Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
North Chapel is a little town in the Weald of Sussex where there were
formerly post-chaises kept; but where there are none kept now. And here
is another complete revolution. In almost every country town the
post-chaise houses have been lessened in number, and those that remain
have become comparatively solitary and mean. The guests at inns are not
now gentlemen, but _bumpers_, who, from being called (at the inns)
"riders," became "travellers," and are now "commercial gentlemen," who
go about in _gigs_, instead of on horseback, and who are in such numbers
as to occupy a great part of the room in all the inns, in every part of
the country. There are, probably, twenty thousand of them always out,
who may perhaps have, on an average throughout the year, three or four
thousand "ladies" travelling with them. The expense of this can be
little short of fifteen millions a year, all to be paid by the
country-people who consume the goods, and a large part of it to be drawn
up to the Wen.
From North Chapel we came to Chiddingfold, which is in the Weald of
Surrey; that is to say, the country of oak-timber. Between these two
places there are a couple of pieces of that famous commodity, called
"Government property." It seems that these places, which have extensive
buildings on them, were for the purpose of making gunpowder. Like most
other of these enterprises, they have been given up, after a time, and
so the ground and all the buildings, and the monstrous fences, erected
at enormous expense, have been sold. They were sold, it seems, some time
ago, in lots, with the intention of being pulled down and carried away,
though they are now nearly new, and built in the most solid,
substantial, and expensive manner; brick walls eighteen inches through,
and the buildings covered with lead and slate. It appears that they have
been purchased by a Mr. Stovell, a Sussex banker; but for some reason or
other, though the purchase was made long ago, "Government" still holds
the possession; and, what is more, it keeps people there to take care of
the premises. It would be curious to have a complete history of these
pretty establishments at Chiddingford; but this is a sort of history
that we shall never be treated with until there be somebody in
Parliament to rummage things to the bottom. It would be very easy to
call for a specific account of the cost of these establishments, and
also of the quantity of powder made at them. I should not be at all
surprised, if the concern, all taken together, brought the powder to a
hundred times the price at which similar powder could have been
purchased.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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