  The tramway terminus at Purley Corner is now a busy place. Those are only the “old crocks” who can remember the South Eastern railway-station of Caterham Junction and the surrounding lonely downs; and to them the change to “Purley” and the appearance in the wilderness of a mushroom town, with its parade of brilliantly lighted shops, its Queen Victoria memorial, its public garden and penny-squirt fountain, and—not least—its hideous waterworks, are things for wonderment. “How strange it seems, and new,” as Browning—not writing of Purley—remarks. The numerous railway-bridges, embankments, cuttings, and retaining-walls that disfigure the crest of Smitham Bottom are chiefly the results of latter-day activities. The first bridge is that of the Chipstead Valley Railway—now merged in the South Eastern and Chatham—from South Croydon to Chipstead and Epsom, 1897-1900, with its wayside station of “Smitham.” This is immediately followed by the London, Brighton, and South Coast’s station of Stoat’s Nest, a transformed and transported version of the old station of the same name some distance off, and beyond it are the bridges and embankments of the same company’s works of 1896-8; themselves almost inextricably confused, to the non-technical mind, with the adjoining South Eastern roadside station of Coulsdon. The chapters of railway history which produced all this unlovely medley of engineering works are in themselves extremely interesting, and have an additional interest to those who trace the story of the Brighton Road, for they are concerned with the solution of the old problem which faced the coach proprietors—how best and quickest to reach Brighton. RAILWAY POLITICS Few outside those intimately concerned with railway politics know that although the Brighton line was opened throughout in 1842, it was not until 1898 that the company owned an uninterrupted route between London and Brighton. The explanation of that singular condition of affairs is found in the curious reluctance of Parliament, two generations ago, to give any one railway company the sole control of any particular route. Few in those times thought the increase of population, and still more the increase of travelling, would be so great that competitive railways would be established to many places; Following this reasoning, a break was made in the continuity of the Brighton Railway between Stoat’s Nest and Redhill, a distance of five miles, and that stretch of territory given to the South Eastern Railway, with running powers only over it granted to the Brighton Company. Similarly, between Croydon and Stoat’s Nest, the South Eastern had only running powers over that interval owned by the Brighton. In 1892 and 1894, however, the Brighton Company approached Parliament and, proving the growing confusion, congestion, and loss of time at Redhill Junction, owing to this odd condition of things, obtained powers to complete that missing link by the construction of an entirely new railway between Stoat’s Nest and a point just within a quarter of a mile of Earlswood Station, beyond Redhill, and also to double the existing line between East and South Croydon and Purley. The works were completed and opened for traffic in 1898, when for the first time the Brighton Railway had a complete and uninterrupted route of its own to the sea. The hamlet of Smitham Bottom, which paradoxically stands at the top of the pass of that name, in this ancient way across the North Downs, can never have been beautiful. It was lonely when Jackson and Fewterel fought their prize-fight here, before that distinguished patron of sport the Prince of Wales and a more or less distinguished company, on June 9th, 1788; when the only edifice of “Smith-in-the-Bottom,” as the sporting accounts of that time style it, appears to have been the ominous one of a gibbet. The Jackson who that day fought, and won, his first battle in the prize-ring was none other than that Bayard of the noble art, “Gentleman Jackson,” afterwards the friend of Byron and of the Prince Regent himself, and subsequently landlord of the “Cock” at Sutton. On this occasion Major Hanger rewarded SMITHAM Until 1898 Smitham Bottom remained a fortuitous concourse of some twenty mean houses on a windswept natural platform, ghastly with the chalky “spoil-banks” thrown up when the South Eastern Railway engineers excavated the great cuttings in 1840; but when the three railway-stations within one mile were established that serve Smitham Bottom—the stations of Coulsdon, Stoat’s Nest, and Smitham—the place, very naturally, began to grow with the magic quickness generally associated with Jonah’s Gourd and Jack’s Beanstalk, and now Smitham Bottom is a town. Most of the spoil-banks are gone, and those that remain are planted with quick-growing poplars; so that, if they can survive the hungry soil, there will presently be a leafy screen to the ugly railway sidings. Showy shops, all plate-glass and nightly glare of illumination, have arisen; the old “Red Lion” inn has got a new and very saucy front; and, altogether, “Smitham” has arrived. The second half of the name is now in process of being forgotten, and the only wonder is that the first part has not been changed into “Smytheham” at the very least, or that an entirely new name, something in the way of “ville” or “park,” suited to its prospects, has not been coined. For Smitham, one can clearly see, has a Future, with a capital F, and the historian confidently expects to see the incorporation of Smitham, with Mayor, Town Council, and Town Hall, all complete. It is here, at Marrowfat, now “Marlpit,” Lane, that the new link of the Brighton line branches off from Stoat’s Nest.