Beckenham Church, Kent.
Beckenham Church, Kent.
The parish of Beckenham lends its name to the hundred, which is in the lath of Sutton-at-Hone. It is ten miles from London, two miles north from Bromley, and, according to the last census, contains 196 houses and 1180 inhabitants. The living is a rectory valued in the king’s books at 6l. 18s. 9d. The church is dedicated to St. George.
—Beyond “Chaffinch’s River” there is an enticing field-path to Beckenham, but occasional sights of noble trees kept us along the high road, till the ring of the blacksmith’s hammer signalled that we were close upon the village. We wound through it at a slow pace, vainly longing for something to realize the expectations raised by the prospect of it on our way.
Beckenham consists of two or three old farm-like looking houses, rudely encroached upon by a number of irregularly built dwellings, and a couple of inns; one of them of so much apparent consequence, as to dignify the place. We soon came to an edifice which, by its publicity, startles the feelings of the passenger in this, as in almost every other parish, and has perhaps greater tendency to harden than reform the rustic offender—the “cage,” with its accessory, the “pound.” An angular turn in the road, from these lodgings for men and cattle when they go astray, afforded us a sudden and delightful view of
“The decent church that tops the neighb’ring hill.”
On the right, an old, broad, high wall, flanked with thick buttresses, and belted with magnificent trees, climbs the steep, to enclose the domain of I know not whom; on the opposite side, the branches, from a plantation, arch beyond the footpath. At the summit of the ascent is the village church with its whitened spire, crowning and pinnacl’ing this pleasant grove, pointing from amidst the graves—like man’s last only hope—towards heaven.
This village spire is degradingly noticed in “An accurate Description of Bromley and Five Miles round, by Thomas Wilson, 1797.” He says, “An extraordinary circumstance happened here near Christmas, 1791; the steeple of this church was destroyed by lightning, but a new one was put up in 1796, made of copper, in the form of an extinguisher.” The old spire, built of shingles, was fired on the morning of the 23d of December, in the year seventeen hundred and ninety, in a dreadful storm. One of the effects of it in London I perfectly remember:—the copper roofing of the new “Stone Buildings” in Lincoln’s Inn was stripped off by the wind, and violently carried over the opposite range of high buildings, the Six Clerks’ offices, into Chancery Lane, where I saw the immense sheet of metal lying in the carriage way, exactly as it fell, rolled up, with as much neatness as if it had been executed by machinery. As regards the present spire of Beckenham church, its “form,” in relation to its place, is the most appropriate that could have been devised—a picturesque object, that marks the situation of the village in the forest landscape many miles round, and indescribably graces the nearer view.
We soon came up to the corpse-gate of the church-yard, and I left W. sketching it,[222] whilst I retraced my steps into the village in search of the church-keys at the parish clerk’s, from whence I was directed back again, to “the woman who has the care of the church,” and lives in the furthest of three neat almshouses, built at the church-yard side, by the private benefaction of Anthony Rawlings, in 1694. She gladly accompanied us, with the keys clinking, through the mournful yew-tree grove, and threw open the great south doors of the church. It is an old edifice—despoiled of its ancient font—deprived, by former beautifyings, of carvings and tombs that in these times would have been remarkable. It has remnants of brasses over the burial places of deceased rectors and gentry, from whence dates have been wantonly erased, and monuments of more modern personages, which a few years may equally deprave.