The ancient manor of Hendon belonged at the time of the Conquest to the abbots of Westminster, but changed hands many times between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries. The old manor-house (replaced first by an Elizabethan mansion and later by the present Hendon Place, built about 1850) was sometimes occupied by the ecclesiastical owners, and in it, as the guest of the reigning abbot of Westminster, Cardinal Wolsey rested in Holy Week 1530 on his way from Richmond to York after his fall. In 1757 the manor-house was sold by the Earl of Powis, to whose family it had long belonged, to the actor David Garrick, since whose death it has changed hands more than once.
The various rivulets that unite to form the Brent take their rise in Hendon parish, and within its bounds is the beautiful open space, three hundred and fifty acres in extent, known as the Wyldes, a name that probably means the lonely or the unenclosed, that was for more than four centuries the property of Eton College, to which it was given in 1449 by the founder, Henry VI. Part of this fine estate has recently been bought for the public and added to Hampstead Heath, and the remainder, if the necessary funds can be collected, is to be acquired for the formation of a garden suburb, which, if it is ever laid out according to the present plans, will be an ideal addition to the attractions of the northern heights of London. The ancient home farm of the Wyldes is still standing on the edge of Hampstead Heath, but it remains a private residence, and is not included in the scheme of purchase. Its fine barns and outhouses have been thrown into one house, the red-tiled roofs and weather-boarded walls of which present very much the same appearance that they did several centuries ago, and the quaint old homestead, long known as Collin's Farm, but now renamed the Wyldes, has long been a favourite haunt of artists and authors. In it the painter John Linnell and his family resided for a long time, receiving amongst their many guests Constable, Morland, and Blake; and when they removed to London in 1827 their rooms were occupied successively by Samuel Lever, Charles Dickens, and Birket Foster. Ford Madox Brown, Edward Carpenter, the Russian author Stepniak, and Olive Schreiner were often at the Wyldes; and the whole neighbourhood of Hendon was dear to Mrs. Alfred Scott Gatty, the authoress of Parables from Nature, who spent much of her girlhood at the vicarage.
Within an easy walk of Hendon, on the right bank of the Brent, is the still picturesque village of Kingsbury, supposed to occupy the site of one of Cæsar's camps, and to have got its name from its having been the property of King Edward the Confessor, who gave it to the Abbey of Westminster. The quaint little church of St. Andrew, said to be built of Roman bricks and to retain traces of Saxon work, all now hidden in a coating of rough cast, is set on a hill amidst venerable elm-trees dominating the village, which contains many typical old-fashioned cottages, and on the east is the beautiful Kingsbury Lake, or Welsh Harp, an artificial reservoir some three hundred and fifty acres in extent, formed on the eastern course of the Brent as a source of supply for the Regent's Park Locks, a most successful piece of engineering work, presenting the appearance of a natural sheet of water, that is a favourite haunt of a great variety of water-fowl, and is well stocked with fish. Unfortunately, the opening of the Welsh Harp racecourse and station, both named after an ancient inn hard by, has done much to destroy the peaceful seclusion of the beautiful district of Kingsbury, but country lanes still lead from it in many directions, in one of which, running eastward towards Edgware Road, is the farmhouse called High or Hyde House, in which Oliver Goldsmith lived for some time, calling his temporary home the Shoemakers' Paradise, because of a tradition that it was built by a votary of St. Crispin, the patron saint of workers in leather. There many choice spirits visited the poet, and Boswell relates that he once called at the Shoemakers' Paradise, and Goldsmith being out at the time, he nevertheless, 'having a curiosity to see his apartments, went in and found curious scraps of descriptions of animals scrawled upon the walls with a black lead pencil,' evidently notes for the History of Animated Nature.
HARROW ON THE HILL
HARROW ON THE HILL
Two miles north of Hendon, with which it is connected by a beautiful lane leading through fields, is the village of Mill Hill, the church of which, a somewhat commonplace structure, was founded in 1829 by the philanthropist William Wilberforce. Opposite to it is the Congregationalist College, that occupies the site of the beautiful Botanic Garden laid out by the well-known botanist Peter Collinson, the friend and fellow-worker of Linnæus, who was often with him at Mill Hill; and not far off is St. Joseph's College of the Sacred Heart, with a fine chapel and campanile, the latter surmounted by a statue of the patron saint, that is a landmark for many miles round.
Harrow
From the loftier Highwood Hill, close to Mill Hill, a noble view is obtained of the beautiful Harrow Weald, that stretches away in a north-westerly direction to Harrow-on-the-Hill, and is dotted with picturesque villages and hamlets, some of which are still unspoiled by the invasion of the builder. The Hill, crowned by the parish church and famous school of Harrow, rises up abruptly from an undulating plain, and forms a conspicuous feature of the whole neighbourhood, for it is visible from many widely separated points of the northern, southern, and south-western suburbs of London. The name of Harrow, that is a modern adaptation of the Herges of Doomsday Book, is differently interpreted by scholars, some being of opinion that it signifies the church, others the military camp on the hill. In any case, the manor was held soon after the Conquest by Archbishop Lanfranc, and remained in the possession of his successors until 1543, when Archbishop Cranmer exchanged it with Henry VIII. for other property. Three years later it was given to Sir Edward, afterwards Lord, North, and after changing hands several times, it passed to the Rushout family, to whose present representative it now belongs.
The exact site of the ancient manor-house of Harrow is not known, for its ecclesiastical owners early removed to a mansion at Haggeston, now Headstone, near Pinner, supposed to have been close to the present manor farm. However that may be, it seems certain that in 1170, soon after his return home from France, the great Archbishop Thomas à Becket spent several days at Harrow-on-the-Hill, for the story goes that he was on that occasion so grievously insulted by the rector of the parish, the Rev. Nizel de Sackville, that he revenged himself by excommunicating him from the altar of Canterbury Cathedral on the following Christmas Day, just four days before his own assassination in the same building. The parish church of Harrow was built by Archbishop Lanfranc, who died just before its consecration, a ceremony that was performed by his successor, the greatly venerated St. Anselm, who, it is related, was interrupted during the service by two canons sent by the Bishop of London to contest his right to officiate on the occasion. The sacred oil, it is said, was carried off by the emissaries, so that the service could not proceed, and the point at issue was later submitted to St. Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, the sole remaining Saxon prelate of England, who decided in favour of St. Anselm, since which time the special rights at Harrow of the Archbishop of Canterbury have never again been called in question.
"BYRON'S TOMB," HARROW
"BYRON'S TOMB," HARROW
All that now remains of the building associated with Archbishop Lanfranc and St. Anselm is the lower portion of the tower, the western gateway, which has well-preserved Norman pillars, and a finely sculptured lintel. The massive stone font is, however, probably the very one in which baptisms took place in the eleventh century. The main body of the present church—that was recently well restored and enlarged under the direction of Sir Gilbert Scott—dates from the fifteenth century. Its most noteworthy features are the lead-encased wooden spire, the stone porch with the priest's chamber above it, and the open timber roof with figures of angels playing on musical instruments on the corbels. In the church are several interesting fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth century brasses, and in the churchyard is a much defaced ancient tombstone known as Byron's Tomb, on which the poet, who was educated at Harrow, was fond of resting, and to which he referred in an often-quoted letter to his publisher, Mr. John Murray, dated May 26, 1822, and also in the well-known lines—
'Again I behold where for hours I have ponder'd,
As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay;
Or round the steep brow of the churchyard I wander'd,
To catch the last gleam of the sun's setting ray.'
