The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, And Cromer Road - free ebook by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

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The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, And Cromer Road

Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

56 chapters

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56 chapters

THE NEWMARKET, BURY, THETFORD,AND CROMER ROAD

THE NEWMARKET, BURY, THETFORD,AND CROMER ROAD

The Brighton Road : Old Times and New on a Classic Highway. The Portsmouth Road , and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old. The Dover Road : Annals of an Ancient Turnpike. The Bath Road : History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway. The Exeter Road : The Story of the West of England Highway. The Great North Road : The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols. The Norwich Road : An East Anglian Highway. The Holyhead Road : The Mail Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols. The Cambridge, Ely, and Ki

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PREFACE.

PREFACE.

Petersham, Surrey, February, 1904 ....

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THE ROAD TO NEWMARKET, THETFORD,NORWICH, AND CROMER.

THE ROAD TO NEWMARKET, THETFORD,NORWICH, AND CROMER.

List of Illustrations...

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I

I

The road to Newmarket, Thetford, Norwich, and Cromer is 132 miles in length, if you go direct from the old starting-points, Shoreditch or Whitechapel churches. If, on the other hand, you elect to follow the route of the old Thetford and Norwich Mail, which turned off just outside Newmarket from the direct road through Barton Mills, and went instead by Bury St. Edmunds, it is exactly seven miles longer to Thetford and all places beyond. There are few roads so wild and desolate, and no other main

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II

II

The Newmarket and Thetford route was not a favourite one with the earliest coachmasters. Its lengthy stretches of unpopulated country rendered it a poor speculation, and the exceptional dangers to be apprehended from Highway-men kept it unpopular with travellers. The Chelmsford, Colchester, and Ipswich route on to Norwich was always the favourite with travellers bound so far, and on that road we have details of coaching so early as 1696. Here, however, although there were early conveyances, we o

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III

III

Although the road to Newmarket lay, as we have seen, chiefly through Epping, Chesterford, and Bishop’s Stortford from the earliest days of coaching, this route was, in earlier times of travel, but one of several. A favourite way was along the Old North Road, through Enfield, Ware, Puckeridge, and Royston, whence wayfarers might branch off to the right, by way of Whittlesford and Pampisford, or might go through Melbourn, Harston, and Cambridge. Travellers were shy of venturing into the glades of

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IV

IV

It behoves us now, after tracing this truly Royal route, to return and plod the plebeian path. Let us start from whence the road of old was measured, from busy Shoreditch. Here the ordinary traffic of London streets is complicated by that of the heavy railway vans and trollies to and from the great neighbouring goods station of Bishopsgate, and the din and confusion are intensified by the stone setts that here have not been replaced by wood paving. Upon all this maze of traffic the church of St.

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V

V

The place is now a busy suburb, like every other in most respects, and remarkable only for the extraordinary number and variety of its places of worship. Every brand of religion is represented here, but all that remains of the old parish church is the venerable mediæval tower, hard by where the North London Railway crosses over the road. The body of the old building was demolished, on the plea that it was dangerous, in 1798: really, the times were out of sympathy with Gothic architecture, and an

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VI

VI

The Lea Bridge Road, although a broad and direct thoroughfare, makes a bad beginning, and branches off narrowly and in an obscure manner from the wide Lower Clapton Road. The present bridge was built in 1821. The road itself is a singular combination of picturesqueness and sordid vulgarity. Badly founded on the marshes that stretch, water-logged, on either side of the river Lea, its two miles’ length of roadway is full of ridges and depressions that no mere surface repairs will ever remedy, and

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VII

VII

The entrance to Epping Forest, the greenwood tree aforesaid, is by way of Snaresbrook, past the Eagle Pond, a pleasant lake which takes its name from that old coaching-house, the “Eagle,” pictured here in the old print after Pollard. It is more than seventy years since that Old Master of coaching subjects painted this view of the Norwich Mail passing by, but the old house still stands, not so very greatly altered. Pollard has made it and its surrounding trees look more of the Noah’s Ark order of

