To Bell Grove, then, succeeds Welling, and Welling is a quite uninteresting and shabby hamlet fringing the road, ten-and-a-quarter miles from London Bridge. The new suburban railway from London to Bexley Heath crosses the road, and has a station--a waste of sand, stones, and white palings--here. The place, says Hasted, in his "History of Kent," was called Well End, from the safe arrival of the traveller at it, after having escaped the danger of robbers through the hazardous road from Shooter's Hill, which derivation, though regarded as a happy effort of the imagination, is considerably below the dignified level of a county historian. Indeed, I seem to see in this the irresponsible frivolity of the guards and coachmen of the Dover Mail. Why, the thing reeks of coaching wit, and how Hasted, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, could have included in his monumental work (which took him forty years to write) so obvious a witticism, is beyond my comprehension. Shall I be considered pedantic if I point out that the place-name, with its termination _ing_, carries with it evidence of being as old as Saxon times, and denotes that here was the settlement of an ancient tribe, or patriarchial family, the Wellings? I will dare the deed and record the fact, remarking, meanwhile, that if other county historians were as little learned as Hasted, and equally speculative, they would seem more human, and their deadly tomes become much more entertaining. But, after this, it would not beseem me to do else than record the fact that the new suburban district springing up beside the road, half a mile past Welling, is called "Crook Log." Why "Crook Log," and whence came that singular name, are things "rop in mistry," and I will run no risks of becoming fogged in rash endeavours to elucidate the origin of this place-name. [Sidenote: TO BEXLEY] Half a mile onward, and then begins Bexley Heath. "Once upon a time," that is to say, before an Act of Parliament was obtained in 1817 for enclosing what was then a wide, wild tract of desolate heath-land, Bexley Heath was entirely innocent of buildings. The old village of Bexley lies a mile and a half to the right of the road, and is as rural, peaceful, and pleasant as Bexley Heath is mean and wretched. Between here and the village lies Hall Place, a Tudor mansion of great size and stately architecture, largely distinguished for its chequer-board patterning of flint and stone. The property was once that of the family called "At-hall," from their residence here, in an earlier mansion. The Tudor flint-and-stone building we now see was built by Sir Justinian Champneis, a Lord Mayor of London, towards the middle of the sixteenth century. In less than a hundred years the Champneis were succeeded by the Austens, who made alterations, until 1772, when it passed to Sir Francis Dashwood, in whose family it yet remains.