The view from Byron's Tomb, now enclosed within railings, from the terrace outside the churchyard, the school buildings, and other points of vantage on the Hill, is not perhaps quite so inspiring as that from Hampstead Heath immortalised by Constable, but there is a quiet charm about it, and it is very extensive, embracing parts of Surrey, Buckinghamshire, and Berkshire, with Windsor Castle, the Crystal Palace, and Leith Hill Tower as its most conspicuous features.
The chief interest of Harrow is, of course, the famous school, that ranks second only to Eton amongst the great centres of education in England, and is intimately associated with the memory of many distinguished men, including amongst the headmasters Dr. Vaughan, who ruled from 1844 to 1859, and his successor Dr. Butler, who held office until 1885; while amongst the students were the intrepid traveller James Bruce, the Oriental Sir William Jones, the accomplished scholar Dr. Samuel Parr, Admiral Lord Rodney, the witty writer Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the novelist Theodore Hook, the statesmen Sir Robert Peel, Lord Ripon, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Palmerston, and Sir Spencer Perceval, Cardinal Manning, Archbishop Trench, the philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury, and, most celebrated of them all, the poet Lord Byron.
Founded in 1571 by John Lyon, a yeoman of the hamlet of Preston, to whom there is a fine brass in Harrow Church, the school had in it from the first the elements of growth, and its interests were watched over with untiring care for twenty years by its generous originator. No detail was too trivial for his consideration, and the statutes laid down by him were eminently practicable yet sufficiently elastic to allow of future development, though their simple-hearted author certainly never dreamt of what that development was to be. The salaries of the masters, the books to be used, were all specified; and it is a noteworthy fact that very special stress was laid on the exercise of shooting, all parents being bound to give their boys 'bowstrings, shafts, and braces,' that they might practise archery, which at that time represented what rifle-shooting does now. To arouse the ambition of the students, a prize of a silver arrow was given every year to the best marksman out of six or twelve carefully selected competitors, and it was not until 1771 that the ancient custom was discontinued by the then headmaster, Dr. Heath, on account, he said, of the rowdy crowds who used to flock from London to witness the contests, and the serious interruption it caused in the routine of the school work. The butts at which the students, in picturesque costumes of white and green, used to shoot, and the little hill on which they stood, are gone, their place being taken by modern houses; but the silver arrow made for the competition of 1772 is preserved in the school library, a silent witness to John Lyon's recognition of the fact, on which Lord Roberts and other enlightened patriots are now laying such stress, that every boy should learn how to aid in the defence of his native country.
The first endowment of Harrow School was made in 1575, when Lyon bequeathed to the governors certain lands at Harrow and Preston; but it was not until 1615, twenty years after his death, that his instructions were carried out for the building of a 'large and convenient schoolhouse, three stories high, with a chimney in it, and meet and convenient roomes for the schoolmaster and usher to dwell in, and a cellar under the said roomes to lay in wood and coales ... divided into three several roomes, one for ye master, the second for ye usher, and the third for ye schollers.' Until 1650 this house met all the requirements of the institution, the students boarding, as they do now, in outlying houses; and the big class-room, known for many generations as the Fourth Form Room, with the three small apartments above it and the attic called the Cockloft, still remain much what they were four hundred years ago, and are venerated by all Harrovians as the most ancient portion of their beloved school. The rest of the present buildings are all modern; a new wing with a speech-room, class-rooms, and a library, were added in 1819, and in 1877 it was in its turn supplemented by yet another speech-room. The chapel now in use replaces two earlier ones, and was built in 1857, after the designs of Sir Gilbert Scott. The Vaughan library, commemorating the headmaster after whom it is named, was opened in 1863; and the beautiful Museum buildings, that are perhaps the most satisfactory from an æsthetic point of view of the recent erections, were completed in 1886.
Of the many beautiful villages north of London that have of late years been transformed into suburbs of the ever-growing metropolis, few retain any of their original character, or can, strictly speaking, be called picturesque. Tottenham, in spite of its fine situation, with the river Lea forming its eastern and the New River its western boundaries, is to all intents and purposes a town, the restored High Cross, about which there has been so much learned controversy, the ancient parish church, and two or three old houses near the green, alone bearing witness to the good old times when the quaint poem of The Tournament of Tottenham was written. It is much the same with Edmonton, where, in the still standing Bay Cottage, Charles Lamb lived for some time and died, and in the churchyard of which he and his sister are buried, and where John Keats served his apprenticeship to a surgeon and wrote his earliest poems. It bears but a faint resemblance to the village into which John Gilpin of immortal fame dashed on his famous ride after his vain attempt to pull up at the Bell Inn, on the left-hand side of the road from London. The once charming little hamlet of Whetstone, too, a short distance further north, where, according to local tradition, the soldiers halted to sharpen their swords on the way to Barnet Field, is rapidly losing its rural appearance. On the other hand, the scattered settlement of Friern Barnet—beyond the completely modernised Finchley—with its picturesque church that retains a fine Norman doorway, is still quite a country place; whilst Edgware, the two Stanmores, Elstree, High Barnet, East Barnet, and Enfield, though they too are already marked for destruction, are as yet full of the aroma of the past. Edgware, situated on the ancient Watling Street, prides itself on owning the forge in which Handel, having taken refuge from a storm, was inspired by the rhythmic beats of the hammer on the anvil with the famous melody of the 'Harmonious Blacksmith'; and it also owns several quaint old inns, one of which, the Chandos Arms, preserving the memory of the great mansion—known as The Canons, because it occupied the site of a monastery—that was built for the Duke of Chandos whilst he held the lucrative post of paymaster to the forces, but was pulled down after his death by his successor. Fortunately, however, the richly decorated private chapel of The Canons, in which Handel was organist from 1718 to 1721, and containing the organ on which he played, is still preserved as part of the parish church of Little Stanmore, or Whitchurch, a pretty village about half a mile from Edgware, and in its graveyard Handel and the blacksmith whose name is so closely associated with his are buried not far from each other.
Great Stanmore, near to which are the eighteenth-century mansion known as Bentley Priory, replacing a suppressed monastery, and the beautiful Stanmore Park, the seat of Lord Wolverton, is beautifully situated on a hill commanding very extensive views, and has two churches, one now disused, containing some interesting seventeenth and eighteenth century effigies, the other a somewhat uninteresting modern building. The chief charm of the old-fashioned village of Elstree, originally called Eaglestree, because it was much frequented by eagles, is the fine artificial reservoir haunted by water-fowl, which is nearly as extensive as that of Kingsbury, and it also owns a beautiful old Elizabethan mansion.
High Barnet
High Barnet, also known as Chipping Barnet, is a far more important place than Edgware or the Stanmores, and is supposed to date from Anglo-Saxon times. Its site, with that of East Barnet, both once covered with the forest of Southaw, belonged to the abbots of St. Albans, to whom Henry I. granted the privilege of holding a weekly market in it, and it is still the chief cattle-mart of the district, a great fair taking place there every year in September. The church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, founded in the early part of the fifteenth century, and in which is a fine monument to Thomas Ravenscroft, a local worthy of the seventeenth century, was originally very characteristic of the time at which it was built, with a well-proportioned nave and aisles, and square embattled tower; but it has been added to from time to time, with unsatisfactory results. To make up for this, the ancient grammar-school, now used as a dining-hall only, the charter of which was granted by Queen Elizabeth to her beloved Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is much what it was when completed in 1575, the new buildings that supplement it being quite distinct.