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VIII

VIII

Highway-men early made their appearance on this road, and from very remote times the great Forest of Epping was dreaded by travellers on their account. But it was not until Newmarket’s fame as a racing and gambling centre arose, in the time of James I., that these long miles became so especially notorious. One of the very worst periods would seem to have been that of Charles II., under whose ardent patronage of the Turf the Court was frequently, and for long periods, in residence at Newmarket. N

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IX

IX

The “Wake Arms” inn stands where the roads by High Beech Green and Loughton join again. In the old days it was a posting-house of some celebrity, and a prize-fighting, cock-fighting, and badger-drawing resort of a considerable notoriety. Near it, on the right side of the road towards Epping, are those prehistoric earthworks, largely overgrown with ancient trees, called Ambresbury Banks, and supposed to take their names from Ambrosius Aurelius, a half-legendary Romanised British chieftain who die

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X

X

Bishop’s Stortford is a pleasant and an old-fashioned market-town, with a great and fussy air of business, a long High Street running in the valley near, and parallel with, the Stort, and a large parish church perched on the shoulder of a precipitous street most picturesquely and accurately named Windhill. Natives have long since dropped the first half of the name and know it as “Stortford,” except indeed when they say “Strawford,” as very often they do. WINDHILL, BISHOP’S STORTFORD. There was,

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XI

XI

Travellers by road who fleet from Hockerill on to Newport, turning neither to the right nor left, pass through Stansted Street and know nothing of the ancient village of Stansted Mountfitchet, of which it is an offshoot. It is a pity, for that village is a distinctly interesting place. Turning to the right hand at the cross-roads, one arrives at the centre of the old settlement in less than half a mile. It was originally built in a deep hollow, under the heavy shadow of the giant earthworks on w

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XII

XII

Quendon , a scattered little village prettily situated where the road broadens out and curves slightly, with broad margins of grass, bears a resemblance to Trumpington, on the Cambridge Road. In advance of the cottages stands a picturesque modern well-house and fountain, with a beautifully designed horse-trough, “given to Quendon and Pickling in memory of Caroline Mary Cranmer-Byng,” as an inscription states. Quite at the end of the village is the “Coach and Horses” inn, a survival of posting an

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XIII

XIII

Among the many points of interest in Newport, the still-surviving “Newport Toll” is certainly not least. In these latter days, when traffic fares the road unhindered, all public roads are toll-free—except the road through Newport. Pedestrians and cyclists in general, and the whole of the traffic from certain specified neighbouring villages are exempt; but waggons from elsewhere pay 2 d. each, forwards and backwards; higglers’ horses, ½ d. each; and sheep and all other cattle, 4 d. per score. The

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XIV

XIV

Passing by Shortgrove Park and Uttlesford Bridge, the dirty and dismal station of Audley End is noticed, down the left-hand road we take, on the way to discover what manner of place “Wendens Ambo” may be. To the present historian nothing is more attractive than a place with an odd name, and he has gone unconscionable distances out of his way, often to find the most unusual names enshrining the most commonplace towns and villages. But not always. Here, for example, Wendens Ambo is a quaint, old-w

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XV

XV

SAFFRON WALDEN. Saffron Walden lies a mile distant, on a ridge overlooking a wide stretch of country, and is one of the prettiest and neatest of rural corporate towns. To the whole countryside it is merely “Walden.” No local person would ever think of saying “Saffron” Walden; and really, now there is no longer any saffron grown here, why should he? Prominent, far and near, is the great Perpendicular church, bracketed with that of Thaxted as the finest in Essex. Not a little of its proud dominanc

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XVI

XVI

We regain the high road at Littlebury, a rural village whose church is said to be built within the lines of a Roman encampment. It may be so, but the Eye of Faith is required to perceive any relics of it, although the natural hillock it stands upon, overlooking the river Cam, must be the “little bury” of the Saxon, once guarding the passage of that stream, and whose title has now crystallised into the place-name. Littlebury was the birthplace of Winstanley, the cocksure and unfortunate designer

