Charles G. Harper

PETERSHAM

The most complete oasis in all these developments is Petersham, on the Surrey side: Petersham, and Ham, and Ham Common. There railways come not, nor tramways. At Petersham are few but old houses and the time-honoured mansions of the great of bygone centuries, inhabited nowadays by the small and futile. So, at any rate, I gather them to be from the sweeping remark made to me some years ago by a man whom I discovered leaning meditatively over a fence, contemplating the view across Petersham meadows.

“Purty place, ain’t it?” said he.

“It is indeed,” said I.

“Ah!” he resumed, “boy and man, I’ve lived here forty year. I remember the time when the people as lived here was people. Now there’s nobody here worth a damn.”

The Duke of Buccleuch lived near by in those halcyon times.

Pleasant hearing, this, for a new-comer who had just taken over a long lease in this region of souls so worthless. This shocking old cynic was—— But no matter; suffice it that he was one who ought to have put it differently.

Yet there are some of the elect, the salt of the earth, who pleasantly savour the lump. Indeed, I live at Petersham myself.

But even here there are woeful changes. Instead of the three inns that formerly graced the village, there are now but two: the Petersham Arms went about fifteen years ago, and now there are but the Dysart Arms and the Fox and Duck. If you want further variety, you must resort to the Fox and Goose, at Ham, or the New Inn, Ham Common. Besides this grievous thing, the landscape is seared by an undesirable novelty, in the shape of a new, very red, red-brick church, which partakes in equal parts of the likeness of a pumping-station and a crematorium. Woodman, spare those trees that grow around it, and Nature, kindly mother, do thou add yet more to their height and size, that we may not, in our going forth and our return, have it, and all it means, constantly before eyes and mind. It has, in addition, lately been furnished with bells, of sorts, that commence early in the morning and wake one untimeously from sleep, often with an air associated with the words of that pagan hymn, “A few more years shall roll.” Pagan, I say, because it tells us that when those few years shall have rolled

It is a godless teaching. We shall not be asleep within the tomb. Our poor bodies, yes, but they are not us. In any case, it is not a pleasant reminder, several times a day, that we shall soon be dead. Church-bells, whatever the legal aspect of the case, are in fact licensed nuisances, established without consulting those who have to hear them, and continually rung without any necessity, in spite of indignant protests.

In this rustic spot we have two churches, two inns, one general shop, a decreasing population, and a general post-office which will hold, all at once, if they are not very big people, and if they stand close together, quite six persons. Exactly what it is like, let this illustration show. It will be seen at once, and without any difficulty whatever, that it is a very humble relation indeed of the General Post-Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand.

There are some curious survivals at Petersham, the more curious because they survive at these late times in such comparatively close proximity to London. Adjoining the Fox and Duck Inn—one of the two aforesaid—is a little wooden building that looks like nothing else than an outhouse for gardening tools. It is really an old village lock-up for petty misdemeanants, such as may often be seen in remote rural places. Behind it is another old institution, equally disused, although it is not so very long since a strayed donkey was placed there. It is the village pound for lost and wandering cattle found upon the road and placed in the pound—impounded—until a claimant appears and pays a shilling to the beadle for release. The present condition of the pound is such that no animal placed in it could well be kept there, for the fence is decayed, and all attempts at maintaining the old institution appear to have been given up. A magnificent crop of nettles and thistles now grows within, and would make it an ideal place for any donkey that might chance to be impounded: donkeys being reputedly fonder of them than of any other kind of food.

Close by this quaint corner the two old curiously gabled Dutch-looking cottages pictured here are seen. The space between them is now merely a yard occupied by the Richmond Corporation for storing carts and road-making materials, but these were once the lodge-gates to the entrance of Petersham Park, in the old times when it was a private estate containing old Petersham Lodge, the mansion of my Lord Harrington, that peer to whom the poet Thomson, of “The Seasons,” alluded in his lines on the view from Richmond Hill:

The view in these pages shows a glimpse of those pendant woods, still flourishing up along the ridge of Richmond Park, but it is now the better part of a hundred years since the Commissioners of Woods and Forests purchased that peer’s old estate, demolished the mansion, and added the land as a very beautiful annexe to Richmond Park. The cottages, with their little gardens, are charming, and would be even more so were they red bricks of which they are built, instead of common yellow stock brick.