On the common, about a mile from High Barnet, there is a spring of medicinal water that was held in high esteem in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is often referred to in contemporary records. A farmhouse now occupies the site of the old spa, but the actual well, though covered over, is even now occasionally resorted to by invalids, to whom the water is supplied by means of a small pump. The chief claim to distinction of the village is, however, that it is near to the scene of the great battle of 1471 between the Lancastrians and Yorkists, at which the former were defeated, the mighty king-maker, the Earl of Warwick, was slain, and Edward IV. firmly established on the throne.
There has been much heated controversy concerning the actual place where the great struggle took place, but it is now generally supposed that the fiercest fighting occurred on Hadley Green, half a mile north of Barnet, extending thence along the ridge sometimes called Gladsome Heath, and sometimes Monken Mead. An obelisk, locally known as the Highstone, with a rudely carved inscription commemorating the victory, was set up in 1740 by Sir Jeremy Sambook, about two hundred yards from the spot where it now stands at the junction of the St. Albans and Hatfield roads, and the low ground sloping down from Monken Mead is marked on old maps as Deadman's Bottom, an incidental proof that it was there the bodies of the dead were buried after the battle.
Monken Hadley
The village of Monken Hadley, that is rapidly becoming a suburb of High Barnet, is very picturesquely situated along a green and common, all that now remain of the once famous Enfield Chase, and its fine old church, built some twenty years after the great battle, and well restored in 1845-50, looks down upon the scene of that historic event. Not far from it still stands the trunk of a huge oak, that has been identified as the 'gaunt and lifeless tree' on which, as related by Lord Lytton in the Last of the Barons, Adam Warner was hanged by Friar Bungay, and at the foot of which the victim's daughter fell down insensible close to the shattered fragments of the mechanical invention from which her father had hoped so much; and a little distance off is an elm known as Latimer's, because the zealous Protestant after whom it is named, who was later to die for his belief, is said to have sometimes preached beneath it.
East Barnet, a pretty village nestling in a charming valley, is the mother parish of the other communities of the same name, and its manor was part of that of High Barnet at the time of the Conquest. Its church, recently enlarged and modernised, was founded as early as the twelfth century, but it has few historic memories. Some writers, however, assert that it was from the house of Thomas Conyers at East Barnet that the unfortunate Arabella Stuart, whose marriage to William Seymour so greatly incensed James I., escaped, disguised as a man, on 3rd June 1611, only to be taken prisoner immediately after her embarkation in the boat that was to have borne her to France, whence she was removed to the Tower, there to die four years later, without having again seen her husband.
Enfield
The extensive parish of Enfield, through which flows the New River, and of which the Lea forms the eastern boundary, is divided into four parts, known as the Town, the Chase, the Bull's Cross, and Green Street. It is finely situated on the borders of what was once a famous royal hunting-ground, that although now almost entirely enclosed, is not yet built over. The actual town is one of the most prosperous of the suburbs of London, for it is the seat of a thriving Government small-arms factory, employing several hundred hands. The whole district is full of interesting historic memories, for even in the eleventh century, as proved by the descriptions in Doomsday Book, Enfield was a populous village, and the parish included no less than eight manors—Enfield proper and Worcesters, that long belonged to the Crown; Durants, Elsynge or Norris, Suffolks, Honeylands, Pentviches, and Goldbeaters, each with a palace and park of its own. The children of Henry VIII. were educated at Enfield, and it was there that Prince Edward heard of his father's death. In 1552 the young king settled the chief manor of Enfield on his sister Elizabeth, and also built for her the palace, of which a small, but very picturesque, portion still remains in the High Street, but the future queen appears to have spent the short time of liberty enjoyed by her before she was imprisoned by the jealous Mary at Elsynge Hall, of which no trace is left. It was there, too, that she and her escort probably put up, when in 1557 her indulgent gaoler, Sir Thomas Pope, allowed her to take part in a hunt in Enfield Chase, and she certainly often held her court in it during her long and prosperous reign. Of the chief manor-house of Enfield all that has been preserved is a fireplace incorporated in the library of a private house in the so-called Old Park, whilst the mansion of Worcesters, the other royal demesne, is represented by a seventeenth-century house known as Forty Hall—in which, by the way, there is a fine collection of pictures—designed by Inigo Jones for Sir Nicolas Raynton, to whom the estate was given in 1616 by the then owner, the Earl of Salisbury.
Of the other manor-houses of Enfield the memory alone survives, but the neighbourhood is still rich in fine old private mansions, of which the most note-worthy are Enfield Court and Foxhall, and on Chase side is an ancient cottage in which Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have lived for some time not far from which was the 'odd-looking gambogish house' in which Charles Lamb, writing in 1825, declared he would like to spend the rest of his life.
Unfortunately, the beautiful and characteristic Market Hall was pulled down some little time ago, to be replaced by a modern and not very satisfactory Gothic cross, and the church, that dates from the thirteenth century, has lost much of its venerable appearance through injudicious restoration. It still retains, however, several well-preserved and most interesting monuments, including that to Lady Tiploft, who died in 1446, one to Sir Nicolas Raynton and his wife, who passed away two centuries later, and one to Mrs. Martha Palmer, the last the work of Nicolas Stone, the famous seventeenth-century sculptor.
WALTHAM CROSS
WALTHAM CROSS
Waltham Holy Cross
Although, strictly speaking, neither Waltham Cross, Waltham Abbey, nor Epping Forest can be called suburbs of London, they are in such intimate touch with the capital, that a point may well be strained to include them in a publication intended to serve to some extent as a guide to beautiful places within easy reach of the city. Waltham Cross, a hamlet of Cheshunt, is specially noteworthy, as owning one of the crosses (well restored in 1883) that were set up by Edward I. to mark the resting-places of the body of his beloved queen Eleanor on the way to her tomb at Westminster, and it also greatly prides itself on the possession of the actual inn at which the bearers of the coffin rested for a night, the signboard bearing the legend, 'Ye Old Four Swannes Hostelrie, 1260.' The town of Waltham Abbey, or Waltham Holy Cross, that may possibly ere long be the seat of a new bishopric, a low-lying, straggling settlement, intersected by the Lea, which here divides into several branches, is a far more important place than its namesake of Cheshunt parish, with which it is often confounded, for it is the seat of a great Government gunpowder manufactory, the works of which occupy an area of some two hundred acres. It owes its chief fame, however, to what was once one of the grandest abbey churches of England—of which the nave, that is amongst the oldest places of worship in Great Britain, alone remains—that was built by Harold, the last of the Saxon kings, on the site of an earlier one founded by Tovi or Tovig, standard-bearer to Canute the Great, to enshrine a remarkable crucifix that was found on his estate in Somersetshire. The story goes that the place where the precious relic had been buried for many centuries was revealed in a dream to a smith, and that after it had been dug up, an attempt was made to send it to Glastonbury. The twelve red oxen and twelve cows harnessed to the cart in which the crucifix was placed, refused, however, to move in that direction, and Tovi therefore bade the drovers make for Waltham or Wealdham, as the village was then called, the name meaning the homestead in the forest. Directly their heads were turned northwards the animals set off at so rapid a pace that the escort could hardly keep up with them, and they needed no guidance till they reached the site of the abbey, when they halted of their own accord. This was at once accepted as a proof that it was the divine will that the church should be erected there, and the work was begun at once, the crucifix meanwhile working many miracles in the temporary shelter in which it was housed. After the death of Tovi the estate of Waltham was forfeited by his son Athelstan to King Edward the Confessor, who gave it to his brother-in-law Harold. The Saxon earl, who was a very devout Catholic, considered the church unworthy of the priceless treasure it enshrined, and he lost no time in having it pulled down, to replace it with a stately building that was consecrated in 1060. To it he often went to pray, the last time on the eve of the battle of Senlac, when it was popularly believed that the sad issue of the struggle was foreshadowed by a significant omen, for as the king prostrated himself before the miraculous crucifix the figure of the Lord bent its head, and gazed into the suppliant's face with an expression of infinite sorrow. But a few days afterwards the dead body of the last of the Saxon kings was brought to the abbey he had loved so well, and buried in front of the high altar, whence it is said to have been later removed to a tomb some little distance from the present church. During the reign of Elizabeth this tomb was opened, when it was found to contain the skeleton of a man of great stature, but there is no absolute evidence that it was that of the unfortunate Harold.
