Route of our England trip in 2019

Yorkshire moors and wolds

Surrey hills and byways

Leafy roads lead to Dorking

Avoiding the traffic we took leafy roads to Dorking today and drove almost the entire way in narrow tunnels of green, dappled with autumn gold, and it was simply beautiful. Beautiful homes, many gated and secured, peeped out from the forest. We drove over Box Hill and loved the view so paused for a shot of the valley through a gap in the trees. This view brought tourists flocking to Dorking in great numbers. Many of the villages and towns around here have much that is stylish about them, Dorking does style in spades. Its life has revolved around it being on the railway line, so folk visited and made its market famous. The Dorking Cockerel was the big seller. The market was held in the centre of town and the town shoppes subsequently thrived. 

It feels and looks prosperous. Just entering through a little alley from the carpark you could see the style and sense the money. A silver cockerel permanently on a pedestal greets everyone who walks this way. And probably winks. Metal witches fly wild and free across one of the many winding black and white passages. We love the whimsy of Dorking and Surrey. There is a real sense of humour about its style and its decor. Even the Dorking butcher has gone to great trouble to present himself to his buyers wearing his best clothes: black is beautiful. And in the ironmonger shop, 16th and 17th century paintings from the era of James 1 were uncovered on the walls when renovating was underway. Panels have been preserved under glass and are now displayed on the second floor. Even back then, there was style. 

We stopped for lunch at a Deli, come Bar, come Restaurant, called The White Horse, and photographed every room. Interior design has changed in England. Once pubs were dark and traditional, symmetrical and sombre, decorated with horseshoes. Nowadays, the decor is unusual, creative and fun. The horseshoes, here, were sent to a farrier, and twisted into hooks, and dozens of them hang from the walls as rustic coat hangers, or ham hooks, if needed. A white horse, outrunning a black one, each with flowing manes has been hand painted in pointillism on one of the feature walls. It is simple and stunningly effective. As were the three white horse sculptures breaking though one of the walls. Such a great idea. 

And the theme goes on in the other rooms. A white horse is featured in a Dickensian highway robbery triptych tale hung on an adjoining wall: each piece is white plaster, hand built, telling the tale of a merchant being held up, removed from his carriage, deprived of his box of coins, distraught: only to watch, heart thumping, as the Highwayman went riding, riding, not realising, yet, that he has dropped his bundle. Gold coins, like a crumb trail, lead in his direction.  Knives, forks and spoons have been bored and hung from hooks as kitchen art. A cluster of worn breadboards and cutting boards with leather thongs are mounted artistically beside an array of rolling pins. 

At the end of the day, so lovely was our drive to Dorking that we programmed in a repeat of the leafy green and gold tunnels homewards. Autumn leaves are falling now around Dorking, making it even more beautiful. Our time in England is now coming to a close.  We have to head back to Australia.  It is sad, always, to leave.

Tunnels of green 

Expensive homes under lock and key 

View from Box Hill 

Silver cockerel welcoming pedestrians to town

Merry witches riding 

The Dorking Butchery

Old panels under glass 

Pointillist horses

Breaking the barrier

Highwayman foiled 

Kitchen utensils as art

Autumn leaves start to fall 

Our house in the middle of our street

Our village, Ripley, is as ancient as any in southern England.  Its roots go deep.  It was on the route between the sea and London so became a valuable stopping off place to and fro, and being only 25 miles from the heart of London, that proximity is still the engine that maintains the village as a commuter hub.

In the early days when travel was by horse and carriage this was a good place to change horses. Many carriage houses were built here.  Our house used to be a carriage house, but has recently been converted into a vast residential home.  But there are still many fine old buildings lining the High Street that started life as characterful post houses with liveries at the back, but are now expensive inns, attractive pubs, or starred restaurants, some so old and tired they lean woozily on their neighbours for support, their old bricks bulging fit to burst, their attic timbers twisted and sagging under the weight of aged shingles.  For time it became fashionable to cycle to Ripley from London and we still see weekend cyclists about.