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I have just now remarked that there are at Petersham those who are numbered of the elect. But it must sadly be admitted that not all in the borough of Richmond, in which we have the doubtful honour of being included, are of the opinion that Petersham is inhabited by the children of light and grace. Indeed, the following remarks of a deleterious and poisonous character, lately brought to my notice, convince me that there exists among some misguided folk up yonder an idea that this most delightful of surviving villages within a short distance of London is inhabited wholly, or at least largely, by the mentally afflicted. This desolating and alarming belief was brought home to me by a friend, who hired a conveyance at Richmond station, to be brought down to our idyllic village.

“Where to, sir?” asked the flyman.

“Petersham.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the driver—this was entirely uncalled-for, you know—“you mean balmy Petersham.”

“Yes,” rejoined the unsuspecting stranger, “the air there is good, I suppose.”

“I don’t mean the hair,” he was astonished to be told, “but the people what lives there. Don’t you know that they’re all balmy on the crumpet—what you call ‘off it’?”

My poor friend looked a little astonished at this. I am afraid he is not intimately acquainted with the language of the streets.

“Oh! you know!” continued the man, noticing this air of bewilderment: “they’re dotty, that’s what they are.”

“You mean non compos mentis,” rejoined my friend at last, comprehending what was meant, and heroically and waggishly endeavouring to get a bit of his own back, and in turn to mystify this derogatory licensed hackney-driver.

The man, convinced that he had happened upon a “sanguinary German,” said: “Yus, I suppose that’s what you call it in your country,” and mounted his box, and in silence drove down to this asylum for the “balmy.”

It should be said that we in Petersham, who live quietly and engage in delightful pursuits—such as writing books, flower-growing, and criticising our neighbours—do by no means endorse this opinion of our surroundings. As we are of the elect, so also are we exceptionally sane, even among the level-headed. But there is a reason to be found in most things, even in the remarks above quoted. That reason is sought and discovered in the fact that our village is unique: the only place within its easy radius from London in which the surroundings are unspoiled, the air pure, and the means of communication with the great neighbouring roaring world primitive and not readily at command. The nearest railway station is a mile and a quarter away, and such services of omnibuses as have run between Kingston and Richmond, through Petersham, have ever been fugitive and evanescent, and have generally run at intervals of not less than twenty minutes. The peculiar humour or the peculiar tragedy—according to point of view—of these omnibus services is that in fine weather every one wants to walk, and in rain all want to ride; so that in the first case the omnibuses are empty, and in the second cannot cope with the sudden and unlooked-for demand, and one has perforce to walk home and get wet through, or alternatively to wait until the rain ceases.

And during the last remarkable summers there have been occasions when it has rained in torrents, without ceasing, for four days!

My pen, entered upon the woes of the would-be passenger by omnibus, has run away with me, and I must at once disclaim the dawning conclusion that the alleged “balminess” of Petersham is due to rain and the lack of conveyances other than the comparatively expensive flys. Those are not the reasons. Petersham, being entirely rural, even though surrounded by great populations, and yet being near London, it is found by the medical profession to be a convenient district for recommending to patients to whom, for a variety of reasons, it would be inconvenient to go remotely into the provinces. Here, then, qualified somewhat of late years by fleeting irruptions of motor-cars, and by brake-loads of mischievous and bell-ringing children who are brought down from London in summer for school-treats in Petersham Park, invalids may hope to obtain a happy recovery, even though the air, instead of being sharp and bracing, is steamy and languorous. Thus the expression “balmy Petersham,” whether used in the literate sense, or in the regular way of slang, if duly analysed, is found to be essentially a proud title to consideration, instead of a term of reproach. The neighbouring village of Ham is a co-partner in these things, perhaps even in a greater degree, for it is equally distant from a railway station, and fringes a wide common whose remotest corners are at all times extremely secluded.