After being despoiled of its treasures by William the Conqueror, and suffering many things at the hands of his successors, the beautiful church of Waltham was given in 1187 to a branch of the Augustinian order by Henry II., who added greatly to the monastic buildings and was from the first a liberal patron of the abbey. It was for many centuries a favourite resort of the English kings, probably on account of the fine hunting-grounds in its immediate neighbourhood, and it was there that Henry VIII. received from Cranmer the joyful news that a device had been hit upon for justifying the divorce from Katharine of Aragon on which his heart was set. It was at Waltham, too, that the Reformation may in a certain sense be said to have begun, for it was there that the king first decided on the drastic measures which inaugurated it. Harold's foundation shared the fate of the rest of the religious houses, and was given to Sir Anthony Denny, to whom there is a beautiful though much defaced monument in the church, that was well restored in the early nineteenth century. Of the monastic buildings, however, that were associated with so many historic memories, the only relics now remaining are a single gateway, a small vaulted chamber in a market garden once part of the abbey grounds, a few fragments of the walls, and some subterranean arches. A quaint little bridge spanning the Corn-Mill stream, a tributary of the Lea, is still called Harold's Bridge, and a picturesque modern mill occupies the site of the one that belonged to the monks of the abbey.
Waltham Abbey
The immediate neighbourhood of Waltham Abbey is still thoroughly rural in character, well-watered undulating districts dotted here and there with beautiful seats—amongst which Copped Hall and Warlies Hall are the chief—replacing the forests which once extended over nearly the whole of Essex, including with what is now known as Epping Forest, the so-called Harold's Park—the name of which is still retained by a farm—that was given by Richard I. to a branch of the Augustinian order.
At the ancient Copped Hall—so named from the Saxon cop, signifying the top of a hill—that occupied the site of the present nineteenth-century mansion, the Princess Mary lived during the brief reign of her brother, and from it she addressed in 1551 a remarkable letter protesting against the prohibition to have mass celebrated in her private chapel. There, too, she received the messengers who brought back the king's unfavourable reply, and gave to the chief of them, no less a personage than the Lord Chancellor himself, a ring to be delivered to His Majesty, who was to be informed 'that she would obeye his commandements in all things excepte in theis matters of religion towchinge the mass.' It is noteworthy that three years later, when the tables were turned on the Protestants by the accession of Mary, the same Lord Chancellor should have received orders from her 'to be presente at the burning of such obstinat persons as presently are sent downe to be burned in diverse partes of the county of Essex.'
Epping Forest
Originally part of the great forest of Essex, the beautiful woodlands of Epping, in spite of all the changes through which they have passed, still retain something of their primeval character, and enshrine in their recesses some few relics even of pre-Norman days, of which the most noteworthy are the two camps of Ambresbury Banks and Loughton, for each of which it has been claimed that it was the stronghold from which Queen Boadicea watched the last stand of her army against the invaders, and the massacre of the women and children who had come, as they fondly hoped, to rejoice over a victory! Whether this or any of the many other theories advanced be true, it is certain that long before the Conquest, Epping Forest, which at that date included some sixty thousand or seventy thousand acres, was the property of the Saxon kings, and that in Norman times it was strictly preserved for the royal pleasure, the game-laws being terribly severe and most rigidly enforced. The killing of a stag was in fact more severely punished than the murder of a man, for in the former case the eyes of the offender were put out, whilst for the latter crime a money payment was often accepted. The first king to sanction any disafforesting was Stephen, who allowed certain districts to be cleared for cultivation, and his example was followed by John, who reluctantly gave up the portion north of the main road between Stratford and Colchester, the concession having been wrung from him by the united barons, who compelled him to sign the Charter of Forests, the wording of which is very significant of the terrible oppression to which the people were subjected at the time. Later the concessions were confirmed by Henry III. and by Edward I., who had at first shown signs of going back from the promises of his predecessors, but in 1301 he was brought to a better mind by means of a heavy bribe of money. Gradually, through grants to nobles, unauthorised enclosures, etc., the forest lands belonging to the Crown were reduced to about a third of what they were at the Conquest, and a survey made in 1793 estimated the still uncultivated woods and wastes at twelve thousand acres only. From that date until the middle of the nineteenth century the history of the once magnificent forest was one of constant encroachment, one beautiful tract after another having been sold and enclosed, for the officers of the Crown interpreted their duty to be to turn the land to as great a money profit as possible rather than to preserve it for the enjoyment of its owners or of the people to whom at various times certain rights had been granted. In 1850 some six thousand acres only were left, and in the next twenty years these were reduced to little more than half that amount. Fortunately, however, about this time public feeling began to be aroused on the subject, and thanks to the enlightened efforts of a number of influential men, amongst whom special recognition is due to the members of the Commons Preservation Society, the matter was brought before Parliament, and in 1882 five thousand five hundred acres were bought by the Corporation of London for the nation, including the woodlands beginning near Chingford and stretching northwards beyond Theydon Bois, parts of which are still much what they were when royal parties used to go forth to hunt from the palaces of Chigwell, New Hall, and Writtle, and when the post of Lord Warden of the Forest was eagerly sought by the great nobles, whilst a far less picturesque portion extends southwards to Wanstead Flats and Aldersbook Cemetery.
Some two miles from Waltham Abbey begins what is known as the Sewardstone district, supposed to be named after a noted Saxon thane, that is dotted with picturesque hamlets, from one of which, known as Sewardstone proper, a pretty lane leads to High Beech Green, a straggling village that once belonged to the Priory, with a good modern church, near to which is the loftiest point of the Forest: High Beech Hill, 759 feet high, that commands a very beautiful view. According to popular tradition, Dick Turpin used to lie in wait in a cave at the base of this hill for the travellers he intended to rob, undeterred by fear of betrayal at the hands of the landlords of the neighbouring Robin Hood and King's Oak inns, now represented by modern hotels, the latter named after the stump of a venerable oak known as Harold's—the very one that inspired The Talking Oak of Tennyson, who wrote it and Locksley Hall in a house near by, since pulled down; whilst in the still standing Fairmead House, then a private lunatic asylum, the half-crazy peasant poet John Clare, who lived in it from 1837 to 1841, composed some of his beautiful descriptions of the forest scenery.