Amazingly, it maintains the sense of a village. It has a green in the centre of town, right opposite our place, where every weekend some village activity happens, be it a fair, a fete or a festival.  This village is well organised and seems to have an endless list of volunteers ready and willing to contribute to maintain the beloved village feel.  This week we had an amazing Guy Fawkes Bonfire.  Wooden pallets were stacked to the sky with a 'guy' crowning the lot and fireworks rained down on our roof for a solid 30 minutes, scaring the cats.   That is quite a bit of expense every year for the coffers of a small village.

Not that this village is likely bothered by that. This is not a village where folk count their pennies.  The shops are not really survival shops, and there is not a single charity shop anywhere, which is amazing for an English town.   What shops are here tend to be discreet.  Even the coffee shops are tricky to suss out.  One is cramped into tiny rooms with wooden beams that keep you bent until you sit. Another, is full of expensive clutter there to be touched, to be bought,  so coffee drinkers have to find a space amidst all of that to sit.  It is delightful and where we have our pain au chocolat and morning espresso.  A group of about four local women tend to gather in the kitchen nattering and often forget to serve.  No one seems to rush them or to take offence.  There is a nook of a bakery on one corner that has been there continuously for over 500 years, and maybe beyond.  It still wears an old Hovis bread sign touting its wares.  Miss Bush's Bridal wear is by appointment only, a chalk billboard states at the entrance to an old chapel that looks rather like a home studio, which it well may be.  Brides and bride's mothers may enter via the gothic front door. Fittings and tradefok are invited around the side entrance.

We have found many discreet decorator and interior design shops along both sides of the street, with inconspicuous signs that only locals would know were there, one leaning against leaded Regency windows which says it specialises in silk; another, a little more obvious offers classes and products in decorative designer handmade glass, mostly in soft greens and soft blues.  All very pretty and stylish.   Some entire shops in town are chockers with decorator items, yet have no name and likely only open by appointment, too.  We have not been able to suss this out,  as yet.  There are one or two eclectic gift shops, with showroom halls filled with decorator items stretching into the depths of their buildings, selling outdoor metal mirrors of the gothic variety,  massive wicker baskets to be placed near a big fire for winter armloads of firewood, along with ornamental and whimsical garden adornments of animals with crooked tails or twisted tuft feathers.  Today we saw mice with musical instruments.  Whimsy.  Much is expensive and much of is exposed to the weather.   Pristine, super crisp wares are not what this village is about. The look that is popular is aged, a little worn, a little shabby,  but infinitely chic. Expensively  chic.

Our house fits that bill completely.  It is amazing.  As it was once a carriage house it has its frontage slap bang on the High Street for easy access.   It still wears its carriage house name pinned to the front.  Folk here don't seem to bother with house numbers for their post, names get the mail just as effectively. Though that doesn't help taxi drivers from out-of-town attempting to find which house you need to be dropped off at, if you are new to town.

The front door opens onto a long black and white tiled hall with panelled walls in grey and white: a converted carriage house makes a massive home.  Living here for a month one would expect to lose weight by simply walking to and fro.

There is a Library on one side of the Hall, with a Priest's Hole only able to be accessed if you know which book to touch on which shelf.  It is decorated in Regency red flocked wallpaper, buttoned chesterfields  around a log burner, and Victorian ladies clustered on the walls in a family history picture gallery, all  in gilded frames hanging over and about the piano.  The library shelves are groaning with old text books, references and other works of importance to this family.  A glass chandelier drips from an ornate corniced ceiling and there is a globe, a telescope tripod, and a headless bust of a display mannequin whimsically arrayed in one corner,  beside a large wicker basket for winter wood. Likely bought from the shop just a few doors down. The floor is parquetry.

Beneath this room there is a Cellar, accessed via low doors almost hidden in the hallway closet. Steps down into the cellar are stone.  It is cool down there, perfect for wine, of course. Though that is not the only cellar, there is another at the end of the priest's hole.

The Office, where I spend a lot of time, has a parquetry floor too.  It faces the High street and has an old wooden desk at the window with many drawers, with a scuffed leather surface edged in a gilded frieze. This matches the long decorative mirror at the entrance to the room. There are mirrors everywhere in this house: ornate, painted, eccentric.   The plaster cornices are heavily decorative, all white, while the wall paper is a white cherry blossom Japanese print on a light azure background stretching around to a comfy sofa against the back wall.  Several masculine painting hang on the office walls, as do a cluster of expensive guitars. Five, at least. Someone is an aficionado.  It is all very cheerful.  I love working here.

