Returning to the exploited main road. Friar’s Oak is soon reached. It was selected by Sir Conan Doyle as one of the scenes of his Regency story, “Rodney Stone”; but since the year 1900, when the old inn was rebuilt, the spot has become an eyesore to those who knew it of old.

No one knows why Friar’s Oak is so called, and “Nothing is ever known about anything on the roads,” is the intemperate exclamation that rises to the lips of the disappointed explorer. But wild legends, as usual, supply the place of facts, and the old oak that stands opposite the inn is said to have been the spot where a friar, or friars, distributed alms. To any one who knows even the least about friars, this story would at once carry its own condemnation; but a friar, or a hermit, may have solicited alms here. At any rate, the old inn used to exhibit a very forbidding “friar of orders grey” as its sign, dancing beneath the oak. Stolen many years ago, it was subsequently discovered in London by the merest accident, was purchased for a trifling sum, and restored to its bereft signpost. The innkeeper, however, thinking that what befell once might happen again, hung the cherished panel within the house, where it remains to this day.

From Friar’s Oak it is but a step to that newest creation among Brighton’s suburbs, Clayton Park, its clustering red-brick villas, building estates, and half-formed roads adjoining the station of Hassocks Gate, which, by the way, the railway authorities have long since reduced to “Hassocks.” The name recalls certain dusty contrivances of straw and carpeting artfully contrived for the devout to stumble over in church. But, not to incur the suspicion of tripping over the name as here applied, it may be mentioned that “hassock” is the Anglo-Saxon name for a coppice or small wood; and there are really many of these at and around Hassocks Gate to this day.

At Stonepound a road leads on the right to Hurstpierpoint, which is too big a mouthful for general use, and so is locally “Hurst.” The Pierpoints, whose name is embedded in that of the place, like an ammonite in a geological stratum, were long since as extinct as those other Normans, the Monceaux of Hurstmonceaux, and are what Americans would term a “back number.”

Stone Pound Gate
Clears Patcham Gate
St. John’s and Ansty Gates
Y

Patcham Gate
Clears Stone Pound Gate,
St. John’s and Ansty Gates
126

Stonepound Gate was one of the nine that at one time barred the Brighton Road, and the last but one on the way. It will be seen, by the specimens of turnpike-tickets reprinted here, that at one time, at least, the burden of the tolls was not quite so heavy as the mere number of the gates would lead a casual observer to suppose, a ticket taken at Ansty “clearing” the remaining distance, through three other gates, to Brighton. But it was necessary for the traveller to know his way about, and, if he were going through, to ask for a ticket to clear to Brighton; else the pikeman would issue a ticket, which cost just as much, to the next gate only, when another payment would be demanded. These were “tricks upon travellers” familiar to every road, and they earned the pikemen, as a class, a very unenviable reputation.

It was here, in the great Christmas Eve snowstorm of 1836, that the London mail was snowed up. Its adventures illustrate the uncertainty of travelling the roads.

In those days you took your seat on your particular fancy in coaches, and paid your sixteen-shilling fare from London to Brighton, or vice versa, trusting (yet with heaviness of heart) in Providence to bring you to a happy issue from all the many dangers and discomforts of travelling. Occasionally it was brought home, by storm and flood, to those learned enough to know it, that “travelling” derived originally from “travail,” and the discomforts of leaving one’s own fireside in the winter are emphasized and underscored in the particulars of what befell at Stonepound in the great snowstorm of December 24th, 1836—a storm that paralysed communications throughout the kingdom.

“The Brighton up-mail of Sunday had travelled about eight miles from that town, when it fell into a drift of snow, from which it was impossible to extricate it without assistance. The guard immediately set off to obtain all necessary aid, but when he returned no trace whatever could be found, either of the coach, coachman or passengers, three in number. After much difficulty the coach was found, but could not be extricated from the hollow into which it had got. The guard did not reach London until seven o’clock on Tuesday night, having been obliged to travel with the bags on horseback, and in many instances to leave the main road and proceed across fields in order to avoid the deep drifts of snow.

