Eric Parker

Restored church windows.—A Cow for an apprentice.—A Horley eleven.—Thunderfield Castle.—Horne.—Outwood Common.—A daring jump.—Over the Green.—Burstow's Astronomer.—Causies.—St. Margaret and the Devil.—A Country Sermon.

"The pretty village and church of Horley" is the opening of a descriptive paragraph in a Surrey guide-book not thirty years old. Horley is more than a village and a little less than pretty to-day. But it has two good old-fashioned country inns, and it is a convenient centre to some interesting country. It contains in itself little of interest except the church, which has a fine tower; but which is one of the unhappiest examples of unintelligent "restoration." The story of the "restoration" is, indeed, hardly credible. In 1877 the Surrey ArchÆological Society visited the church, and Major Heales wrote an admirable paper on its architecture, particularly drawing attention to the beauty of the windows in the north aisle, which dated from 1310, and contained some rare deep ruby glass. He described the tracery as the most beautiful in the county. Yet within five years the church was "restored"; the windows, which were in excellent preservation and would have lasted another five hundred years, were destroyed, every stone of them; and the glass had disappeared, either broken up or sold.

Horley parish registers have some pleasant entries. Stray daughters, who ate too much at home and otherwise were hard to look after, used to be apprenticed to persons who would undertake, for a consideration, to keep them until they were twenty-one. The consideration might be in cash or in kind. Thus, Jeremy Shoe, on January 13, 1604, took An Chamley, daughter of Edmund Chamley, deceased, apprentice "until she come to xxj, in consideracon he receives some household stuffe to the valew of vj^s viij^d and is to be eased in not paying to the poore for iiij yeares to come." John Chelsham had a better bargain, for he agreed to take An Williams till she came to twenty-one, and had from her father "one mare and a colte in full satisfaction." Sometimes the apprentices were bound even longer. Susan Washfoord was bound to Bernard Humphry, and he undertook "to keep her sufficient meate, drink, and apparell until she come to the age of fower and twenty yeares." Susan's mother was a widow, and she paid to get rid of her daughter a cow and twenty shillings from the churchwardens.

Not many Surrey towns or villages can boast a family cricket eleven. Horley can. Eleven Watneys of Horley have played frequent matches against local clubs, and against eleven Wigans of Mortlake. Mr. F.S. Ashley-Cooper has collected some other instances of family cricket teams in the county. Eleven Bacons, a father and ten sons, played eleven postmen at Thornton Heath in 1895, but were beaten by the postmen. In 1877 eleven Mitchells played eleven Heaths on Shalford Common. The Heaths all belonged to the same family, but the Mitchells were only relations. Eleven Lovells played a match at Tulse Hill in 1901, but had much the worst of it; and, most famous name of all, twelve CÆsars of Godalming, three fathers and their nine sons, once played the Gentlemen of the District. The family luck was no better; they lost by 16 runs.

Hardly a mile to the south-east of Horley lies an enigma—Thunderfield Castle. There is no castle; perhaps there never was one. A moat of brown water, splashed with white duck-feathers; an irregular mound beyond, thick with brushwood, and an ordinary set of farm-buildings through a gate to the side—that is all that is to be seen of the castle to-day. Was it an old British camp? Almost certainly not, nor a Roman camp. Mr. Malden, the Surrey historian, thinks it may have been one of the numberless castles built by the quarrelsome de Clares to annoy the equally quarrelsome de Warennes. Perhaps it was built in the days when castles sprang up like mushrooms; and perhaps it was demolished when demolitions were so frequent that one more or less was never noticed. It may have had a stone keep, but nobody can tell whether it had or not unless he excavates the ground within the moat, and that is a task which nobody, apparently, desires to try.

Another mile and a half along the west road from Horley leads to Smallfield Place, once the manor-house of the Bysshe family, afterwards a farmhouse, and now a private residence, with the Jacobean part of the old house apparently well worked in with the new. Further, by another mile, is the tiny village of Horne, not much more than a school, a church, and an old cottage or two. In such a simple, open-air little place it was attractive to see, on a hot September day when I was there, a ring of schoolchildren being given their lessons out of doors in the shade. Horne is one of those little villages in which, when the busy, pleasant hum of the children's school first comes down the wind, you wonder where the children spring from. It does not look as if there were enough cottages within walking distance to provide a class, much less four or five standards—if that is the correct expression. Horne is, indeed, one of the most out-of-the-way little places in this part of the county. But it makes a satisfactory objective for a walk from Horley, and its small church contains at least two memorials of interest. One is an elaborate piece of wood-carving, painted to look like marble, which commemorates John Goodwine, who died when James I was king; the other is an ingenious model of the church itself, as it stood before restoration. The restorers altered the interior pretty thoroughly; but the old church must have been a curious building. It had a long, large window on the roof, especially let in to throw light on the hymn-books of the musicians in the gallery. How was such a window cleaned?

Walking in this part of Surrey, which is chiefly pasture, is apt to be a little monotonous, without a good view. One of the prettiest views near Horne is at Outwood, a little more than a mile to the north-west, on the way back to Horley. Outwood Common is delightful. Two great windmills, black and white, spread sails to the blowing air; below them, black and white like the mills, pigs nose quietly over the short grass, and geese strut cackling. To the north, beyond rich and tranquil fields, lie the grey-green wooded hills by Bletchingley and Nutfield.