There is a downstairs bathroom with a shower, an upstairs main bathroom with a massive clawfoot tub as well a shower, along with two other good sized power shower ensuites, all four bathrooms charmingly decorated with painted wooden cabinets, long necked tapware, all of them featuring panels of whimsical colourful wallpaper. Flamingoes with long white necks swim on the upstairs master bathroom walls.  Monkeys curl their tails and climb all ovoverser ized green jungle plants in the downstairs bathroom.  It is all such great fun.

On down the hall past a white staircase leading upstairs, beneath which are secret inbuilt panels that with one press reveal drawers for wellies and boots, or doors for the Cellar and Cloak Room, we come to a Garden Room with French doors to an outside patio, which takes you to another set of steps leading outside, up to an second floor terrace with metal table and chairs, where dinner and drinks might be served on a fine evening, under the stars.   We still haven't made it up there, amazingly.  There is just so much we can absorb. The Garden Room is set up with low tables where little people play and work, and where Max and Smudge, the family pets,  like to sleep.  Opposite the Garden Room is the Utility Room with lots of storage and cupboards, a full length wooden bench top,  and an old wooden pulley maid airing rack hanging from the ceiling ready to use.

On we move,  and up two stairs, into the Drawing Room with its heavily patterned pink velvet-flocked sofa and chairs,  and highly patterned fabric covered footstools, facing a feature wall of turquoise.  Brave and beautiful decorating choices here. There are glass cabinets filled with eclectic bits of  'good china' and family photos in small clusters on all walls.  The TV is really just a large dummy screen here, a projector of sorts. This is a high tech house. An ominous black box on a built-in cupboard to one side of the Drawing Room streams music and sound to every nook and cranny on all floors; it also controls the television.

An iPad on the wall as you enter The Barn controls everything else in the house.  The lighting is an electrician's delight and a visitors' nightmare until you get used to it. There can be five or six functions on any single light fitting in any one room: the bulb jutting from a deer head in the hallway is one, the down lights on another, the chandelier on another, and spots over paintings on yet another. Then all lights can be on at once. It keeps us pressing and turning. Some of us have mastered it, others have not. Even then, when you press nothing, just wake up in the middle of the night to walk to the loo, lights magically come on dimly in front or you, ushering you on your way.  Then turn off when you pop into bed.  You need do nothing.  The house just knows. It wraps it arms around you.

The Barn is another vast stretch of space further on.  Massive.  It is a vaulted open area which holds a huge kitchen and pantry, a dining area with quirky painted chairs in yellows and blues with different patterned fabrics on each cushioned chair, and an oversized squashy grey sectional sofa that could carry ten people and more, all sitting.  If they could get out of it.  It is too low and too soft for us, so we tend to give it a miss as there are so many other comfy seats available.  But we spend a lot of time here, all told.  It, too, is dripping with chandeliers, these made of cups and saucers. There is a huge vintage wall clock occupying most of the space on one of the walls and bifold doors all along the back to access the patio and long back yard.  It all goes on forever.

Upstairs on the second floor there are three bedrooms, three more bathrooms, and a massive mezzanine playroom overlooking the kitchen.  Up another lot of stairs onto the third floor there are two more attic bedrooms, along with other nooks and crannies ideal for hide and seek.

The house is a delight.  It makes us laugh.   The village is so easy to live in.  We walk down to coffee of a morning,  and there are any number of characterful pubs to frequent for an evening walk.  We shop locally, and that, too, is an easy walk, and there are interesting shops to browse, though not many.   Local traffic increases early in the morning and then again from school finish time onwards until evening.  Ripley is bypassed by most of the traffic, for which we are grateful.   What we have is enough, even so.   

Ripley, where carriages stopped 

Old inns, some built over 500 years ago

Entrance to one of the village homes 

Guy Fawkes celebrations on the village green 

Our favourite coffeeshop  

The back of our house

The library

Secret doors, drawers, traditional tiles and staircase to upper floors

Monkeys on the wall 

The Drawing Room 

One third of The Barn 

Flamingoes on this wall 

Hanging hessian and charred joints

Down one or two leafy country lanes, just a short drive from our place in Ripley, was the ancestral home of the local gentry, the Onslow family, Clandon Park. We drove in to take a peak and learned a little more about the house and the family who own much land around the Surrey hills.   