It was from a height not far from the King's Oak that Queen Victoria, on 6th May 1882, set a seal on the gift of the forest to the people by declaring it free and open to them for ever, and on the south of Beech Wood opens the beautiful lane that winds through the still virgin woods to what is known as Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge, supposed to occupy the site of the original manor-house of Chingford Earls, the history of which can be traced back to early Saxon times. However that may be, the lodge with its high-pitched roof and gables, its massive timber supports and ceiling beams, projecting chimneys and wide ingle-nooks, broad oak staircases and spacious outside landings, the main structure is a very typical example of fifteenth and sixteenth century domestic architecture. The fact that the highest landing is still called the 'horse block' recalls the tradition that good Queen Bess used to ride up to the door of the great reception-room at the top of the house, and that she may have done so is proved by the fact that the feat—not a very difficult one after all—was successfully achieved for a wager some few years ago by a man on an unbroken pony.
EPPING FOREST, NEAR LOUGHTON
EPPING FOREST, NEAR LOUGHTON
The village of Chingford, or the King's Ford, close to the Lodge, and a beautiful sheet of water, named after the present ranger, the Duke of Connaught, is charmingly situated on the edge of the forest, and the ancient church, now disused, about a mile from the new Gothic building that has supplanted it, is extremely picturesque. The parish originally included two manors—the one already referred to in connection with Queen Elizabeth's Lodge and that known as Chingford St. Paul's, which, until it was seized by Henry VIII. belonged to the Metropolitan Cathedral. It was held before the Conquest by a Saxon thane named Ongar, and the manor-house that replaced his old home, now a farm, is still standing, though the present lord of the manor lives in Hawkwood House a little distance off.
Buckhurst Hill
From Connaught Water a good road, known as the Green Ride, leads to Ambresbury Bucks and Epping, and another called the Rangers to Buckhurst Hill and Loughton. Buckhurst Hill, from which for many years the famous Easter Hunt used to start, must once have been one of the loveliest villages in the forest, and is still charming in spite of the many new houses that have been built. Its name has been very variously explained, some supposing it to commemorate the aristocratic poet of Elizabethan times, Lord Buckhurst, others that the original form was Book Forest, signifying a tract reserved in otherwise open moorlands by royal charter. Before the Easter Hunt was transferred to Beech Hill there were many descriptions in the contemporary press of the scenes that used to take place at Buckhurst, notably one that appeared in the Morning Herald in the week after Easter 1826, in which the writer gloats over the gay costumes worn 'by the three thousand merry lieges then and there assembled' to watch the uncarting of the stag that, when released, marched proudly down between an avenue of horsemen 'wearing a chaplet of flowers round its neck, a girth of divers-coloured ribbons, and a long blue-and-white streamer depending from the summit of its branching horns, adding that when it caught a glimpse of the hounds and huntsmen waiting for it, it bounded sideways, knocking down and trampling all who crowded the path it chose.' The account ends by stating that the stag was finally caught at Chingford, 'nobody knows how, for everybody returned to town before the end except those who stopped to regale afresh and recount the glorious perils of the day.'
The picturesque village of Loughton, perched on high ground above the valley of the Roding, about a mile from Buckhurst Hill, was originally a mere appanage of the manor of the same name that was given by Harold to the Abbey of Waltham, and after the Reformation was presented by Edward VI. to Sir Thomas Davey, only to revert to the Crown in the reign of Mary, since which time it has changed hands again and again. Its ancient church is now a mere ruin, but it has been supplemented by a fairly satisfactory modern building in the Norman style. The old manor-house, in which Queen Elizabeth and James I. were guests at different times, was destroyed by fire in 1836, with the exception of part of the great hall, now incorporated in a farm, and the fine wrought-iron entrance gates. In olden times the inhabitants of Loughton enjoyed, in addition to the privileges common to all of pasturing their cattle in the forest and turning out their pigs at Michaelmas to eat beechwood and acorns, that of lopping the trees in the vicinity of their village, and it was the interference of the lord of the manor with the undue exercise of this right that inaugurated the agitation which in the end had the happy result of securing to the whole nation the priceless possession of Epping Forest.
Chigwell Row
Not far from Loughton is the scarcely less charming village of Chigwell, the name of which calls up the memory of Charles Dickens, for in it were laid many of the most exciting scenes of his immortal romance, Barnaby Rudge. It was, however, by the way in the King's Head, a low, rambling, half-timbered building with a projecting upper story, not in that now known as the Maypole, that John Willett and his cronies are described as meeting to gossip together and in which the sturdy but obstinate landlord awaited the coming of the rioters. The ancient hostelry seems to have altered but little since the great novelist used to delight in going down to what ne called 'the greatest place in the world, with such a delicious old inn opposite the churchyard, such beautiful scenery,' etc., and it is much the same with the church, with its noble Norman doorway approached by an avenue of venerable trees. The chief manor-house, known as Chigwell Hall, on the site of one that belonged to Harold, is still standing, but a modern grammar-school replaces that founded by Harsnett in 1629; and the home of the Harewoods, in the garden of which Dolly Varden was, as related by Dickens, robbed of her bracelet by Hugh of the Maypole, was long represented by an ancient red-brick mansion that was burnt down a few years ago.
Chigwell Row, that was long a beautiful secluded hamlet noted for its spring of mineral water, from which the name of Chigwell is derived, is now, alas, a mere suburb of uninteresting modern houses, and is chiefly remembered as having been the home of the peasant who posed for Gainsborough's famous picture of the 'Woodman.' Close to it begins the extensive parish of Woodford—named after the old ford over the Roding that is now spanned by a bridge—in which are many villages rapidly growing into towns, such as Woodford Green and Woodford Wells, given by Earl Harold with seventeen other manors to Waltham Abbey. That of Woodford remained in its possession until 1540, when it was confiscated with the rest of ecclesiastical property by Henry VIII., but the old manor-house, now a convalescent home for children, founded by Mrs. Gladstone, is still standing.
Walthamstow
The extensive parish of Walthamstow has shared the fate of that of Woodford, for it is becoming a densely populated district with little to recall the past. Its name is supposed to signify a storehouse, but whether of food, of weapons, or ammunition, there is no evidence to show. Its manor belonged, at the time of Edward the Confessor, to the Saxon, Waltheof, son of the Earl of Northumberland, and though it was confiscated by William the Conqueror, he later restored it to its former owner in recognition of his early submission. Moreover, Waltheof was allowed to marry the king's niece, who, however, was the cause of his ruin, for she betrayed to her uncle a plot in which her husband was implicated. Waltheof paid for his disloyalty with his life, and his estate was bequeathed by his widow to the elder of their two daughters, by whose marriage with Ralph de Toni it passed into the possession of the family of that name, for which reason the manor is still known as that of Walthamstow Toni, though it is now the property of the descendants of Lord Maynard, by whom it was bought in the seventeenth century. The once scattered hamlets of Whip's Cross, so called because it was the starting-point for the whipping of deer-stealers, Woodford Side, Higham Hill, and many others now practically form part of the town of Walthamstow, to which also belongs a narrow strip of land, called the Walthamstow Slip, running right through the adjoining parish of Leyton, that was won under curious circumstances not long ago. It was in olden times the custom, if the place in which a dead body was found could not meet the expenses of burial, that the parish in which the interment took place should be paid with as much land as those carrying the corpse could cover holding each other's hands and walking one behind the other. An unknown man was found in the Lea, and his remains were taken to Walthamstow by way of Leyton, with the result that the latter had to yield up a slice of its territory to the former.
