Egham is a small town surrounded by some very pretty country, which, having been, bit by bit, blemished by taste, has received the final blow from the conspicuous benevolence of a millionaire. This gentleman has built a gorgeous palace, nay, two gorgeous palaces, for imbeciles of the superior class. The buildings, taken together, may be about as big as Windsor Castle, and they are as visibly prominent in the landscape, though not precisely with the same effect. A white granite bridge, designed by Rennie, and opened in 1832, by William IV. and Queen Adelaide, connects Egham with Staines, and in these iron times is a positive relief to the eye afflicted by such viaducts, railway and other, as are rapidly spoiling the Thames. Altogether there is a comfortable modern look about both places, their comeliness, such as it is, being entirely due to natural surroundings. Egham is mainly one long street. The church is a plain structure of the negative style of 1820, the tower being a landmark seen from far. There is likewise a chapel of ease; and there are places of worship for different denominations. What more of Egham? Strode’s almshouses are in its High Street, and a cottage hospital is healthily placed on Egham Hill. The Elizabethan house of Great Fosters is in the neighbourhood. Egham has an annual race-meeting, the course being no other than Runnymede. Staines, new and manufactural as it now appears for the most part—the “linoleum” works having largely contributed to its industrial aspect—is as old as any place in true English history. Ancient records give the name as Stanes. Modernised though it be, Staines is by no means bereft of all antiquity. The church is venerable; and near it is Winicroft House, a Tudor building which some of the good folk, innocent of architecture and chronology, soberly assign to the reign of King John, who sure enough had a palace at Staines, somewhere or other, and not impossibly on this particular site. One of the earliest bridges in England, preceding the Roman, as may be inferred from the Itinerary of Antoninus, crossed the river here. When the Roman road to the west was made, and a military station formed at Staines, it is probable that a stronger bridge was built; and, as most of the Roman bridges in England seem to have been of wood, supported by stone piers, the guess that Staines, or more properly Stanes, took its name from those relics of Roman occupancy, is perhaps pardonable. Just above the town, at the mouth of one of the entrances of the Colne into the Thames, where an ait is formed, stands a monument worth careful attention. It is a square stone shaft on a pedestal, which again is raised on a base formed of three gradations. This is the ancient London stone, or boundary stone, as it is alternatively called, for it has served during many ages to mark the beginning of Middlesex out of Buckinghamshire, and the termination of the city’s jurisdiction over the waters of Thames.
STAINES BRIDGE.
The Conservancy of the river, by long prescription, confirmed by various Charters and Acts of Parliament, was vested in the Lord Mayor and Corporation. Apart from the courts, which were held by the Lord Mayor in person, and with much state, most of the administrative duties have long been performed by a committee of the Corporation, aided by four harbour-masters, an engineer, water-bailiff, and subordinate officers. Till recent times, the Navigation and Port of London Committee, as it was called, held jurisdiction from Staines in Middlesex to Gantlet in Kent, and exerted a strong hand in preventing encroachments on “the bed and soil of the river,” or any injury to its banks. The duties also extended to the regulation of the moorings of vessels in the port, the deepening of channels, the erection and maintenance of public stairs, the repair of locks, weirs, and towing-paths, the control of fisheries, and the seizure of unlawful nets. Tolls and tonnage-dues contributed to the revenue on which the Corporation depended for means of executing all these obligations. They had, as one of their public advocates tersely put it, “a surplus below bridge which they were unable to appropriate, and a deficiency above bridge which they had no power of making good.” Still, no hesitation or serious shortcoming appeared in their fulfilment of duties. But some years ago, a claim to “the bed and soil of the river” was set up by the Crown. Thirteen years’ litigation ended in a compromise. The City consented to acknowledge the title of the Crown, and the Crown consented to grant a title to the Corporation, stipulating, however, that a Government scheme should be embodied in an Act of Parliament. Hence, the Thames Conservancy Act of 1857, which vested the rights and duties in a Board composed of the Lord Mayor, two Aldermen, four Common Councilmen, the Deputy-Master of the Trinity House, two persons chosen by the Admiralty, another person chosen by the Board of Trade, and another by the Trinity House, making twelve in all. By a later enactment these rights and duties were abrogated, and now the jurisdiction of the City over the Upper Thames has altogether ceased.