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XVII

XVII

It is a fine road that leads from Great Chesterford to Newmarket, partly on the line of the old Icknield Way. Ickleton and Hinxton, two neighbouring villages, are seen down in the distance, on the left hand, as the road climbs steadily over the chalk downs: pleasant villages in the valley of the Cam, with brilliantly whitewashed cottages showing prominently from their setting in green pastures. This is a no mere track over the downs, but a well-made highway, embanked in the hollow and cut throug

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XVIII

XVIII

That cyclist whose way lies in the eye of the wind along these miles to or from Newmarket is greatly to be pitied, for few sheltering plantations break the force of the howling gales that sweep the stark hillsides. But when the summer sun of a still July afternoon shines mellow upon this country of infinite distances—why, then the way of the pilgrim is made easy, and he can better appreciate a road whose bleakness, when overtaken by rain or night, or struggling against adverse winds, he remember

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XIX

XIX

The first mention of the Devil’s Ditch is found in the Saxon Chronicle, in the year 905, when this land of the East Angles was described as laid waste by the northmen between the “Dyke” and the Ouse. It was under the Saxons that it was first imputed to the Father of Lies, whose name it still bears, and to whose strenuous labour, in the open-mouthed astonishment of those simple people, amazed at the many such gigantic earthworks they found in the land, they ascribed almost every other such remark

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XX

XX

Newmarket Heath is a large place. It is easily possible to ramble on it quite away from any sight or sound of the races and the race crowds, and to find a solitude in its midst while eight thousand people are shouting themselves hoarse in cheering a popular winner. While the October meetings are in progress on one side of the Heath, the July Course, on the other, under the shadow of the “Devil’s Ditch,” is a voiceless solitude. You would almost think that the Iceni, who dug the Ditch, had planne

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XXI

XXI

The history of the Jockey Club and that of “Tattersalls” are inseparable. Richard, the first Tattersall, born in 1724, and originally stud-groom to the Duke of Kingston, founded the well-known business of horse-auctioneering in London in 1766, and prospered from the beginning of that enterprise; but his fortune was made rather in horse-breeding, and “Old Tatt” had his first great success in 1779, when he bought Highflyer, Lord Bolingbroke’s famous racehorse, for £2,500, and put him to the stud.

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XXII

XXII

The cemetery at Newmarket is the traveller’s melancholy introduction to this town of gay memories. It acts the part of that oft-quoted ancient Egyptian custom of seating a skeleton at the feast; for those who go to and from the racecourse, and the budding jockeys who daily exercise the horses on the Bunbury or others of the Heath gallops, can scarce fail to see it and its serried ranks of grandiose white marble monuments. It must inevitably be dispiriting to some, for it emphasises the shortness

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XXIII

XXIII

YARD OF THE “WHITE HART,” NEWMARKET. The houses of this broad street are curiously irregular. Great palatial mansions alternate with humble taverns; the busy “White Hart” stands next door to the Duke of Devonshire’s house, and shops elbow other imposing residences of the great. On the right hand, as you enter the town, is the large red-brick pile of Queensberry House, built a few years ago by Lord Wolverton, and at first styled “Ugly House,” from a successful racehorse of that name; and everywhe

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XXIV

XXIV

Modern Newmarket is typified by that showy giant barrack-hotel, the “Victoria,” not long since completed, and in its glitter and electric light an ostentatious sign of these thriving times of new-made wealth and new-born social ambitions. The older Newmarket, of days when wealth alone could not purchase rank and the entrée to society, is represented by the “Rutland Arms,” appropriately staid and severe in its architectural style, and perhaps, like the older order it embodies, a little under the

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XXV

XXV

The flat-racing season at Newmarket—and incidentally the flat-catching season also—opens with the Craven Meeting on Easter Monday, and ends with the Houghton, or third October Meeting, towards the close of that month. Between these are the Second Spring, the two July, and the First and Second October Meetings, making in all eight annual events. But Newmarket does by no means hibernate with the end of October and merely come to life again in the spring. When the flat-racing ends, the hurdle-racin

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XXVI

XXVI

Newmarket at other than race-times does by no means proclaim its occupation to the chance traveller along the road. He must rise betimes and fare forth early who would see the sheeted racers going to or returning from their morning gallops; but such an early riser will find much to impress him. Two thousand horses are in training at Newmarket, but only he who in the brisk and racing early hours of the day sees the long processions belonging to the various owners filing at a walk along the High S