The mother church of Walthamstow, dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, dates from the sixteenth century, and contains some interesting monuments, including one by Nicholas Stone to the memory of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Thomas Merry, and their four children, and one to Sir Gerard Conyers, Lord Mayor of London, who died in 1737. The rest of the places of worship are all modern, and have nothing distinctive about them, but in addition to the chief manor-house Walthamstow owns several fine mansions, including those of Higham Bensted and Walthamstow Sarum or Salisbury Hall, the latter named after Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury.
The low-lying districts of Walthamstow parish, which before the Thames embankment was made were constantly flooded, were some years ago turned to good account by the East London Waterworks Company for the formation of their fine reservoirs, which resemble a vast lake dotted with picturesque islets. During the progress of the excavations, moreover, many very important geological discoveries were made, with the aid of which the whole life-story of the valley of the Lea can be read backwards to the time when the forest of Essex was the home of the elephant, the elk, the reindeer, and the wild ox, as well as of the red and fallow deer of modern times.
Wanstead
Wanstead, the name of which may possibly be a corruption of the word Woden's Stede, or the place sacred to Woden, near to which many traces of Roman occupation have been found, was not very long ago a pretty rambling village on the very outskirts of the forest, but is now practically a town; and close to it is the somewhat dreary district known as Wanstead Flats, once a beautiful furze-clad common with clumps of fine old trees that has given place to brickfields and gravel-pits. The manor of Wanstead has, however, an interesting history, for it was once the property of the Abbey of Westminster, and owned a famous manor-house known as Naked Hall Hawe, that was pulled down in the sixteenth century by its then owner, Lord Chancellor Rich, who built in its place a stately mansion, in which Queen Mary rested on her way from Norwich to be crowned in London, and Queen Elizabeth was more than once entertained by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who had bought the estate in 1577. Later it changed hands again and again, and in 1683, as proved by an entry in John Evelyn's diary, it was owned by Sir Joshua Child, to whom there is an interesting monument in the parish church, whose son replaced the Earl of Leicester's house with an even more magnificent one, which he filled with art treasures, and that was considered one of the finest private residences in England. In 1794, through the death of the then owner and his only son within a few months of each other, the valuable estate passed to Miss Tylney Long, then a mere child, during whose long minority the mansion was let to the Prince of Condé, and was for a time the house of Louis XVIII. and other members of the French royal family. Unfortunately Miss Long married a profligate spendthrift, the Honourable W. Tylney-Long Wellesley, who quickly dissipated his wife's wealth, necessitating the sale of the Wanstead property. The art treasures were dispersed, and the mansion sold for building materials, but fortunately the gardens and grounds were bought for the nation by the London corporation, and thrown open to the public in 1882.
Hainault Forest
The once beautiful district known as Hainault Forest, said to have been named after the wife of Edward III., extending on the north to Theydon Bois, on the west to Leytonstone, on the east to Havering-atte-Bower, and on the south to Aldborough Hatch, belonged in early Norman times to Barking Abbey, and passed, at the dissolution of the monasteries, to the Crown. It was almost as favourite a resort of the Tudors and Stuarts as Epping Forest itself, and is nearly as full of interesting historic associations, but for all that it was condemned in the middle of the nineteenth century as unprofitable waste ground, and in 1851 an Act of Parliament was passed empowering the Government to destroy or remove the deer that had for so many centuries haunted its recesses, to cut down the trees, and to sell the land for farming or building. All too rapidly the work of destruction proceeded, but fortunately, before it was completed, it was finally arrested on the initiative of Mr. North Buxton, whose efforts to save the little remnant left were seconded by the London County Council and various local corporations, with the result that, in 1906, eight hundred acres were bought and secured to the public as a recreation ground. It was of course too late to restore to the forest anything of its ancient charm, for its dense groves of oak and beech were gone for ever, but some few delightful woodlands still remained. Many trees have been planted, and even now certain outlying villages retain something of their original rural character, especially Aldborough Hatch, the name of which signifies an ancient mansion near a hatch or gate of the forest—that has now, however, receded far from it—and Barking Side. The latter, once a secluded spot in a densely wooded neighbourhood, is celebrated as having been near the scene of the famous Fairlop Fair, that was founded in the eighteenth century by Daniel Day, a wealthy blockmaker of Wapping, and for more than two centuries was frequented every year by thousands of pleasure-seekers from the east end of London. The fair took its name from a wide-spreading oak about a mile from the still standing Maypole Inn, beneath which Daniel Day used to entertain his tenants at midsummer; but it was celebrated long before his time. Many allusions are made to it in the contemporary press, notably in the once popular Fairlop Fair song, in which its nickname is explained in the following quaint rhyme—
'To Hainault Forest Queen Anne she did ride,
And beheld the beautiful oak by her side;
And after viewing it from the bottom to the top,
She said to her court: "It is a Fair lop."'
Long after the death of Daniel Day, which took place in 1769, the blockmakers of London used to hold an annual beanfeast beneath the Fairlop oak, going to it, it is said, in a vehicle shaped like a boat, drawn by six horses; and although the tree was blown down in 1820, and its site is now enclosed in a private garden, many merrymakers still resort to Barking Side to be present at a kind of parody of the ancient fair. The trunk of the oak was used to make the pulpit of Wanstead Church and that of St. Pancras in Euston Road, and the fact that its memory was still held dear long after its fall is proved by its name having been given to the boat presented by the London Foresters to the Lifeboat Society in 1865.
Havering-atte-Bower
Although, as from Hainault Forest itself, much of the glamour and romance of the past has for ever departed from the once beautiful country, between it and the Thames, that is now a mere suburb, and not a very interesting suburb of London, some few of its hamlets and villages still bear the impress of the long ago, and are intimately associated with important episodes of English history. Near to the still independent market town of Romford, for instance, is the village of Havering-atte-Bower, that gives its name to the ancient Liberty, including the extensive parishes of Romford, Havering, and Hornchurch, and is built on the site of a royal palace, once the favourite resort of Edward the Confessor, and of many of his successors. The name of Havering has been very variously explained, the most poetic and also the most probable interpretation being that it commemorates a beautiful legend relating to the saintly founder of Westminster Abbey to the effect that he gave to St. John the Evangelist, who had appeared to him in the guise of a pilgrim, a ring from his own finger. Many years afterwards, when King Edward was at the consecration of a church in Essex, two pilgrims from the Holy Land came to him to tell him that the beloved disciple had met them in Jerusalem, and charged them with a message for him. The king at once inquired 'Have ye the ring?'—a sentence that was later converted into Havering—to which the pilgrims replied by producing it. The message was to the effect that St. John would meet the original owner of the ring in Paradise a fortnight later, a prophecy that was fulfilled, for King Edward passed away at that time. Some say the church in which the singular meeting took place was at Waltham, others that it was a chapel on the site of the present church of Romford, dedicated to St. Edward the Confessor and St. Mary the Virgin, whilst yet others think it was that which stood where now rises the modern church of St. John the Evangelist at Havering, which contains a font used in the Saxon building that preceded it.