This is certainly not the place for any argument for or against the deprivation of almost regal authority which the City of London has long swayed. But up-river men, especially anglers, have cause to be grateful for the protection afforded them in the past by the conservators. Staines Deep is a good instance. All the “deeps” on the river are formed for the especial behoof of the angler, who is indebted to their peculiar construction for the abundance of fish that reward his patience, trouble, and skill. A deep is so staked or otherwise protected that no net or coarse process of any description can remove the fish that collect there. Old boats are not unfrequently sunk to prevent the use of nets. All the deeps between Staines and Richmond have been formed on this or some such system at the expense of the London Corporation; and at Staines the never-failing abundance of large roach is due, no doubt, to the careful plan on which the deep is formed. The accessibility of Staines from London makes it exceedingly popular, as is evidenced by the number of boat-houses, and constantly increasing trade of boat-building. The hotels and inns are not spoilt by custom. The little “Swan,” one of the prettiest of old-fashioned houses on the river, is just below the bridge on the Surrey side, and really in Egham parish, though boating men generally speak of it as the “Swan” at Staines. Then there is the “Pack-horse,” on the Middlesex shore, with a good landing-stage. The “Angel and Crown,” which is traditionally associated with the Emery family, having been kept by one of that name in the days when John Emery was the recognised and unapproached stage Yorkshireman, is in the High Street. He played Tyke as probably no other man ever played that character; nor was he less effective in the monstrosities of the stage, Caliban being one of his pet parts, and Pan another. He had a fair range of Shakespearean repertory, being a terribly truthful Barnardine, in Measure for Measure, and a capital Sir Toby Belch. In some panegyric memorial verses which appeared soon after his death was the line—
“And Farmer Ashfield with John Emery died.”
This praise was exaggerated and indiscriminate. The present writer was sitting many years ago at the “Angel and Crown,” in a mixed company of oarsmen, anglers, and residents, when he heard the performance of John Emery as Farmer Ashfield called in question. Somebody had extolled it for its rich Yorkshire dialect. Thereupon a grey-headed old man broke in with a quotation from “Speed the Plough.” In the scene supposed to follow a ploughing-match, when Sir Abel Handy’s patent invention has been kicked to pieces, and carried off at the heels of the frightened horses, Bob Handy answers his father’s question, “Where’s my plough?” by turning to the farmer and inquiring the name of the next county. “We ca’s it Wilzhire, sur,” is the reply. The scene, in fact, is laid in Hants. The grey-haired man was an old actor, and he finished his pertinent reference to Morton’s play with the quiet remark that he too remembered Emery, and admired him in Yorkshire parts, but that Farmer Ashfield was not a Yorkshire part. With a London audience in Emery’s reign all countrymen were Yorkshiremen, just as all foreigners were Frenchmen. We must not leave Staines, where barge-life and riverside character generally may be studied better than at any other spot by the Thames, and the boundary stone without mentioning that this ancient monument bears the traces of its original inscription, dated A.D. 1280, “God preserve the City of London.”
Penton Hook, on the Middlesex side, is a horseshoe-shaped piece of water, where the river shoals out a great deal, so that boats going down the rapid shallow run of half a mile will do well to keep in mid stream, so as to avoid grounding on that shore. If you pronounce Penton Hook as you see it written, you may chance to miss being understood. Penty Hook is the common pronunciation, and if without the aspirate, so much the nearer local correctness. Penty Hook Lock has an average fall of two feet and a half. There is a ferry here, by which you may avoid the Hook and its long pull. The bend at Penty Hook is the natural course of the river, and its horseshoe form, enclosing a large meadow, has the lock for a base. For general fishing, Penty Hook has been famed time out of mind; and, though disappointed men are sometimes heard to lament the growing signs that this fishery has begun to be worked out, every season yields many a well-filled creel. The lock is a good thing for those who voyage for pleasure; not that they go through it, but that it leaves them the undisturbed solitude of the ancient passage, by drawing away the hurriers, who think of nothing but of “getting there,” wherever “there” may be. This retired and tranquil bend is the haunt of water-fowl, and is a very wilderness of butterflies. One of the countless tributary streams that feed the Thames, the Abbey River, babbles of days when the monks of Chertsey kept their preserves well filled from these productive fisheries. Fine trout are taken here still; the strong barbel gives excellent play; a number-twelve hook, mounted on a single hair, and baited with a gentle, will take roach and dace in any quantity, though a heavy float is necessitated by the force and depth of the stream; he who seeks the big chub should cast his line under any of the overhanging willows; and he who scrapes for gudgeon may choose from twenty pitches, any one of which will give him a day’s quick work. Down stream now to Laleham is a short row, or walk, along the Middlesex shore, on which side is the towing-path from Staines as far as Shepperton.