The Hastings Road and the "Happy Springs of Tunbridge" — John Shaqi
The Hastings Road and the "Happy Springs of Tunbridge"Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Hastings Road and the "Happy Springs of Tunbridge"
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs; Hastings Road
Riverhead is a pretty little village, with a puzzling number of
branching roads, situated at the foot of the long steep rises to
Sevenoaks. Its name comes from the source of the Darenth being near at
hand. The church that looks so picturesque in the illustration is, in
fact, a piece of very bad early nineteenth-century Gothic, designed
and built in 1831 by Decimus Burton, whose sympathies were entirely
with the classic styles, as will be acknowledged when it is said that
he it was who designed the Arch and screen at Hyde Park Corner and the
lodges at the various gates of Hyde Park.
The corner of Riverhead selected for illustration here includes old and
new. The gabled houses on the left are recent; the weathered wall on
the right, with the curious little two-spouted fountain, is old; and
very old and weather-worn is the almost entirely illegible notice-board
declaring that something will be done to somebody doing something or
other, followed by “£5.” It is very vague and terrifying.
“Montreal,” a beautiful park on the right hand of the ascent to
Sevenoaks, is an historic place, the seat of Lord Amherst (Earl
Amherst and Baron Holmesdale), descendant of that great soldier
of the eighteenth century, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, Field-Marshal and
Commander-in-Chief.
The estate of Montreal came to this family in the seventeenth century,
when a Jeffrey Amherst of that period, a barrister, acquired it. The
place, then called “Brooks,” had been a seat of the ancient Colepepper
family. The famous soldier was born here, and it is not a little
curious to observe that his equally great contemporary, Wolfe, whose
most renowned exploits were performed in the same series of campaigns
in Canada, was born close at hand, at Westerham.
Amherst was born in 1717, and commenced his career as page to the first
Duke of Dorset at Knole, afterwards learning the profession of arms in
Germany, then, as now, the military school _par excellence_. How he
fought in the victory of Dettingen or in the defeat of Fontenoy does
not concern us here. His chance came when Pitt, alarmed at the policy
of the French in Canada, gave him high command in those territories;
and he justified the selection.
[Illustration: RIVERHEAD.]
He was no kid-glove warrior. Sentiment was no portion of his equipment
in the field, and if there were any in his composition he reserved it
until his campaigns were fought to a finish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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