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XXVII

XXVII

The road on leaving Newmarket, at the crest of the High Street, branches in many directions from where a modern clock tower stands, like a policeman, in the parting of the ways. The Clock Tower, which, as a prominent and venerated landmark, and one of the principal features of Newmarket, it behoves us, in all humility, to spell with capital letters, was erected by one “Charley” Blanton, owner of Robert the Devil, in honour of Victoria the Good. The Clock Tower is Blanton’s, but the antithesis is

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XXVIII

XXVIII

I have never been able to see Bury St. Edmunds in the favourable light of Carlyle’s description of the town. Listen to what he says of it: “The Burg , Bury, or ‘Berry’ as they call it, of St. Edmund is still a prosperous brisk Town; beautifully diversifying, with its clear brick houses, ancient clean streets, and 20,000 or 15,000 busy souls, the general grassy face of Suffolk; looking out right pleasantly from its hill-slope towards the rising sun: and on the eastern edge of it still runs, long,

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XXIX

XXIX

A great open space stretches outside the boundary walls of the old Abbey precincts. Here, on “Angel Hill,” as it is called, Bury fair was held in days of old. It was no mere rustic saturnalia, but a fashionable institution, and lasted a fortnight. A one-day fair still held annually, on September 21st, is the sole relic of this once important event, famous not only for the business, but also for the matrimonial matches concluded there. The “Angel,” a dyspeptic and gloomy-looking house of huge pro

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XXX

XXX

The ditchwater-dull town of Bury comes to an end with Northgate Street and its continuation of “Out-Northgate”; past the curious railway station built in the Jacobean style, and presenting an odd likeness to some ancient mansion of the Hatfield House type, through whose centre a railway has been driven, leaving only the wings standing. Everything is on the largest scale: broad roads, with few people in them; great brick railway bridge over them; tall cupola’d towers of the station looking down u

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XXXI

XXXI

AVENUE NEAR NEWMARKET. Having now disposed of the loop road to Thetford through Bury, we are free to take the main route from Newmarket, by Barton Mills and Elveden. It is a wilder and a lonelier, but yet not a dull road, like that just traversed. Once beyond the long line of trainers’ houses and stables, fringing the road as far as the entrance to Chippenham Park, the heaths that surround Newmarket begin again and plunge the explorer once more into unsheltered wilds. It is after a sun-stricken,

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XXXII

XXXII

The sinuous road out of Barton Mills is one of the chief beauty-spots of all these one hundred and thirty miles to Cromer. Nowhere is a more curving and undecided main road than this, at the crossing of the little river Lark, and few have so great a charm. Here, close by that old roadside inn, the “Bull,” stand the flour-mills that continue to give a meaning to the old place-name, and past them flows that fishful river, along a reach densely shaded by poplars and willows. Graceful plantations li

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XXXIII

XXXIII

The 3¾ miles onwards to Thetford were known and dreaded in the old days as “Thetford Heath.” Elveden Gap, passed on the way, is the name of a clump of firs, marking where the boundaries of estates and parishes run. Beyond it stretches the lonely heath. Pollard, in his terrifying print of the “Norwich Mail in a Thunderstorm,” makes this the scene of a very dramatic picture, with the lightning horribly forky and the rain very slanty and penetrating. Thetford Heath was an ill place on such an occas

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XXXIV

XXXIV

The situation of Thetford and the history of the roads by which it is approached make an interesting subject of enquiry. All ancient accounts of Thetford agree in describing it as from the earliest times a place of great importance—a strongly fortified post and a seat of government. The first mention of Thetford takes us back to the year 575, when Uffa, first King of the East Angles, made this his capital city, and called it “Theotford,” by that name describing the situation of the place, lying

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XXXV

XXXV

The most prominent hostelry at Thetford in coaching days was the “Bell,” and it still occupies that geographical pre-eminence, even though its commercial importance has decayed. The “Bell,” in fact, has never recovered from the blow dealt it in 1846, when the coaches ceased to run, and overhangs the narrow street, its great courtyard a world too large for the diminished traffic. Lord Albemarle has a good deal to say of the “Bell” in his book of reminiscences. As a young man, travelling about 181