The manor of Havering has remained Crown property to the present day, though the park in which the Confessor's house stood has been cut up and let on leases. The so-called royal palace, that was probably merely a hunting lodge, was replaced after the Conquest by a more convenient residence, called the Bower, to which the English kings were fond of resorting. There Edward III., a disappointed and disillusioned man, spent several months of the last year of his life, after he had named the unworthy son of the beloved Black Prince his successor, and there Edward IV., a year before his death, won great popularity with the citizens of London by the hospitality he showed to the 'maire and aldermen,' as related in Hall's Chronicle, who observes, 'No one thyng in many daies gatte him either more hartes or more hertie favour amongst the comon people.' Edward VI. was often at the Bower before he came to the throne; Queen Elizabeth, to whom the people of Havering were devoted, for she secured to them many of their ancient privileges, was as fond of it as of any of her palaces at Enfield, and her successor James I., never failed to visit it once a year. After his time, however, it, for some unexplained reason fell into disrepute, and was allowed to become a complete ruin. By the middle of the nineteenth century not a trace of it remained, and it is now represented by a new Bower House, a short distance from its site, built in 1729 for a private lease-holder.
Not far from the old hunting lodge there was another royal residence, known as Prygo, which was for a long time reserved for the use of widowed queens, but was given by Elizabeth to Sir John Grey, a relation of the ill-fated nine days' queen. After changing hands again and again, the historic relic, which might well have been bought for the nation, was sold for building material and pulled down, with the exception of one wing, which was later incorporated in a house built in 1852, that retains the quaint old name.
Leyton
The twin towns of Leyton and Leytonstone, the latter not long ago a mere hamlet of the former, are both named after the Lea, and were, half a century ago, charming villages, near to which were many fine old mansions, the homes of wealthy City merchants, who have since deserted them for the more fashionable western suburbs. Some few of these houses, notably those known as Etloe and Rockholt, though turned to other uses, still remain, and near to the latter have been found traces of ancient entrenchments, that have led some authorities to identify the site of Leyton with that of the Roman Durolitum. The churches of both towns are modern, but that of St. Mary at Leyton, in which is buried the celebrated antiquarian John Strype, who was vicar of the parish for sixty-eight years, retains the tower of an earlier building, and contains some interesting seventeenth and eighteenth century monuments, including two to members of the Hickes family, which were recently removed from the chancel and set up at the west end. There are also several noteworthy brasses on the walls with quaint inscriptions, such as that relating to Lady Mary Kingstone, who died in 1577, and a tablet to the memory of the famous printer William Bowyer, who passed away in 1777; and in the churchyard rest many celebrities, of whom the best known outside Leyton are the dramatist David Lewis, and the Master of the Rolls, Sir John Strange, who died, the former in 1700, the latter in 1754.
Stratford on the Lea, named after the ancient ford that was in use between it and Bow, the Stratford-atte-Bow of Chaucer, till the river was spanned by the bridge built by Matilda, wife of Henry I., that was taken down as recently as 1839, was originally only an outlying hamlet of West Ham, but it has of late years grown into a densely populated manufacturing centre, well provided with modern places of worship, but retaining, alas, not a trace of the beautiful Cistercian abbey, founded in the twelfth century, that was once the pride of the whole neighbourhood. It is very much the same with Great Ilford, named after a ford over the Roding, which, though not yet so large as Stratford, is already a thriving town, almost its only relic of the past being the hospital, that now belongs, with the estate on which it is built, to the Marquis of Salisbury, originally founded for the use of thirteen lepers who had been in the service of King Stephen, by Adliza, Abbess of Barking, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St. Thomas of Canterbury. Little Ilford, on the other hand, on the south-west side of its greater namesake, is still not much more than a village, though from it, too, nearly everything of antiquarian interest has been improved away. The beautiful old church was pulled down some fifty years ago, but, fortunately, in its modern successor are preserved a few of the ancient monuments, amongst which is especially noteworthy that to William Waldegrave and his wife, who died, the latter in 1595, the former in 1616.
A century ago West Ham was one of the most picturesque villages of Essex, with many charming old mansions belonging to the wealthy City merchants in its immediate vicinity, but it is now a densely populated town, with scarcely anything about it to recall the olden times. The much modernised church of All Saints, however, retains its original foundations, a Norman clerestory and an early English nave, with which, unfortunately, the modern brick chancel and aisles are quite out of character. Some of the ancient monuments have also been preserved, notably the fifteenth-century tomb of a certain Robert Rook, that of Sir Thomas Foot, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1650, and that of William Fawcett, who died in 1631.
Upton
Not far from West Ham is the village of Upton, and near to it are some fine old houses, including that known as The Cedars, once the home of the famous Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, the enthusiastic advocate of prison reform, who was the sister of Mr. Samuel Gurney, a true, kindred spirit, almost as well known for his disinterested work for the poor and oppressed. The latter lived in what was known as Ham House, which was pulled down soon after his death in 1856, and eighteen years later the park in which it used to stand was bought for the people, partly by the Gurney family and partly by the corporation of London.
East Ham is another town of rapid growth, the nucleus of which was not long ago a charming village, still in close touch with the long ago. In early Norman times it was a dependency of Westminster Abbey, and the much modernised parish church, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, retains portions of the ancient building that dated from about the eleventh century, whilst the old manor-house, now a farm, is still standing. There remains, however, a certain rural charm about the dependent hamlets of Flasket and Green Street, the former retaining an ancient mansion, in which Elizabeth Fry lived for many years before her removal to The Cedars, and the latter still priding itself on its ancient manor-house, now an agricultural training home for boys, that was once the seat of the noble Nevill family, to whom there is a good monument in the church. The home bears the inappropriate name of Anne Boleyn's Castle, because of a tradition, for which there is no historical information, that the ill-fated second wife of Henry VIII. was wooed in it, and, by a strange irony of fate, shut up in it later, to await the day of her execution, after her condemnation to death.
Barking Abbey
Greater even than the transformation which has taken place in Stratford and the Hams is that which has converted Barking from a straggling fishing village, dependent on the famous Benedictine abbey, after which it is named, that was founded in the ninth century by St. Erkenwald, into a thriving market town, that is still rapidly widening its boundaries. The abbey itself, that was burnt by the Danes in 870, and rebuilt a century later by King Edgar, is gone, but for all that something of the old romance and sanctity still seems to cling to the district it dominated, that was for centuries looked upon by the faithful as one of the most sacred in England. The first abbess was the saintly St. Ethelburga, sister of the founder, and she and St. Erkenwald were both buried in the abbey church. After the rebuilding of the abbey under Edgar, until the dissolution of the monasteries, its history was intimately bound up with that of the whole country, the holy women who successively held the office of abbess, many of them of royal birth, taking a very active share in politics, and unlike their successors in modern nunneries, exercising jurisdiction over men as well as women. Barking Abbey became celebrated throughout the length and breadth of the land for the miracles wrought in it, and also as a place of education for the daughters of aristocratic parents. The Abbess of Barking was one of the four ladies of England who were baronesses in their own right, a privilege that included, strange to say, the right to a seat in the Witenagemot, or Great Council, the predecessor of the Parliament the doors of which have ever been so jealously closed against women. The prosperity of the great abbey of Barking seems to have begun to decline about the middle of the fourteenth century through the flooding of some lands belonging to it, but it was still a very valuable property when it was confiscated by Henry VIII., who, with unusual generosity, gave to the then abbess an annuity of two hundred marks for the rest of her life.