I spoke just now of mischievous and bell-ringing children, but there are others not intentionally mischievous, who are yet, perhaps, apt to be a little wearing to the nerves of quiet folk who live within gardens behind tall wooden fences overhung by flowering shrubs, such as lilac and syringa. These are a great temptation in their flowering season to all kinds of persons who ought to be able to enjoy the sight of them without tearing off branches; but the Goth and the Vandal we have always with us on Bank Holidays and fine Sundays and Saturday afternoons. We expect them, and our expectations are commonly realised. But sorrow’s crown of sorrow is reached when, hearing a crash of boards, you rush out and find a dismayed child standing among the ruins of a part of your fence, and explaining that she “didn’t mean it, and was only reaching up to pick a bit of syringa for nyture study.” And to this the modern attempt to inculcate the study and the love of Nature brings us!

Before reluctantly I leave Petersham, let something be said as to its name. And, firstly, let it be duly borne in mind that we who reside here are perhaps a little concerned that the place-name shall be properly pronounced. Petersham, we like to think, is the real thing, with no sham about it at all. Hence the particularity with which “Peters-ham” is enunciated by the nice in these things; even as the villagers of Bisham, near Marlow, say “Bis-ham,” or (the tongue being ever at odds with the letter H) “Bis-sam.”

Petersham obtained its name as long ago as those dim Saxon times when the great mitred Abbey of Chertsey was founded and dedicated to St. Peter. In charters of those times the land here is noted as the property of that Abbey, and the place is called “Patriceham” and “Patricesham.” In the Cartulary of Merton Abbey, in 1266, it becomes “Petrichesham.” It thus would appear fairly conclusive that the name originated with the land becoming the property of St. Peter’s Abbey at Chertsey, and in no other way. But none of those who delve deeply into the origins of place-names is ever satisfied with things as they are; and it would now appear that an effort has been made to derive “Petersham” from a supposititious early Saxon landowner, a certain—or as we find no real documentary or other evidence of his existence here, it would be better to say an uncertain—“Beadric,” whose “ham” it is thus assumed to have been. This is a heroic attempt to argue from the old original name of the town we now call “Bury St. Edmunds,” which was in its beginning “Beadric’s-worth.” Although the Saxon name of “Beadric” was not uncommon, it is surely something of an effort to drag this East Anglian example out of Suffolk arbitrarily to fit a place in Surrey; even though, in the course of the same argument, in citing the well-known parallel derivation of “Battersea” from the land there having anciently been the property of the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster, it is found that in the original charter of A.D. 693 the place-name is spelled “Batricesege.” This becomes, in a charter of 1067, “Batriceseie” or “Patriceseia.”

One somewhat speculative blocked-up lancet window of the Early English period is the remotest thing that remains to Petersham old church; which is, for the rest, chiefly of George the First’s time. It is, of course, dedicated to St. Peter. Nowhere do we find the slightest real trace of the ancient cell of Chertsey Abbey which is supposed to have existed here, on the Abbey lands. The curious mass of brickwork along the footpath leading out of River Lane and between the gardens of Church Nursery and the filter-beds of the Richmond waterworks, is commonly said to have been a portion of those ancient ecclesiastical buildings, but no one has ever discovered the slightest hint of church or monastic architecture about that problematical fragment, nor has its purpose been hinted at. The footpath rises sharply between somewhat high walls, and is indeed carried over an arch. The old village folk long knew the spot as “Cockcrow Hill”; but during the last two years, in course of the works undertaken for the neighbouring filter-beds, the brickwork has been patched and the pitch of the lane leading over the arch lowered; so, doubtless, the name of “Cockcrow Hill” will become among the things forgot. If a theory may be entertained where no facts are available, this building was probably a bridge across some long-vanished or diverted stream which at one time flowed from the high ground of what is now Richmond Park, across these level meadows, and so into the Thames.