[8] One of the first trials of the engineers was the removal of three-quarters of a million cubic yards of the “spoil,” dumped down by the roadside over half a century earlier; and then followed the spanning of the Brighton Road by a girder-bridge. The line then entered the grounds of the Cane Hill Leaving the asylum grounds, the railway re-crosses the road by a hideous skew girder bridge of 180 feet span, supported by giant piers and retaining-walls, and then crosses the deep cutting of the South Eastern, to enter a cutting of its own leading into a tunnel a mile and a quarter in length—the new Merstham tunnel—running parallel with the old tunnel of the same name through which the South Eastern Railway passes. At the southern end of this gloomy tunnel is the pretty village of Merstham, where the hillside sinks down to the level lands between that point and Redhill. At Merstham one of the odd problems of the new line was reached, for there it had to be constructed over a network of ancient tunnels made centuries ago in the hillside—quarry-tunnels whence came much of the limestone that went towards the building of Henry VII.’s Chapel at Westminster Abbey. The old workings are still accessible to the explorer who dares the accumulation of gas in them given off by the limestone rock. The geology of these five miles of new railway is peculiarly varied, limestone and chalk giving place suddenly to the gault of the levels, and followed again by a hillside bed of Fuller’s earth, succeeded in turn by red sand. The Fuller’s earth, resting upon a slippery substratum of gault, only required a little rain and a little disturbance to slide down and overwhelm the railway works, and retaining-walls of the heaviest and most substantial kind were necessary in the cuttings where it occurred. Tunnelling for a quarter of a mile through the sand that gives Redhill its name, the railway crosses obliquely under the South CHIPSTEAD CHURCH. Along the road, where the walls of the cutting descend perpendicularly, is the severely common-place hamlet of Hooley, formerly Howleigh, consisting of the “Star” inn and some twenty square brick cottages. Just beyond it, where a modern Cyclists’ Rest and tea-rooms building stands to the left of the road, the first traces of the old Surrey Iron Railway, which crossed the highway here, are found, in the shallower cutting, still noticeable, although disused seventy years ago. Alders, hazels, and blackberry brambles grow on the side of it, and its bridges are ivy-grown: primroses and violets, too, grow there wondrously profuse. CHIPSTEAD And here we will, by way of interlude, turn aside, up a lane to the right hand, toward the village of Chipstead, in whose churchyard lies Sir Edward Banks, who began life in the humblest manner, working as a navvy upon this same forgotten railway, afterwards rising, as partner in the firm of Jolliffe & Banks, to be an employer of labour and contractor to the Government: in short, another Tom Brassey. All these things are recorded of him upon a memorial tablet in the church of Chipstead—a tablet which It was while delving amid the chalk of this tramway cutting that Edward Banks first became acquainted with this village, and so charmed with it was he that he expressed a desire, when his time should come, to be laid at rest in its quiet graveyard. When he died, after a singularly successful career, his wish was carried out, and here, in this quiet spot overlooking the highway, you may see his handsome tomb, begirt with iron railings, and overshadowed with ancient trees. The little church of Chipstead is of Norman origin, and still shows some interesting features of that period, with some unusual Early English additions that have presented architectural puzzles even to the minds of experts. Many years ago the late Mr. G. E. Street, the architect of the present Royal Courts of Justice in London, read a paper upon this building, advancing the theory that the curious pedimental windows of the chancel and the transept door were not the Saxon work they appeared to be, but were the creation of an architect of the Early English period who had a fancy for reviving Saxon features, and who was the builder and designer of a series of Surrey churches, among which is included that of Merstham. “OUR HOPE IS IN THE LORD, 1595.” From here a bye-lane leads steeply once more into the high road, which winds along the valley, sloping always towards the Weald. Down the long descent into Merstham village tall and close battalions of fir-trees lend a sombre colouring to the foreground, while “southward o’er Surrey’s pleasant hills” the evening sunlight streams in parting radiance. On the left hand as we descend are the eerie-looking blow-holes of the Merstham tunnel, which here succeeds the cutting. Great heaps of chalk, by this time partly overgrown with grass, also mark its course, and in the distance, crowned as many of them are with telegraph poles, they look by twilight curiously and awfully like so many Calvarys. Beside the descent into Merstham was situated the terminus of the old Iron Railway, in the great excavated hollow of the Greystone lime-works, where the lime-burners still quarry the limestone and the smoke of their burning ascends day and night. The old “Hylton Arms,” down below, that served the turn of the lime-burners when they wanted to slake their thirst, has been ornately rebuilt in the modern-Elizabethan Public House Style, alongside the road, to catch the custom of the world at large, and is named the “Jolliffe Arms.” Both signs reflect the ownership of Merstham, for Jolliffe has long been the family name of the holders of the modern Barony of Hylton. Formerly “Jolly,” it was presumably too bacchanalian and not sufficiently aristocratic, and so it was changed, just as your “Smythe” was once Smith, and “Johnes” Jones. |
|