“The passengers, coachman, and guard slept at Clayton, seven miles from Brighton. The road from Hand Cross was quite impassable. The non-arrival of the mail at Crawley induced the postmaster there to send a man in a gig to ascertain the cause on Monday afternoon, and no tidings being heard of man, gig, or horse for several hours, another man was despatched on horseback. After a long search he found horse and gig completely built up in the snow. The man was in an exhausted state. After considerable difficulty the horse and gig were extricated, and the party returned to Crawley. The man had learned no tidings of the mail, and refused to go out again on any such exploring mission.”

The Brighton mail from London, too, reached Crawley, but was compelled to return.

Such were the incidents upon which the Christmas stories, of the type brought into favour by Dickens, were built, but the stories are better to read than the incidents to experience. I am retrospectively sorry for those passengers who thus lost their Christmas dinners; but after all, it was better to miss the turkey and the Christmas pudding than to be “mashed into a pummy” in railway accidents, such as the awful heart-shaking series of collisions which took place on Sunday, August 25th, 1861, in the railway tunnel through Clayton Hill. On that day, in that gloomy place, twenty-four persons lost their lives, and one hundred and seventy-five were injured.

Three trains were timed to leave Brighton station on that fatal morning, two of them filled to crowding with excursionists; the other, an ordinary train, well filled and bound for London. Their times for starting were 8, 8.5, and 8.30 respectively, but owing to delays occasioned by press of traffic, they did not set out until considerably later, at 8.28, 8.31, and 8.35. At such terribly short intervals were they started, in times when no block system existed to render such close following comparatively safe.

Clayton Tunnel was already considered a dangerous place, and there was situated at either end (north and south entrances) a signal-cabin furnished with telegraphic instruments and signal apparatus, by which the signalman at one end of the tunnel could communicate with his fellow at the other, and could notify “train in” or “train out” as might happen. This practically formed a primitive sort of “block system,” especially devised for use in this mile and a quarter’s dark burrow.

A “self-acting” signal placed in the cutting some distance from the southern entrance was supposed, upon the passage of every train, to set itself at “danger” for any following, until placed at “line clear” from the nearest cabin, but on this occasion the first train passed in, and the self-acting signal failed to act.

The second train, following upon the heels of the first, passed all unsuspecting, and dashed from daylight into the tunnel’s mouth, the signalman, who had not received a message from the other end of the tunnel being clear, frantically waving his red flag to stop it. This signal apparently unnoticed by the driver, the train passed in.

At this moment the third train came into view, and at the same time the signalman was advised of the tunnel being clear of the first. Meanwhile, the driver of the second train, who had noticed the red flag, was, unknown to the signalman, backing his train out again. A message was sent to the north cabin for it, “train in”; but the man there, thinking this to be a mere repetition of the first, replied, “train out,” referring, of course, to the first train.

The tunnel being to the southern signalman apparently clear, the third train was allowed to proceed, and met, midway, away from daylight, the retreating second train. The collision was terrible; the two rearward carriages of the second train were smashed to pieces, and the engine of the third, reared upon their wreck, poured fire and steam and scalding water upon the poor wretches who, wounded but not killed by the impact, were struggling to free themselves from the splintered and twisted remains of the two carriages.

The heap of wreckage was piled up to the roof of the tunnel, whose interior presented a dreadful scene, the engine fire throwing a wild glare around, but partly obscured by the blinding, scalding clouds of steam; while this suddenly created Inferno resounded with the prayers, shrieks, shouts, and curses of injured and scatheless alike, all fearful of the coming of another train to add to the already sufficiently hideous ruin.

Fortunately no further catastrophe occurred; but nothing of horror was wanting, neither in the magnitude nor in the circumstances of the disaster, which long remained in the memories of those who read and was impossible ever to be forgotten by those who witnessed it.