But if there be indeed no architectural features in this brickwork, there is an almost monastic air of seclusion about the rather grim and very picturesque old seventeenth-century gazebo that stands beside this self-same lane. There is some speculative interest in it, for no one can certainly declare to what this old four-square two-storeyed building of red brick, with the queer peaked roof, belonged. The presumption is that it was at one time a gazebo, or garden-pavilion, attached to the walled garden of Rutland Lodge, adjoining, an early seventeenth-century mansion, the oldest house in Petersham. Presumably, when it was built, its upper windows, some of them long since blocked, had a clear look-out across the unenclosed meadows to the river. The meadows are still there, but a fenced-in garden and an orchard now intervene, and by some unexplainable changes, the building, although at the angle of the walled garden of Rutland Lodge, has no communication with it, and is in fact included within the grounds of Church Nursery and the garden of the modern house called since 1907 “Rosebank,” presumably for the usual contradictory reasons that roses have ever been conspicuously absent from that garden, and that the site is a dead level. Much patching and altering has been done at times to the old gazebo, and attempts have been made to convert it into a cottage. Hence the added fireplaces and the chimney, not requisite in a garden summer-house, but indispensable for living in. Otherwise, the lot of the old building has been the common and almost invariable fate of such—neglect, and a surrender to spiders. The cult of the gazebo came in originally with the Renascence from Italy, and as it was not an indigenous, so it was neither a hardy growth in this land of ours, where the sunshine is never oppressively hot for the house, and chills all too often are the portion of the garden-dweller. Thus the numerous, and often highly picturesque, gazebos and pavilions to be found attached to old English gardens are most often seen to be deserted and in the last stages of disrepair. The gallant fight against climatic conditions has had to be abandoned.

Another hopeless fight against overpoweringly adverse conditions ended here in 1907, when the famous Star and Garter Hotel on Richmond Hill was closed. We who make Petersham our home know well that the “Star and Garter” is closed, if only for the reason that, it being situated in the parish, the loss to the local rates incidental to the closing meant a sudden rise of ninepence in the pound. We are thus hoping, without in the least expecting it, that some greatly daring person or corporation will be good enough to take and open it again. This increased demand, added to the hungry re-assessments recently made, and to the other increases, caused by the extravagant proceedings of the Richmond Corporation, which would appear to carry on the business of the town on behalf of the tradesmen instead of the residents, is rendering the neighbourhood an increasingly costly one to live in. Every one would now seem to share the fallacious belief that to live in Richmond one must necessarily be rich. True, one will presently need to be if things continue on the lines of recent developments.

Meanwhile, will no one take the poor old “Star and Garter”? It really seems as if no one would, for at least two unsuccessful attempts have been made to dispose of it at auction. The property was stated by the auctioneer to have cost £140,000. He described it in a phrase which sounds like a quotation, as “a far-famed hostelry, a palace of pleasure on a hill of delight.” He also declared the view from it to be “the finest prospect in England, perhaps in the world.” But he was not prepared, it seems, to assure the purchaser of a much finer prospect still: that of a dividend from the purchase, and so the result was a bid of only £20,000. The second attempted sale resulted in no bid being made at all.

The “Star and Garter” was ever noted for its high charges, framed to match its lofty situation and the exalted station of many of the guests who of old patronised it. Louis Philippe, King of the French, and Queen AmÉlie resided there for months at a time, and were frequently visited by Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort. The unhappy Napoleon the Third, the ill-starred Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, the equally ill-fated Prince Imperial, and other crowned, or prospectively crowned, heads were the merest every-day frequenters; but the “Star and Garter” long since discovered that there were not enough crowned heads to go round. Nor did the enterprising Christopher Crean, sometime cook to the old Duke of York, who took it and re-opened it after an old-time disastrous interval of five years, in 1809, find that he could secure constant relays of visitors to pay him, as some were stated to have done, half a guinea for the mere privilege of looking out from the windows upon the beauties of the Thames Valley.

It would seem, in conclusion, that the coming of motor-cars has finally rendered the huge “Star and Garter” impossible. Time was when the drive to Richmond was a delightful and leisurely affair, occupying in the coming and the going a considerable part of the day. Motor-cars and taxicabs have rendered it a matter of minutes only, and those who used to lunch or dine at Richmond now do the like, just as luxuriously, and almost as quickly by modern methods of travel, at Brighton, Hastings, or Eastbourne.

I have written much elsewhere of Petersham, in a little book called Rural Nooks round London, and so will now leave the subject for the last Thames-side nooks that can by any means claim to preserve to this day any relics of their old village life. The first of these is Isleworth, in Middlesex.