The only remaining relics of the once beautiful and extensive abbey buildings are a few bits of the old walls and a massive gateway—that from which, according to local tradition, William the Conqueror set forth on his first royal progress through his newly acquired kingdom—which is known as 'The Five-bell Gate,' the curfew bell having been rung from the campanile above it, which used to bear the beautiful name of the Chapel of the Holy Rood, there having been a bas-relief of the Crucifixion on its walls.
The parish church of Barking, dedicated to St. Margaret—the churchyard of which is entered from the Five-bell Gate—retains parts of the original Norman building and of the early English additions to it, and contains several interesting old brasses; but, unfortunately, what was some years ago a very characteristic example of the transition between the two styles has been almost completely spoiled by so-called restoration, the massive piers having been whitewashed and the beautiful timber roof covered in with an over-ornamented plaster ceiling.
The town of Barking is rather picturesquely situated on the left bank of the Roding, about a mile above the creek named after it. It contains, however, very little of interest except the ancient market-hall, said to have been built by Elizabeth, and is practically an integral part of London over the Border, with long monotonous streets of small houses. Of the many mansions once occupied by wealthy merchants, the sixteenth-century Eastbury House, recently restored by its owner, is an isolated example, and is locally known as the 'Gunpowder House,' because of an unfounded tradition that the conspirators in the Guy Fawkes plot watched from it for the blowing-up of the Houses of Parliament, or, according to another version of the same legend, Lord Mounteagle there received the letter which enabled him to frustrate the iniquitous scheme.
Dagenham
The rapidly growing village of Dagenham, that will doubtless soon become a town, set in the midst of market-gardens in the low-lying districts east of Barking, retains far more than the latter the rural appearance it presented when it was part of the extensive abbey demesne. The ancient church, in spite of much necessary rebuilding, retains a fine piscina that was long bricked up, and other ancient relics, including an altar-slab bearing the marks symbolical of the Redeemer's wounds, and the tomb of Sir Thomas Ursuyk, who died in 1470, on which are effigies of himself, his wife, and their thirteen children.
Subject as it has been from the earliest historic times to inundation from the Thames, Dagenham has been from the first intimately associated with engineering enterprise. Discoveries were made in the early eighteenth century of what was at first taken for a submerged forest, but on examination proved to be relics of wooden embankments that were probably existing in pre-Roman times. In 1376 the breaking down of the banks of the Thames at Dagenham flooded the village and the whole neighbourhood, involving so heavy a loss to the Abbey of Barking that the then abbess had to appeal to King Edward I. for exemption from a payment due to him. How the mischief then done was repaired there is no evidence to show, but there are many allusions in contemporary records to later occurrences of a similar kind, all of which, however, sink into insignificance before the great calamity of December 17, 1707, when in a violent storm a breach four hundred feet wide was made in the Thames embankment, and one thousand acres were submerged. Many attempts were made to stop the gap, but it was not until 1715 that anything like success was achieved. At that date Captain Perry undertook the arduous task, and five years later he had reclaimed all but a comparatively small portion of the lost lands, the so-called Dagenham Breach or Dagenham Lake, a picturesque sheet of water much resorted to by anglers, being all that is now left to keep alive the memory of the famous disaster. About 1884 a company was formed to transform this lake into a dock, but fortunately, perhaps, for those who prefer beauty to utility, the enterprise failed for want of funds. Meanwhile Dagenham Breach had become associated with an institution still dear to the hearts of politicians—the annual ministerial whitebait dinner—for it was in a cottage on its banks belonging to Sir John Preston, M.P. for Dover, and president of the committee for inspecting the embankment at Dagenham, that that dinner was first eaten. In its inception a mere gathering of friends who met to enjoy the country air and to eat freshly caught whitebait in each other's company, the meeting gradually grew in importance as time went on, William Pitt having been often one of the guests. Later, the distance from town was found too great for ministers and city magnates, so it was transferred to Greenwich, where, since the death of Sir John Preston, the old Dagenham traditions have been religiously maintained.
Barking Creek
The low-lying, marshy districts near Barking Creek, where the Roding flows into the Thames, and those between Dagenham and Woolwich, have unfortunately lost nearly all the country charm which distinguished them at the time of Sir John Preston, but the beautiful water highway intersecting them, that is associated with so many thrilling memories, and has been the scene of so many notable historic pageants, will ever lend to them a strong element of the picturesque. Constant changes in the tides, with never-ending variations in the traffic, dainty pleasure-craft, heavily laden barges, crowded steamers, and busy tugs succeeding each other in an unbroken procession, or momentarily forming picturesque groups to which the rarely absent mist and fog give an effective touch of mystery, render every reach of the Lower Thames full of inspiration to the artist. Even at Woolwich itself, one half of which is on the north and the other on the south of the river, there is still much that is attractive, in spite of the fact that the town is nearly everywhere divided from the water by the long lines of the dockyard and arsenal, and that strength and utility rather than beauty of structure are the distinguishing characteristics of those two centres of activity.
Woolwich
Originally a small fishing-village, the site of which is supposed to have been once occupied by a Roman camp, Woolwich, now one of the most important eastern suburbs of London, owes its prosperity chiefly to its having been chosen by Henry VIII. as his chief naval station. In its dockyard was built the famous ship called the Henrye Grace à Dieu, as proved by entries in an account-book, now in the Record Office, of the payments made to 'shippe-wrights and other officers working upon the Kinges great shippe at Wolwiche' from 1512 to 1515, when it was launched in the presence of Henry and Katharine of Aragon, who with their court and many invited guests dined on board at the royal expense. The career of the great Henrye Grace à Dieu was short, for it was destroyed by fire at Woolwich in 1553; but many other famous ships were built in the same dockyard, including some of those that went forth to meet the Spanish Armada, others that took part in the voyages of exploration of Hawkins and Frobisher, and the Royal Sovereign, nicknamed the 'Golden Devil' by the Dutch on account of its terrible powers, that was built in the reign of Charles I. In his famous Diary the gossipy Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Pepys, often alludes to Woolwich, which he constantly visited to inspect the dockyard, the ships, and the stores, making the journey from Greenwich sometimes by boat, sometimes on foot. He describes how he looked into the details of every department, examining the charges made for work done, and he strikes a melancholy and prophetic note when he says: 'I see it is impossible for the King to have things done so cheap as other men.' A somewhat later entry in the same journal calls up a picture of a very different kind of place to the crowded, busy, and somewhat squalid town of to-day, for on May 28, 1669, the writer says: 'My wife away down with Jane ... to Woolwich in order to [get] a little ayre, and to lie there to-night and so to gather May dew in the morning ... to wash her face with.' To quote Pepys again, he laments at the time of the scare about the Dutch, the sinking of so many good ships in the Thames off Woolwich, shrewdly remarking that these ships 'would have been good works to command the river below' had the enemy attempted to pass them, and adding, 'it is a sad sight while we would be thought masters of the sea.'