The Onslow's ascent into aristocracy started small in the 12th century when their wool growing dad  moved the family from Shrewsbury to London to give his boys a leg up in politics.  By the sixteenth century, they had their first earl, George.  He followed his father and became a lawyer, then a Member of Parliament, which lead to him being placed, fortuitously, to become a junior lord of the Treasury.  The house that soon became the family home was bought in 1641, barely thirty miles from Parliament House in London, so close enough to commute, even in those days. And that single factor still defines these expensive villages even today: their accessibility to London.    

Before that, it was probably far enough removed from London to have been considered a weekend hunting lodge, but by then, it had been converted into a not-too-shabby Jacobean mansion.  But, that did not last. It was given a complete overhaul in the 18th century when it took on clean simple Palladian lines,  sunken gardens, and a park designed by Capability Brown.  Alas, in 1956, one of the daughters found she had to gift Clandon Park to the National Trust in lieu of death duties. The family was not altogether happy about this, though subsequent earls held on to, and still manage the remaining acreage, that was not gifted with the house. That land we drive daily.  It stretches in all directions around our local villages.  

National Trust took over the venue and for a time used it for weddings, exhibitions and period drama shoots. But, tragically, an electrical fire in the basement in 2015 left the beautiful venue a burnt out shadow of its former self. The family was not happy about this, either. They made the news, remonstrating that the National Trust should have looked after the place better. The National Trust went in to damage control and built a big protective plastic canopy around the ruins of the burnt out house, prior to deliberating on what work to do on it, when, how and with what. It is presented like that still today and folk visit in droves, all in hard hats and high visibility vests.  

The current family members do not want to see it rejuvenated as a theme park version of their former home.  Not that they have much say in this.  But, when we were visiting, Clandon Park attracted an amazing cross section of visitors, all fascinated, and in deep conversation about the effects of fire on crumbled plaster and heavy wooden beams.There was surprise about how undamaged the Italian marble was and there was grim humour over the Hallowe'en effect of eerily hanging fragments of hessian backing for the wallpaper.  A group of architects and students were pouring over the site with finely tuned cameras pointed at every charred angle and feeble joint looking for structural implications of fire on such a building.  National Trust is still waffling about what to do with it, but my feeling is that there are dozens of authentic viewable homes already in the Trust portfolio, so it may be time for the Trust to think laterally. This site appears to have more intrinsic value as a ruin than a renovation.  Even left as it is, it is a valuable educational resource tool,  and an interesting one.  So, that option gets my vote.  

Clandon Park as it was 

Part of the damage to one of the reception rooms 

Another damaged room 

Clandon Park as it is

Where kings once lay

Today we had to get some legal papers signed for our move back to Toowoomba which involved us visiting the centre of Woking, our train terminus to the heart of London. From there anyone can get to London in about 30 minutes, which makes modern Woking a commuter belt hotspot to live. Hence the traffic. 

Being on a route to the sea accounts for much of Woking's popularity as a destination from even the earliest times. There was once a palace here, Woking Palace. It started life as a much smaller manor and deer park, a pretty spot along the Wye river for nobles to play, but expanded to Palace status very quickly. 

Margaret Beaufort inherited Woking Palace and when her son, Henry V11, became the first Tudor King he expanded the place. His second son, the fabled Henry V111, completed the Great Hall and carried out extensions turning Woking Palace into a large and favoured country retreat enroute from Windsor Park to Portsmouth. Henry would often bring his 'riding court' to Woking Palace for a little hunting and hawking in an attempt to avoid the stench and noise of London. Parks stretched south from Windsor Palace and Hampton Court and life, for Henry, was good. 

After its heyday, under Henry V111 and Elizabeth 1, Woking Palace gradually decayed and fell into ruin. Locals likely used many of its palace stones and bricks to build their village homes around the area. Today, its depleted ruins lie in a distant field, accessible only on foot, barely useful for leaning hay bales. Where kings once lay. 

Canals, for a short time, took over from horses and became the arterial highway from London to the south. Canal traffic became the way to move materials and people to and from London, until London started to feel the squeeze of its expanding population. 

