Surrey: Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope MoncrieffMoncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
History
Surrey: Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope Moncrieff
Moncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
Surrey (England) -- Description and travel
The next village, Morden, looks still not unfit to have a squire in its
park; then two or three miles farther on, the cyclist spins unsuspecting
by another name fallen from high estate. He approaches Ewell and the
springs of the Hogsmill River, along the wall of Nonsuch Park, in which
once stood a stately palace built by Henry VIII.; and on the other side
of the road the name of Worcester Park recalls how this outlying
residential suburb also made part of a royal demesne, the neighbourhood
of which fostered Epsom in Tudor and Stuart days. Nonsuch Palace became
a favourite residence of Elizabeth and James I., and seems to have set a
fashion of the day in names. The Virginian colonists christened
Powhattan's lodge _Nonsuch_, as "the strongest and most pleasant place
in the country," when John Smith also complimented Pocahontas with the
title "Nonpareil of Virginia." The present mansion keeps no more than
the name of Nonsuch, the site of which was near the modern mock
antiquity styled Ewell Castle and the ivied tower of the old church,
that makes such a picturesque monument beside its successor. Pictures
and Camden's description preserve the grandeur of that vanished palace,
still standing in the plague year, to be used as a government office,
when Pepys hints how it was falling into decay, but Evelyn could admire
the manner in which its walls "were all so covered with scales of slate,
that it seemed carved in the wood and painted, the slate fastened on
the timber in pretty figures, that has, like a coat of armour, preserved
it from rotting."
So much for the high-road to Epsom. But if I were going there in no
hurry and in dry weather, I once could walk almost all the way from
Richmond Park or from Putney Heath over grass or green lanes, with only
two bits of road tramping, one at Coombe, and one through the houses of
Worcester Park: there has, indeed, been so much building hereabouts of
late, that I should fear now to find the paths turning to streets. This
way is mainly up the course of the Hogsmill River to Chessington, the
parish where Fanny Burney visited the retreat of her "Daddy" Crispe.
From the hillock on which the little church stands, more than one path
leads on by the tower of the asylum at Horton and beneath the railway
line into Epsom's main thoroughfare.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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