COACHING times and coaching inns have long kept us at the very threshold of Kelvedon, which has a modern claim to notice of which it is not a little proud. Spurgeon was born here. Although the figure of that great wielder of homely and untutored pulpit oratory is but one among several preachers in the same family, there is only one possible Spurgeon when that name is mentioned. Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born in a house still pointed out, on June 19, 1834; the eldest son of the Rev. John Spurgeon. The old cottage is now the "Wheatsheaf" beer-house and has had a bay window and a brick frontage added since that time. Close by is a now highly respectable and not a little dignified private residence known still as the "Tommy shop," although almost seventy years have passed since it was used as a kind of restaurant and canteen for the navvies then working on the construction of the Great Eastern Railway, which runs at the rear. The oldest house in Kelvedon is doubtless the "Sun," which dates from the middle of the fifteenth century and has within recent years had its carved woodwork, long covered with plaster, once more exposed to view. It stands, almost the last house in the town, by the bridge over the Blackwater, on the way to Gore Pit. Gore Pit is generally said to be the site of a battle. _What_ battle, however, historians do not and cannot specify; and indeed this name, bloody though it may sound to modern ears, has, despite the popular legend of the derivation of Kelvedon from "Kildane," perhaps no such sanguinary association, and is probably a contraction of the old word "coneygore," or rabbit warren. It is, despite its name, a pretty and a peaceful hamlet, with a blacksmith's shop and a roadside horse-pond, and surrounded by the fruit-farms of a great jam-making company. The church of Feering can be seen across the flat fields, on the other side of the railway. Messing lies a mile away, in the other direction. Let the idle wayfarer, curious as to the name of Gore Pit, speak to the blacksmith on the subject, and he will be told, with the seriousness of implicit belief, of the fighting of a great battle here, and that the blood ran down into "that there horse-pond." Moreover, that at Kelvedon--"Killdane they used to call it--they killed the Danes; at Feering they feared 'em, and at Messing they made a mess of it"; which seems to very correctly reflect the views of the neighbourhood on local history in ancient times, as reflected in place-names!