Londoners found they were running out of space to bury all those who died there. They thought to purchase new land around old Woking for a burial place and to move the dead from London to there. This they did. The London Necropolis Company bought over 2000 acres from Lord Onslow, the local aristocrat who owns much of the lands around here, even today. His manor lands virtually abutt the back yards here in Ripley. 

They built a special station called the Necropolis Station near Waterloo, south of the Thames. We visited this when we were last in London. They then installed a line between the Necropolis Station and a newly built station at Woking. Over time that line became extended to Guildford, then on to Portsmouth. 

The cemetery they constructed was called Brookwood Cemetery. It was intended to be a large cemetery, to have space for all of London's dead. And for a time after it opened in 1854 it was the largest cemetery in the world. A branch line from Woking Station to the Brookwood cemetery was built, with one station for the Non-Conformist burial grounds, another for the Anglican. 

Whole churchyards in London that had to be dug up for road building had their graves transferred to Brookwood over the decades, sometimes dozens of coffins being brought at any one time in 'hearse vans' at the rear of the normal carriages. At its peak some 2000 coffins came by rail each week. And soon after, that became one of the reasons why modern Woking exists. Funeral trains bearing mourners and their families from London to visit Brookwood cemetery became a regular Sunday outing. Sightseers came too. Woking station became quite the hub, so services grew up and around the station, and modern Woking came into being thanks to London's dead. 

As time went on much of the land bought for the cemetery was given over to the developing city, so much of present day Woking is being built on old cemetery lands which were once the hunting grounds for kings, nobles, visiting diplomats and parliamentarians. Who are now all at rest. 

Luckily, we found Woking library close to the large inner city shopping centre with lots of parking, and were able to access a printer and scanner and send off our completed digital files. We found time to visit The Lightbox, Woking's stunning museum and exhibition gallery, where we were able to explore the many tales of Woking from its early days.

Brookwood Cemetery

Today the canal is for a man, his cigar, and two dogs

The Lightbox Gallery in Woking

Going to Godalming

There is a better class of homeless in Godalming, it appears. They can erect tents to protect themselves and their plastic bags of possessions from the weather. This one can sleep dry, even comfortably prone for much of the day, tucked under a lofted alcove on one of the busiest footpaths in town with just an enamel 'poor dish' set out for donated coins at the ready for dinner. Makes living in Godalming look rather easy, even painlessly comfortable. It needs to. Some folk may need convincing that life there is that. Others have to be desperate to escape Godalming, and that would include us. 

At the moment we live all of 11 or 12 miles north of Godalming, closer to London. A hop, step and jump in terms of distance. Almost anywhere else in the country you can still drive such a distance, no quibble, for something as mundane as a coffee, at times. Getting to Godalming today, even to short order a coffee, was a torturous tortuous nightmare. It took us hours. The twists and turns in and around Guildford enroute, where traffic has few options and is forced into the inner city both ways, contributes to the chaos. So the traffic and constant traffic jams were endless, both ways. We sat in dense non-moving gridlocks for most of a very long afternoon. We ended up with barely an hour to visit Godalming, and that, genuinely, was enough. I doubt there is any reason sufficient to inspire any one of us to ever choose to return. 

Yet Godalming is frequently on the 'best places to live in the UK' lists. It has some charming old buildings that offer a street scape straight out of Dickens, with crooked half timbered buildings leaning woozily against black and white arched alleyways built to access livery and mews courtyards at the back of the High street. There are cute characterful butcher shops, and a market place with rounded arches, that looks a little like a pepper pot and is quite distinctive. And there are charity shops every couple of doors. Is this enough to make the drive there worth it? To some maybe. Definitely not to others. We made the effort because I have a relative who just happened to go to school in Godalming a couple of centuries ago. He was a boarder from Somerset. The school had already existed for a couple of centuries even then, so its roots are ancient. Today it is one of the most expensive schools in England to attend, if not the most expensive: in the vicinity of £40,000 per year for fees. 

