We were away from Cambridge by nine o'clock and soon found ourselves in a country quite different in appearance from any we had yet passed through. Our route led through Essex to Colchester on the coast. We passed through several ancient towns, the first of them being Haverhill, which contributed a goodly number of the Pilgrim Fathers and gave its name to the town of Haverhill in Massachusetts. It is an old, straggling place that seems to be little in harmony with the progress of the Twentieth Century.
Our route on leaving Haverhill led through narrow byways, which wind among the hills with turns so sharp that a close lookout had to be maintained. We paused at Heddingham, where there is a great church and a partly ruined Norman castle. The town is made up largely of cottages with thatched roofs, surrounded by the bright English flower gardens. It was typical of several other places which we passed on our way. I think that in no section of England did we find a greater number of picturesque churches than in Essex, and a collection of photographs of these, which was secured at Earl's Colne, we prize very highly.
Colchester is an interesting town, deserving of much longer time than we were able to stay. It derived its name from King Cole, the "merry old soul" of the familiar nursery rhyme. It is one of the oldest towns in England and was of great importance in Roman times. One of the largest collections of Roman relics in Britain is to be found in the museum of the castle. There are hundreds of specimens of coin, pottery, jewelry, statuary, etc., all of which were found in excavations within the city. The castle is one of the gloomiest and rudest in the Kingdom, and was largely built of Roman bricks. It is quadrangular in shape, with high walls from twenty to thirty feet thick surrounding a small court. About a hundred years ago it was sold to a contractor who planned to tear it down for the material, but after half completing his task he gave it up, leaving enough of the old fortress to give a good idea of what it was like.
The grim old ruin has many dark traditions of the times when "man's inhumanity to man" was the rule rather than the exception. Even the mild, nonresistant Quaker could not escape the bitterest persecution and in one of the dungeons of Colchester Castle young George Fox was immured and suffered death from neglect and starvation. This especially attracted our attention, since the story had been pathetically told by the speaker at the Sunday afternoon meeting which we attended at Jordans and which I refer to in the following chapter. While there is a certain feeling of melancholy that possesses one when he wanders through these mouldering ruins, yet he often can not help thinking that they deserved their fate.
Colchester suffered terribly in Parliamentary wars and only surrendered to Cromwell after sustaining a seventy-six day siege, many traces of which may still be seen. There are two or three ancient churches dating from Saxon times which exhibit some remarkable specimens of Saxon architecture. Parts of Colchester appeared quite modern and up-to-date, the streets being beautifully kept, and there were many handsome residences. Altogether, there is a strange combination of the very old and the modern in Colchester.
We left this highway at Chelmsford to visit the Greenstead Church near Chipping-Ongar, about twenty-two miles from London. This is one of the most curious churches in all England. It is a diminutive building, half hidden amidst the profusion of foliage, and would hardly attract attention unless one had learned of its unique construction and remarkable history. It is said to be the only church in England which is built with wooden walls, these being made from the trunks of large oak trees split down the center and roughly sharpened at each end. They are raised from the ground by a low brick foundation, and inside the spaces between the trunks are covered with pieces of wood. The rough timber frame of the roof is fastened with wooden pins. The interior of the building is quite dark, there being no windows in the wooden walls, and the light comes in from a dormer window in the roof. This church was built in the year 1010 to mark the resting place of St. Edmund the Martyr, whose remains were being carried from Bury to London. The town of Ongar, near by, once had an extensive castle, of which little remains, and in the chancel of the church is the grave of Oliver Cromwell's favorite daughter. A house in High Street was for some time the residence of David Livingstone, the great African explorer.
From Chipping-Ongar we followed for the third time the delightful road leading to London, passing through the village of Chigwell, of which I have spoken at length elsewhere. On coming into London, we found the streets in a condition of chaos, owing to repairs in the pavement. The direct road was quite impassable and we were compelled to get into the city through by-streets—not an easy task. In London the streets do not run parallel as in many of our American cities. No end of inquiry was necessary to get over the ten miles after we were in the city before we reached our hotel. It was not very convenient to make inquiries, either, when driving in streets crowded to the limit where our car could not halt for an instant without stopping the entire procession. We would often get into a pocket behind a slow-moving truck or street car and be compelled to crawl along for several blocks at the slowest speed.
It was just sunset when we stopped in front of the Hotel Russell. We had been absent on our tour six weeks to a day and our odometer registered exactly 3070 miles. As there were five or six days of the time that we did not travel, we had averaged about six hundred miles a week during the tour. The weather had been unusually fine for England; we had perhaps half a dozen rainy days, but only once did it rain heavily. We had now traveled a total of 4100 miles and had visited the main points of interest in the Kingdom excepting those in the country south of the city, where we planned a short tour before sailing. We remained in London a week before starting on this trip, but during that time I did not take the car out of the garage. I had come to the conclusion that outside of Sundays and holidays the nervous strain of attempting to drive an automobile in the streets of London was such as to make the effort not worth while.
