MERSTHAM.

Beyond the brook, above the tall trees, is seen the shingled spire of the church, an Early English building dedicated to St. Catherine, not yet spoiled, despite restorations and the scraping which its original lancet windows have undergone, in misguided efforts to endue them with an air of modernity.

The church is built of that limestone or “firestone” found so freely in the neighbourhood—a famed speciality which entered largely into the building and ornamentation of Henry the Seventh’s Chapel at Westminster. Those wondrously intricate and involved carvings and traceries, whose decadent Gothic delicacy is the despair of present-day architects and stone-carvers, were possible only in this stone, which, when quarried, is of exceeding softness, but afterwards, on exposure to the air, assumes a hardness equalling that of any ordinary building-stone, and has, in addition, the merit of resisting fire, whence its name. From the softer layers comes that article of domestic use, the “hearthstone,” used to whiten London hearths and doorsteps.

Merstham Church is even yet of considerable interest. It contains brasses to the Newdegate. Best, and Elmebrygge families, one recording in black letter:

“Hic iacet Johesi Elmebrygge, armiger, qui obiit biij die
ffebruarij; Aº Dni Mºccccºlxxij, et Isabella uxor eius
quae fuit filia Nichi Jamys quonda Maioris et
Alderman London: quae obiit bijº die Septembris
Aº Dni Mºccccºlxxijº et Annae uxor ei: quae
fuit filia Johes Prophete Gentilman quae obiit ...
Aº Dni Mºcccº ... quoru animabus
ppicietur Deus.”

The date of the second wife’s death has never been inserted, showing that the brass was engraved and set during her lifetime, as in so many other examples of monumental brasses throughout the country. The figure of John Elmebrygge is wanting, it having been at some time torn from its matrix, but above his figure’s indent remains a label inscribed Sancta Trinitas, and from the mouths of the remaining figures issue labels inscribed Unus Deus—Miserere nobis. Beneath is a group of seven daughters; the group of four sons is long since lost.

A transitional Norman font of grey Sussex marble remains at the western end of the church, and on an altar-tomb in the southern chapel are the poor remains of an ancient stone figure of the fifteenth century, presumably the effigy of a merchant civilian, as he is represented wearing the gypciÈre. It is hacked out of almost all significance at the hands of some iconoclasts; their chisel-marks are even now distinct and bear witness against the Puritan rage that defaced and buried it face downwards, the reverse side of the stone forming part of the chapel pavement until 1861, when it was discovered during the restoration of the church.

Before that restoration this was an interior of Georgian high pews. Among them the “squire’s parlour” was pre-eminent, with its fireplace, its well-carpeted floor, its chairs and tables: a snuggery wherein that good man snored unobserved, or partook critically of his snuff during the parson’s discreet discourse. But now the parlour is gone, and the squire must slumber, if he can, with the other sinners.

In Merstham village, just beyond the “Feathers” inn, stood Merstham toll-gate, followed by that of Gatton, at Gatton Point, a mile distant, where the old route through Reigate goes off to the right, and the new—the seven miles between Gatton Point and Povey Cross, through Redhill—continues, straight as an arrow, ahead. The way is bordered on the right hand by Gatton Park, a spot the country folk rightly describe as an “old arnshunt place.” The history of Gatton, in truth, goes back to immemorial times, and has no beginning: for where history thins out and becomes a mere scatter of disjointed scraps purporting to be facts, tradition carries back the tale into a very fog of legend and conjecture. It was “Gatone” when the Domesday survey was made: the Saxon “Geat-ton,” the town in the “gate,” passage, or road through the North Downs, just as Reigate is the Saxon “Rige-geat,” the road over the ridge. The “ton” or town in the place-name does not necessarily mean what we moderns would understand by the word, and here doubtless indicated an enclosed, hedged, or walled-in tract of land redeemed and cultivated out of the then encompassing wilderness of the Downs.

Who first broke the land of Gatton to the plough? History and tradition are silent. No voice speaks out of the grave of the centuries. But both Reigate and Gatton are older than Anglo-Saxon times, for a Roman way, itself following the course of an even earlier savage trail, came up out of the stodgy clay of Holmesdale, over the chalky hills, to Streatham and London. It was a branch of the road leading from Portus Adurni—the present Old Shoreham, on the river Adur—and doubtless, in the long centuries of Romano-British civilisation, it was bordered here and there by settlements and villas. Prominent among them was Gatton. There can scarcely be a doubt of it, for, although Roman relics are not found here now, Camden, writing in the time of Henry the Eighth, tells of “Roman Coynes digged forth of the Ground.” It was ever a desirable site, for here unfailing springs well out of the chalk and give an abounding fertility, while another road—the ancient Pilgrims’ Way—running west and east, crossed the other highway, and thus gave ready communication on every side.

Gatton has, within the historic period, never been more than a manorial park, but an unexplained something, like the echo of a vanished greatness, has caused strangely unmerited honours to be granted it. Who shall say what induced Henry the Sixth in 1451 to make this mere country park a Parliamentary borough, returning two members? There must have been some adequate reason or excuse, even if only the one of its ancient renown; for there must always be an apology of sorts for corruption; no job is jobbed without at least some shadowy semblance of legality. But no one will ever pluck out the heart of its mystery.

A Parliamentary borough Gatton remained until 1832, when the first Reform Act swept away the representation of it, together with that of many another “rotten borough.” Rightly had Cobbett termed it “a very rascally spot of earth,” for certainly from 1541, when Sir Roger Copley owned the property and was the sole elector of the place, the election was a scandalous farce, and never at any time did the “burgesses” exceed twenty. They were always tenants of the lord of the manor and the mere marionettes that danced to his will.

Gatton, returning its two members to Parliament, as of old, was early in the nineteenth century purchased by Mark Wood, Esq., who was soon after created a Baronet. It was then recorded that in this borough there were six houses and only one freeholder: Sir Mark Wood himself. The other five houses he let by the week; and thus, paying the taxes, he was the only elector of the two representatives. At the election, he and his son Mark were the candidates, and the father duly elected himself and his son! Scandalous, no doubt; but those members must have represented the constituency better than could those of a larger electorate.

The landowner who possessed such a pocket-borough as this, and could send whomsoever he liked to Parliament, to vote as he wished, was, of course, a very important personage. His opposition was a serious matter to Governments; his support of the highest value, both politically and in a pecuniary sense; and thus place, honours, riches, could be, and were, secured. The manor of Gatton actually, in the cynical recognition of these things, was valued at twice its worth without that Parliamentary representation, and Lord Monson, who purchased the property in 1830, gave as much as £100,000 for it, solely as an investment in jobbery and corruption, by which he hoped, in the course of shrewd political wire-pulling, to obtain a cent per cent return.