Even there we were uncomfortable. To get a photograph for my family history we ended up turning onto a private school road crawling with security cars and uniformed cops, chatting together around an empty football field. Why they all happened to be so aimlessly congregated at Charterhouse today, with not a single one visible on the streets trying to organise vehicles to get moving again, will remain one of life's mysteries. But in time, Charterhouse and Godalming will be forever frozen still in our memories. Things there will, very shortly, be stuck in a moment in time, and be forever unchangeable. Because seriously no one will be able to access anything anywhere in town anymore to change it. Very soon. The traffic to and fro is beyond controlling. Going to Godalming in the future will simply not be possible. 

Homeless in Godalming

Charming black and white houses

Carriage house access

The Pepperpot 

Vast Charterhouse boarding school.  Larger than many universities. 

War and peace and fiction

Martians landed on Horsell Commons near Woking just a few seconds after midnight on a Friday in June in the year 1900.  The first person to discover their entry craft was Ogilvy, an astronomer,  out walking on 'the commons'. He found a crater with a large space craft cooling from its entry into earth.  And that was the beginning of chaos.

We were out on those very commons ourselves today, unaware of all that, just wandering in between showers, spending a quiet afternoon that we had never anticipated would turn out so interesting.  Ogilvy wasn't the first person to notice lumps and bumps in the landscape here.

More than 4,000 years ago Bronze Age man dug deep into the ground creating burial chambers for tribal leaders.  They interred cremated remains in clay urns, then heaped great mounds of earth,  in the way of small pyramids, atop those chambers for protection and, very likely, as a mark of respect.   What is unusual about these Horsell Commons barrows is that they are not the widely found ball barrows from most everywhere in England, but are bell and disc barrows, more commonly found over in Wesssex, so not this far east.  Theories abound as to why such unusual barrows happen to be formed here.  The most prevailing being that the Bronze Age population was growing fast and needed more land for food, so these folk might even have come from the west and colonised this area.  With their strong bronze tools they would have been able to fell trees and farm the land they cleared, which would subsequently have depleted it, so that it soon became heathland, as it is today.   These burial chambers are clearer from the air now than on the ground as they have been messed with over many ages.

These were not the only burial sites on the common, either, we discovered.  From the road we have driven by, and could see, tucked way back under tall trees, an exceptional looking walled garden area of red brick with decorative domes, arches and minarets.  Today we walked to it, rather than drive past as usual. Amazingly, it turned out to be a Muslim Burial Site, as during the first world war England recruited over a million Indian continent soldiers to help in battles, particularly in Africa. Wounded soldiers were brought to hospital in Britain for care. Most of the soldiers who were buried here died whilst in the Brighton Hospital. As they were Muslims they needed burial. There were cremation sites elsewhere placed for Hindus and Sikhs, but when a furore broke out about the need for appropriate burial sites and rites for particular religions England rose to the fore and built this site for the Muslim dead. It held 19 bodies of soldiers who died in the first war, and later 5 more were buried here after the second world war. Their bodies, though, have had to be re-sited to the larger, more protected, Brooklands cemetery close by, so recently the old Muslim Burial ground on the heath has been turned into a Peace Garden for the dead soldiers.  With rosemary for remembrance growing in the garden beds.  It is beautiful.

We wandered further, wondering as we did so, how and why Martians would choose to land on the heath here, just before that first great war. It turns out that the writer, H G Wells, lived in Woking.  One day in the late 1800s, he and his brother were chatting, reflecting on what it must have been like for the indigenous population of Tasmania, Australia, at the time that white man landed on their shores and invaded their space.

The War of the Worlds became H G Well's conceptualisation of what might have ensued.  Men, as if  from Mars, landing in unfamiliar craft, bearing fearsome weapons and tools unrecognisable to the locals, terrifying them so much that the population who were not killed, ran in fear and terror, those remaining alive fleeing across the sea.  

What H G Wells could never have guessed as he penned his tale of fiction and desperation was that some fourteen years later, there would be a really desperate war of the worlds, called the Great War, which ended with the Muslim dead being interred close to where his fictional space craft landed, neither of those sites at all far from the unusual burial mounds of bronze age folk.

H G Wells Martian fighting machine in Woking town centre

Bell barrows and disc barrows of the Bronze Age 

Muslim Burial Ground in Horsell Common

Memorial to the Muslim dead of the two wars

Walking in the heath in steps of the Martians