The Brighton Road Part 19

St. John's Common, partly in Keymer and partly in Clayton parishes, was enclosed piecemeal, between 1828 and 1855, by an arrangement between the lords of the manors and the copyholders, who divided the plunder between them, when this large tract of land resently became the site of these towns of St. John's Common and Burgess Hill, which sprang up, if not with quite the rapidity of a Californian mining-town, at least with a celerity previously unknown in England. Their rapid rise was of course due to the Brighton Railway and its station. There are, however, nowadays not wanting signs, quite apart from the condition of the brick and tile and drainpipe-making industry, on which the two mushroom towns have come into being, that the unlovely places are in a bad way. Shops closed and vainly offered "to let" tell a story of artificial expansion and consequent depression: the inevitable Nemesis of discounting the future.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JACOB'S POST.]

I will show you what the site of these uninviting modern places was like, a hundred years ago. It is not far, geographically, from the sorry streets of Burgess Hill to the wild, wide commons of Wivelsfield and Ditchling; but such a change is wrought in two miles and a half as would be considered impossible by any who have not made the excursion into those beautiful regions. They show us, in survival, what the now hackneyed main roads were like three generations ago.

[Sidenote: JACOB'S POST]

In every circ.u.mstance Ditchling Common recalls the "Crackskull Commons" of the eighteenth-century comedies, for it has a little horror of its own in the shape of an authentic fragment of a gibbet. This is the silent reminder of a crime committed near at hand, at the "Royal Oak" inn, Wivelsfield, in 1734. In that year Jacob Harris, a Jew pedlar, came to the inn and, stabling his horse, attacked Miles, the landlord, while he was grooming the animal down, and cut his throat. The servant-maid, hearing a disturbance in the stable, and coming downstairs to see the cause of it, was murdered in the same way, and then the Jew calmly walked upstairs and slaughtered the landlord's wife, who was lying ill in bed. None of these unfortunate people died at once. The two women expired the same night, but Miles lived long enough to identify the a.s.sa.s.sin, who was hanged at Horsham, his body being hung in chains from this gibbet, ever since known as Jacob's Post.

Pieces of wood from this gallows-tree were long and highly esteemed by country-folk as charms, and were often carried about with them as preventatives of all manner of accidents and diseases; indeed, its present meagre proportions are due to this practice and belief.

The post is fenced with a wooden rail, and is surmounted by the quaint iron effigy of a rooster, pierced with the date, 1734, in old-fas.h.i.+oned figures.

It is a lonely spot, with but one cottage near at hand: the common undulating away for miles until it reaches close to the grey barrier of the n.o.ble South Downs, rising magnificently in the distance.

XXIX

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

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

From Friar's Oak it is but a step to that newest creation among Brighton's suburbs, Clayton Park, its cl.u.s.tering red-brick villas, building estates, and half-formed roads adjoining the station of Ha.s.socks Gate, which, by the way, the railway authorities have long since reduced to "Ha.s.socks."

The name recalls certain dusty contrivances of straw and carpeting artfully contrived for the devout to stumble over in church. But, not to incur the suspicion of tripping over the name as here applied, it may be mentioned that "ha.s.sock" is the Anglo-Saxon name for a coppice or small wood; and there are really many of these at and around Ha.s.socks Gate to this day.

[Sidenote: TURNPIKE GATES]

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

. Stone Pound Gate .

. Clears Patcham Gate .

.St. John's and Ansty Gates.

. Y .

. Patcham Gate .

. Clears Stone Pound Gate, .

.St. John's and Ansty Gates.

. 126 .

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

familiar to every road, and they earned the pikemen, as a cla.s.s, a very unenviable reputation.

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

In those days you took your seat on your particular fancy in coaches, and paid your sixteen-s.h.i.+lling fare from London to Brighton, or _vice versa_, trusting (yet with heaviness of heart) in Providence to bring you to a happy issue from all the many dangers and discomforts of travelling.

Occasionally it was brought home, by storm and flood, to those learned enough to know it, that "travelling" derived originally from "travail,"

and the discomforts of leaving one's own fireside in the winter are emphasized and underscored in the particulars of what befell at Stonepound in the great snowstorm of December 24th, 1836--a storm that paralysed communications throughout the kingdom.

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

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

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

[Sidenote: CLAYTON TUNNEL ACCIDENT]

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

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

Clayton Tunnel was already considered a dangerous place, and there was situated at either end (north and south entrances) a signal-cabin furnished with telegraphic instruments and signal apparatus, by which the signalman at one end of the tunnel could communicate with his fellow at the other, and could notify "train in" or "train out" as might happen.

This practically formed a primitive sort of "block system," especially devised for use in this mile and a quarter's dark burrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

x.x.x

[Sidenote: THE SOUTH DOWNS]

From these levels at Stonepound the South Downs come full upon the view, crowned at Clayton Hill with windmills. Ditchling Beacon to the left, and the more commanding height of Wols...o...b..ry to the extreme right, flank this great wall of earth, chalk, and gra.s.s--Wols...o...b..ry semicircular in outline and bare, save only for some few clumps of yellow gorse and other small bushes.

Just where the road bends, and, crossing the railway, begins to climb Clayton Hill, the Gothic, battlemented entrance to Clayton Tunnel looms with a kind of scowling picturesqueness, well suited to its dark history, continually vomiting steam and smoke, like a h.e.l.l's mouth.

Above it rises the hill, with telegraph-poles and circular brick ventilating-shafts going in a long perspective above the chalky cutting in the road; and on the left hand the little rustic church of Clayton, humbly crouching under the lee of the downs.

"Clayton Hill!" It was a word of dread among cyclists until, say, the year 1900, when rim-and back-pedalling brakes superseded the inefficient spoon-brake, acting on the front tyre. Coming from Brighton, the hill drops steeply into the Weald of Suss.e.x, and not only steeply, but the road takes a sudden and perilous turn over the railway bridge, at the foot of the descent, precisely where descending vehicles not under control attain their greatest speed. Here many a cyclist has been flung against the brick wall of the bridge, and his machine broken and himself injured; and seven have met their death here. Even in these days of good brakes a fatality has occurred, a cyclist being killed in November, 1902, in a collision with a trap.