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XXXVI

XXXVI

I am quite sure that if any old Thetfordian were permitted to return to his native town, he would find it, by contrast with other times, astonishingly dull. No badgering of Quakers, no cock-fighting, no scold-ducking, and no more bribery and corruption at Parliamentary elections—or at least it is not done in the old approved style, when at every inn you could call for what you liked, get riotously, hilariously, and finally dead, drunk, and have the cost of the debauch chalked up to the Duke of G

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XXXVII

XXXVII

They still show you—if you are persistent enough to at length find those who know or care anything at all about it—the birthplace of Tom Paine, in White Hart Street, but it must be confessed, gladly or with regret—one is not quite sure which emotion is pre-eminent—that Paine, that stormy petrel of late eighteenth-century politics, has quite faded out of popular recollection in this his native town. Who, anywhere, knows nowadays much more about Tom Paine than that he was the author of a work, “Th

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XXXVIII

XXXVIII

When the modern tourist leaves Thetford, he does so without a thrill on the threshold, and the only thing to give him pause is the rather bewildering choice of roads on the barren-looking rise where the town ends. Every way leads to open heath, even now, but every turning does not, as of yore, bring you butt against a highwayman. I, for one, do not regret the disappearance of that feature of the old days, and am content to forego all such thrillful encounters. Two miles out of Thetford one came

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XXXIX

XXXIX

Here the murmurous twilight course of the Peddar’s Way through the avenue of pine-trees known as Dale Row marks the boundaries of the parishes of Roudham and East Wretham. By the elder among the peasantry it is still spoken of as “the Scutes”— i.e. , the Skirts; but it is quite certain they are ignorant why they so call it. It is interesting to recall the fact that feminine skirts are pronounced “skutes” in New York and other towns of the New England States of America, doubtless in a survival of

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XL

XL

Larlingford , a tiny hamlet on the Thet, in a dip of the road, long since became a misnamed place, for the ford is replaced by a bridge, itself of a respectable age. Two miles beyond the old ford there existed in Ogilby’s time, in the second half of the seventeenth century, a beacon on the right-hand side of the road, duly pictured on his road map as a cresset, or fire-basket, mounted on a post and reached by ladders; a contrivance eloquently witnessing to the wild state of the road in those tim

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XLI

XLI

Attleborough , quiet enough on all other days of the week, wakes up and does a considerable business on market-day, although even that weekly fixture does not command the trade of sixty years ago, before the railway brought the better marketing of Norwich within reach. But the trade of the town is still large enough to support several large inns, a Corn Hall, and a long street of shops. It would be unprofitable to argue the origin of the “Attle” in the place-name, for it has already been discuss

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XLII

XLII

To Wymondham is our next stage, a flat six miles. In midst of this level tract of country, where villages, and houses even, are few and far between, the wayfarer’s eye lights upon a stone pillar on the grassy selvedge of the road, a dilapidated object that looks like a milestone. But as it occurs only three-quarters of a mile after passing the sixteenth stone from Thetford, it is clearly something else, and inspection is rewarded by the discovery of this inscription:— “ This Pillar | was erected

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XLIII

XLIII

Wymondham town, to which we now come, stands at the junction of many roads, and was long a centre, both of religious and trade activity. Strangers, uninstructed in Norfolk usage, pronounce the name as spelled, and thereby earn the contempt of those to the manner born, who smile superior; but when the East Anglian travels into Leicestershire and, arriving at that Wymondham, calls it, after his own use and wont, “Windham,” he in turn is made to feel outside the pale, for Leicestershire folk take f

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XLIV

XLIV

Some years earlier a short-lived but significant movement had been set afoot by one self-styled “John Amend-all,” whose name is sufficient earnest of there being wrongs grievously calling for justice to be done. It had then been said that three or four stout fellows, riding overnight through the towns of Norfolk, with bell-ringing and exhortations to rise, would by morning have collected 10,000 men, and it was now perceived that this had been no idle talk; for 16,000 peasants joined the camp on

