The Brighton Road: The Classic Highway to the SouthHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Brighton Road: The Classic Highway to the South
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
Brighton Road (London, England); England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs
There is a remarkable appropriateness in Gatton Hall being designed in the
classic style, for its marble hall and Corinthian hexastyle colonnade no
doubt revive the glories of the Roman villa of sixteen hundred years ago.
It is magnificence itself, being indeed designed something after the
manner of the Vatican at Rome, and decorated with rare and costly marbles
and frescoes; but perhaps, to any one less than an emperor or a pope, a
little unhomely and uncomfortable to live in. Since 1888 it has been the
seat of Sir Jeremiah Colman, of Colman's Mustard, created a Baronet, 1907:
Mother, get it if you're able,
See the trade mark on the label,
Colman's Mustard is the Best----[Advt.],
as some unlaurelled bard of the grocery trade once sang, in deathless
verse.
XVII
Half a mile short of what is now Redhill town, there once stood yet
another toll-gate. "Frenches" Gate took its title from the old manor on
which it stood, and the manor itself probably derived its name from the
unenclosed or free (_franche_) land of which it was wholly or largely
composed.
Redhill town has not existed long enough to have accumulated any history.
When the more direct route was made this way, avoiding Reigate, in 1816,
Redhill was--a hill. The hill is still here, as the cyclist well enough
knows, and we will take on trust that red gravel whence its name comes;
but since that time the town of Redhill, now numbering some 16,000
persons, has come into existence, and when we speak of Redhill we
mean--not the height up which the coaches laboured, but a certain
commonplace town lying at the foot of it, with a busy railway junction
where there are always plenty of trains, but never the one you want, and
quite a number of public institutions of the asylum and reformatory type.
The railway junction has, of course, created Redhill town, which is really
in the parish of Reigate. When the land began to be built upon, in the
'40's, it was called "Warwick Town," after the then Countess of Warwick,
the landowner, and the names of a road and a public-house still bear
witness to that somewhat lickspittle method of nomenclature. But there is,
and can be, only one possible Warwick in England, and "Redhill" this
"Warwick Town," by natural selection, became.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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