The Brighton Road

annals of the way to Brighton, start along the road itself,

he palace where his son, Hardicanute, died, mad drunk, in 1042. Edward the Third annexed it to his Duchy of Cornwall, and even yet, after the vicissitudes of nine hundred years, the Prince of Wales, as Duke of Cornwall, owns house property here. Kennington Park, too, has its own sombre romance, for it was an open common until 1851, and a fa

of his due at the hands of sportsmen, noble and ignoble. There is a view of this gate on such a day drawn by James Pollard, and published in 1839, which gives a very good idea of the amount of traffic and, incidentally, of the curious costumes of the period. You shall also find in the "Comic Almanack" for 1837 an illustration by George Cruikshank of this same place, one w

NGTON

he sea in 1826. The others were at South End, Croydon: Foxley Hatch, or Purley Gate, which stood near Purley Corner, by the twelfth milestone, until 1853; and Frenches, 19 miles 4 furlongs from London-that is to say, just before you come into R

beginning of the Brixton Road, is other than extremely hideous. Fortunately, its pagan architecture, once fondly thought to revive the glories of old

late the marble beauties of the Parthenon and other triumphs of classic architecture in plebeian brick and stone. Those materials, however, and the architects themselves, were found to be somewhat inferior t

e exact spot where the unhappy Scottish rebels were executed in 1746, and where Jerry Abershawe, the highwayman, was hanged in 1795. The remains of the gi

illion and a half of money to the clergy as a "thank-offering." This sum took the shape of a church-building fund. Wages were low, work was scarce, and bread was so dear that the people were starving. That good paternal Parliament, therefore, when they asked for bread gave them stone and brick, and performed the heroic feat of picking their impoverished pockets as well.

GATE: DERBY

raving afte

RICE C

ixton, and Norwood, all ferociously hideous, and costing ￡15,000 apiece; the Government granting one moiety and the other being raised by a parish rate on all, without distinction of creed. The Government also remitted the usual taxes on the building

, and he ma

ands out of his

ing all Church rates, excepting those levied under special Acts; but the ey

an way on which Streatham stood. Both the Domesday name of Brixton and the name of Streatham are significant, indicating their p

ide, which, rising at Norwood, eventually found its way into the Thames at Vauxhall. Its course ran where the front gardens of the houses on that side of the road are now situated, and at that period every hous

eenth century a new suburb began to spring up, where Angell Road now stands, called "Angell Town," and then the houses of Brixton Road began to arise

ls on the gate-posts, a circular lawn in front of the house, skirted by its gravel drive, and perhaps even a stone dog on either side of the doorway! Solid comfort resides within those four-square walls, and reclines in saddle-bag armchairs, thinking complacently of big bank balances, all derived from wholesale dealing in the City, and now enjoyed, and added to, in the third and fourth generations; for these solid houses were built a century ago, or thereby. They are not beautiful, nor indeed are they ugly. Built of good yellow stock brick, grown decorously neutral-tinted with age, and sparsely relieved, it may be, with stucco pilasters picked out with raised medallions or plaster wreaths. Supremely unimaginative, admirably free from tawdry affectations of Art, unquesti

TON

crest of it, with the hulking monument of the Budd family, all scarabei and classic emblems of death, pr

an, passes, is one in shape like a biscuit-box, to John Miles Hine, who died, aged seventeen, in 1824. A

modest, learn

hee, whose ashe

ard will pluck

urf whene'er he

ung and lovely

vigour warms, o

mmer's bloom and

eep o'er this

fifty-two; and now there is no turf and no flowerets, and the tomb is neglected, and the cats ma

y a gas-engine; but in the old building corn is yet ground, as it has been since in 1816 John Ashby, the Quaker grandfather of the present millers, Messrs. Joshua & Bernard Ashby, built that tower. Here, unexpectedly, amid typi

in the London Postal District. Even so early as 1850 we read in Brayley's "History of Surrey" that "the village of Streatham is formed by an almost continuous range of villas and other respectable dw

e fifth milestone, and from it hung in chains the body of one "Jack Gutteridge," a highwayman duly executed for r

tham

rattons, Streets, and Stroods on the map. Those "streets" were Roman roads. The particular "street" on which Streatham stood seems to have been a Roman road which came up from the coast by Clayton, St. John's Common, Godstone, and Caterham, a branch of the road to Portus Adurni, the Old Shoreham of to-day. Portions of it were discovered in 1780, on St. John's Common, when the Brighton turnpike road throu

OR J

flesh is grass," said the Preacher, and therefore Dr. Johnson, whose bulky figure we may put at the equivalent of a truss of hay, is of course but an historic name; but bricks and mortar last immeasurably longer than

a rosy chance of becoming another Tunbridge Wells or Cheltenham, for in the early years of the eighteenth century it became known as a Spa, and real and imaginary invalids flocked to drink the disagreeable waters issuing from what quaint o

e, to be lionised and indulged, and in return to give Mrs. Thrale a reflected glory. The lion had the manners of a bear, and, like a dancing bear, performed clumsy evolutions for buns and cakes; but he had a heart as tender as a child's, and a simple vanity as engaging, beneath that unpromising exterior and those pomp

many lesser lights, and partook there of innumerable cups of tea, dispensed at that hospitable board by Mrs. Thrale. That historic teapot is still extant, and has a

o say, he does not merely seem to have only just saved himself from falling off, but is

e had broken with the widowed Mrs. Thrale on the subject of her marriage with Piozzi, and he could no longe

culo." Thus, kissing the old porch of St. Leonard's, the lex

Henry Thrale, who died in 1781, but alterations and restorations have changed almost all else. It is, in truth, a d

p in Westminster Abbey. The great authority on the English language, the compiler of that monumental dictio

n a tablet by Richard Westmacott to Frederick Howard, who in pugna Wa

ss to an ecclesiastic, nailed upon the woodwork toward the west end of the north aisle, is not free from it. So the shade of the Doctor, i