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XLV

XLV

There are modern epitaphs to Ketts in Wymondham churchyard, whose fir-grown space admirably sets off and embellishes the gaunt towers. It is in the narrow lane leading to the church that the most picturesque inn of the town is to be found, in the sign of the “Green Dragon,” a characteristic old English title and a very fine specimen of old English woodwork. Most of the ancient inns of Wymondham have either disappeared, or have been rebuilt or otherwise modernised, but it was once, in common with

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XLVI

XLVI

Hethersett , whose name means “Heather-heath,” and is pronounced “Hathersett” in the local speech, is heralded along the open road by a solitary roadside inn with the sign of the “Old Oak.” No ancient oak is within sight, but the accustomed pilgrim of the roads has not for years been exploring the highways and byways without having long ago arrived at the conclusion that there is a substantial reason for most things, even the names of inns, and so from that sign deduces an historic oak somewhere

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XLVII

XLVII

Distinguished travellers of old generally made their entrance here, through the long-vanished St. Stephen’s Gate in the equally vanished walls. This way came, in 1600, on his public entry, that dancing Will Kemp, of whom we have already heard much. On the completion of his ninth day’s jigging, from Hingham to Barford Bridge and Norwich, he ended at St. Giles’s Gate, and thence, to avoid the crowd, rode into the City. Three days later, having duly advertised his intentions, he danced in through S

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XLVIII

XLVIII

It has been already remarked how winding are the ways of Norwich, and it is indeed only with difficulty those once in it can find their way out. If it were required to turn a very pretty compliment to Norwich, here we have the most obvious foundation for one. But we must on to the coast, and take the City only incidentally, as its mazy streets are threaded on the way to the Aylsham road. It is by no means slighting Norwich so to do, for the City has been described in a short impressionistic sket

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XLIX

XLIX

TOMBLAND ALLEY. By Prince’s Street we come to Tombland, the open space by the Cathedral, where St. George’s Church and Tombland Alley make so picturesque a group; and thence across the Wensum at Fye Bridge and along Magdalen Street. Bearing to the left, by Botolph Street, and noticing the gable end of the “King’s Arms” inn, with its ornamental tie-rods “I.C. 1646,” on the gable-end, we finally pass along St. Augustine Street, to come to the long suburban rise of the Aylsham Road, through Upper H

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L

L

The “Black Boys” owes its existence on this scale to the near neighbourhood of Blickling Hall, perhaps the most famous mansion in Norfolk, and certainly the most beautiful and stately. Blickling is scarce a mile distant, and is so small a village that it must have been to Aylsham in general, and to the “Black Boys” in particular, the custom fell in those old days when the Hobarts of Blickling Hall entertained so royally. We cannot forbear visiting Blickling, for not merely Hobarts, but Anne Bole

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LI

LI

From Aylsham to Cromer is little more than ten miles; downhill from Aylsham town to the levels at Ingworth, whose name, meaning the “meadow village,” illustrates that it is, in fact, set down beside the water-meads bordering the river Bure. Ingworth has a dilapidated church picturesquely overlooking the road from a little hillock, with only the lower part of its round tower left. Erpingham church is presently seen, away to the left, standing lonely in the ploughlands, without any village, and on

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LII

LII

There can be few more delightful woodlands than those of Felbrigg, and no more romantic approach to a seaside than that of the woodland road which goes, as though tunnelled through the trees, steeply down from Felbrigg’s height to Cromer’s level. In the distance, down there, you see the illimitable sea, Cromer’s great church tower standing up against it, and the houses of the town clustered around—a little group set in a vast expanse of salt water and green fields. This is the most delightful wa

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LIII

LIII

It was somewhere about the beginning of the nineteenth century, contemporaneously with the general rise of seaside resorts, that the invigorating air of Cromer first began to attract attention, and so early as 1806 an anonymous visitor, seeking health here, published Cromer: a Descriptive Poem , a wearisome production of several hundred lines, in blank—very blank—verse. The reader shall be spared his rhapsodies on the sea, but his circuitous description of a taxed cart, typical of his literary m

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