in spite of the north wing having been destroyed by fire in 1866, is a dignified-looking structure. It was built with the materials and partly on the plan of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and the public are to be congratulated on the fact that its three hundred acres of grounds preserve some of their original rural character when the district was one of the most beautiful near London.

Anerley, once famed for its tea-gardens; Gypsy Hill, long the haunt of Zingari squatters; Norwood, or the wood north of Croydon; Streatham, long the home of Mrs. Piozzi, with whom Dr. Johnson often stayed; and Penge, that appears in an early nineteenth-century map as a town with one inn, the Crooked Billet, were all for many centuries outlying settlements, each with a distinctive charm of its own, the last-named set in the midst of a wide-stretching common crossed by the Croydon Canal with many picturesque locks, now replaced by the iron road, the levelling influence of which is apparent on every side.

Hayes

From the somewhat melancholy fate that has overtaken so much of Kent and Surrey, the wildly beautiful Keston Common has so far escaped, and the villages of Hayes and Keston, both on its north-western edge, are still unspoiled. The former has a well-restored Early English church, its Georgian rectory is a fine example of the domestic architecture of its period, and near to it is the celebrated Hayes Place, built in 1757 by the great orator and statesman, Lord Chatham, whose favourite home it was. In it, two years after its completion, was born his even more famous son, William Pitt the younger, whose childhood was passed in a small house connected with Hayes Place by a covered-in passage, for his father was already suffering from the depression which so often clouded his happiness, and, as related by Horace Walpole, who was a frequent guest of Lord Chatham, the harassed statesman 'could not bear his children under the same roof, nor communication from room to room, nor whatever he thought promoted noise.' When in 1766 the elder Pitt inherited another property elsewhere Hayes Place was sold to the Honourable Thomas Walpole, but its previous owner was taken ill soon afterwards, and entreated the purchaser to let him have it back. He was convinced, he said, that he could recover nowhere else, and his whim was humoured, with the best results. Lord Chatham returned to his old home, which was his chief residence until his death. There he received George II. and George III., as well as the leading politicians of the day; and there the young General Wolfe dined with him on the eve of sailing for Canada. The younger William Pitt was now the constant companion of the 'oracle of Hayes,' as his father was affectionately called by his intimates, imbibing from him no doubt much of the practical wisdom that from the first distinguished him; and he it was who had the melancholy privilege of carrying the stricken minister from the House of Lords when he fell down insensible after his noble speech against the unworthy terms of peace proposed by the Duke of Richmond. The dying statesman was taken back to Hayes Place, where in a small room on the ground floor he breathed his last four weeks later.

After the death of Lord Chatham, Hayes Place was sold, and since then it has changed hands many times, but fortunately its various owners have respected it for the sake of its memories, and but for the addition of a new entrance-hall it remains practically what it was during the occupancy of its first owner. It is the same with the stables, that are some little distance from the house, which have been kept as they were when the old earl and his sons used daily to go down to inspect the horses, and in one corner of the yard is a platform from which, according to tradition, William Pitt the younger used to rehearse his speeches in the presence of his father and the rest of the household.

Keston village, originally a dependency of the manor of the same name that was once the property of Bishop Odo of Bayeux, consists of a few old houses and cottages, some grouped about the Red Cross Inn, also known as Keston Mark, possibly because it is situated on an ancient boundary, others on the common near a picturesque windmill. Its church, a humble little sanctuary, with a nave and chancel only, contains a fine Norman arch, possibly a relic of an earlier building, and in its quiet graveyard rests the novelist Mrs. Craik, better known as Miss Muloch.

Holwood House