Horne is pretty near the centre of the country of the Burstow foxhounds, which stretches from Leigh, the other side of Horley, to Edenbridge in Kent. Two good stories are told of White, the Burstow huntsman. One is of an extraordinary jump, singular not for its height or the width of ground covered, but for its daring and adroitness. It was on one of the best days the Burstow ever had, when they killed a fox at Crawley after an hour and ten minutes' run almost without a check; and went on to find another fox near New Chapel Green, which hounds ate in Kent at half-past five, nobody knows quite where, so bad was the light. Nearly at the end of the second run White found himself on the edge of a narrow, deep ghyll, with a stream at the bottom, crossed by an overgrown footpath which went down to the stream and up again by flights of stone steps opposite each other. Riding down two or three of the steps, he took a standing jump over the stream and landed on the top steps the other side. On another occasion his daring was of a different kind; he did not know where he was riding. Hounds had crossed the golf links on Earlswood Common, and White, close behind them, was riding straight for one of the greens. A member of the hunt shouted to warn him, but White, who had not the slightest notion what was meant, galloped straight over the green, turning round to point at the hole and shout to the hunt, "Ware hole! ware hole!"

Burstow itself, hidden among pines, has named the hounds, but has not a large part in Surrey history. One of its rectors, the Rev. J. Flamsteed, who is buried in the church, was the first Astronomer Royal. Charles II made him that, when he was twenty-nine; nine years later he took orders, and went on astronomising till his death. Newton helped him and quarrelled with him over the publication of his observations; but it was something, even in the days of Charles II, to be made Astronomer Royal when Newton was alive.

Three miles on the other side of Horley lies Charlwood, once a wholly restful little village, but of late years stiffened and discoloured by the building contractor. The centre street of the village, near the church, is quaintly arched by a pair of elm trees, cropped and pollarded to meet overhead. Elms are not often selected for experiments in topiary. But Charlwood has more than one feature peculiar to itself, or at all events to the district. The village lies deep in Wealden clay, which can grow luxuriant roses, but which in days when Surrey roads were less well laid made getting about in the winter rains a matter of difficulty for those who could not drive. So those who walked made their own paths, which can be seen running along the side of most of the roads in the neighbourhood. "Causies" is the local name for these causeways, which are single slabs of flat stone set like stepping stones in the clay, sometimes for miles together. The villagers tell you that they have been there since no one knows when. They may be right, but their probable date is the middle of the seventeenth century, when John Gainsford, as we shall see, was making a causeway like these at Crowhurst.

A very curious set of wall paintings portrays, in the south aisle of Charlwood church, the legend of St. Margaret. St. Margaret was a virgin and a martyr, a most popular saint in the middle ages, and the heroine of a remarkable story. She was the daughter of a pagan priest at Antioch, and since she was a weak child, she was sent into the country for fresh air. Her nurse brought her up as a Christian, and when she was older she was sent into the fields to mind sheep. One day the governor of Antioch, whose name was Olibrius, was out hunting, saw the pretty shepherdess, fell in love with her at sight, and offered her his hand in marriage on the spot. St. Margaret refused him; she might not wed with a pagan. Olibrius was furious. He seized the poor shepherdess, beat her cruelly, and threw her into prison; even there she was not safe. The devil himself came after her in the form of a dragon, entered the prison and swallowed the saint whole, as you may see in the picture. However, Providence intervened, and by a miracle she escaped from the dragon's body. Evidently Providence then gave up helping, for Olibrius succeeded where the devil had failed. He ordered her head off at once, and the artist has painted her soul flying to heaven in the form of a dove.

Another painting sets out a commoner story, the allegory of the Three Living and the Three Dead. Three kings ride out hunting in the forest, and are met by three ghastly spectres, who lecture them on the vanity of this world's pomps and pleasures. I should think this used to be a favourite. It must have been vastly comforting to the poor, and pretty easy, too, for the parson. Anybody could make a sermon on the sufferings in store for kings and other rich people, and the way they go out hunting and shooting and not caring for anybody, and then the spectres come at them and they see how empty life is. Even to-day those ruddled drawings can set a spell. Stare at them, and the little church calls back its preacher and his flock; there, in the pulpit, he stood, gesturing at the dragon and St. Margaret; here, below him, sat the quiet-hearted countrymen, wondering in the solemn Sunday sunshine; here, perhaps, a child, hearing the story for the first time. St. Margaret must have been more difficult than the Kings. She begins well enough, and she goes on well—the village maidens would doubt whether they would have the strength to refuse an Olibrius. Then the deliverance from the devil would do admirably; the bumpkins would swallow that as easily as the devil swallowed St. Margaret. But how to go on? How to explain the failure of Providence afterwards? The preacher must have slurred that, and got on quickly to the wings of the dove.

Two great Surrey families belong to Charlwood. One is the line of Sander, or Saunder, settled at Charlwood as early as Edward II, and still surviving, in name at all events, in the neighbourhood. It was Richard Saunder who placed in the church the delicate fifteenth-century oak screen, the most beautiful in the county; but a more famous member of the family was Nicholas Saunder, Regius Professor and Jesuit Divine, over whose writings many good churchmen quarrelled. The other family are the Jordans of Gatwick, almost as old as the Saunders, and like them surviving in cottage life to-day.