Compton looks like a village presided over by a single mind. The cottages which add themselves to whatever is old in neighbouring buildings are designed to fit with a scheme; the cottage gardens are challenges of roses and phloxes, which shall be brightest. The black beams and jutting stories of an ancient timbered house stand above the road, an example and a guardian; the whole aspect of the village is of the quietest country. When I was walking through Compton I was told of a village festival which had been held in the spring, in which children from Bermondsey--Bermondsey once a Thames-side village itself--dressed in the old dresses and danced the old dances. They had a Queen of the May and they twined a maypole with ribands; and as I went out of Compton there were the Compton village children, six or seven of them, dancing over the dances the Bermondsey children had shown them, in the same field where the festival was held. The first of May would come round again; they would choose their own Queen and twine their own maypole. Compton church is one of the most interesting in the country. It must be forgiven a hideous organ, whose blue and red pipes block the western arch of the nave; the sanctuary is the beauty of the church. It is the only two-storied sanctuary in England, and the origin of two-storied sanctuaries is unknown. Mr. Lewis Andre, writing in the _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, is inclined to think that the dedication of the upper sanctuary may have been to St. Michael; there are several altars dedicated to St. Michael in the galleries of continental churches. Another feature of the church is the wooden Norman screen which fences off the upper sanctuary; it is the oldest known in England, and dates back to 1180, according to the archaeologists. Some Jacobean screen work in the pulpit and the altar rails is an interesting contrast.