psmv5: Heritage: Day 2: Part 1

For our second heritage day this autumn, we selected the Providence Chapel in Charlwood, tucked into the north western perimeter of Gatwick Airport. A chapel of unusual appearance. The small cross, up a track, to the north of Orchard Farm and to the east of PH on the map below.

Much discussion about how exactly to get from Epsom to Charlwood, eventually settling for the country route via Brockham, through the heart of the upper Mole valley, although we did not make it to the source, a little to the east of Redhill aerodrome, some miles to the north east of Charlwood. Which meant that the first stop was Highridge Wood, a Forestry Commission plantation, a couple of miles to the south of Brockham. This turned out to be a very pleasant place, with paths, a small car park and no-one much else about.

Two views of what appeared to the be the tallest tree in the wood, not a Wellingtonia, although I thought that perhaps it was some other kind of cypress, perhaps a distant relative of the humble leylandii.

As far as I got, with BH waiting it out on a log a few hundred yards behind.

Plenty of bracken on the way back to the car. Which prompted me to wonder, not for the first time, why the ecovols of Epsom (a sister organisation to the Chainsaw Volunteers of reference 3), make such a virtue of pulling the stuff up. If you have a nature reserve and the bracken wants to grow, why not just let it?

There must be a lot of careless and inconsiderate dog owners about to make such a sign necessary. Either that or someone in the recreational part of the Forestry Commission is a bit obsessive about the natural functions of dogs. Not that I am a pet person myself: other people's up to a point, but not for myself.

Coming into Charlwood, we noticed quite of lot of men, both young and of middle years, who did not look terribly local, possibly from the Middle East or perhaps Afghanistan. It turned out later, that the somewhat run down Russ Hill Hotel had been turned over to displaced persons, of whom there were quite a few hanging around the village. Furthermore, we overheard the bar maid in a public house we visited still later complaining to her manager about the way that they looked at her in the street. The manager suggested that a call to the police was appropriate. My first thought was that it must be a bit tricky for young men far away from their own homes and womenfolk, with alcoholic drink readily available and being quite unused to young women wandering the streets in what they would regard as a state of undress. My second thought was that it must be hard to find suitable occupation for them in the depths of the Mole Valley. Perhaps they get bussed into cleaning jobs at Gatwick Airport. Or to fruit picking jobs - not that we saw any farms of that sort.

We also heard later that Charlwood was home to a number of other facilities for people with special needs. At least one of which was apt to call in the police helicopter when one of their residents went missing. Facilities which as well as meeting special needs, perhaps also serve to soak up what might otherwise be rural unemployment, with the extinction of regular agricultural work - apart, that is, from seasonal work on the fruit and vegetable harvests.

And so we made our way up the lane to the chapel. A lane which I had to reverse back down to get out, not my favourite manoeuvre, so I had BH leading the way and making appropriate gestures.

A place about which Pevsner manages to find something positive to say. Quite an event in itself. A place which 'was originally built in 1797 as the guardhouse of a barracks in Horsham for troops assembled to repel an expected invasion by a French army'. Then, some time after those wars, acquired by non-conformists who did not want to pray in the same building as the squires and toffs: they had to put up with such people during the working week, but not on the Lord's Day. The congregation eventually fell away and the recently restored building is now used by the local school as a learning resource during the week and as a heritage item at weekends.

BH explained to me afterwards that the non-conformists were kicked off by an Act of Uniformity of Charles II, after which lots of parsons who did not want to be uni-form became non-con-form. Checking in my Book of Common Prayer when we got home, I found three relevant acts printed at the front for the convenience of readers. The original act of Elizabeth I, the amending act of Charles II and the supplementary act of Victoria. The three of them running to about 20 two-column pages. The act of Charles had the elaborate title: 'An Act for the uniformity of publick prayers, and administration of sacraments, and other rites and ceremonies: And for establishing the form of making, ordaining, and consecrating bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England'. While at the back we had the thirty nine articles to which all said bishops, priests and deacons were required to sign up. Of which, for example, the twenty second article repealed, amongst others, the Romish doctrines of Purgatory and Adoration.

No altar, rather a simple wooden pulpit from which the parson could lecture his flock. On which point I might say that 'Bleak House', last noticed at reference 5, written at the time in question, contains a not very flattering portrait of such a parson. Rather too fond of the grub laid on by the faithful, that is to say the respectable, middle aged ladies who went in for that sort of thing. Not to mention the claret.

No piano, but there was a small organ, made by Mason & Hamlin of Boston, USA.

A company which Bing knows all about, offering, for example, the enthusiast of reference 6.

Views of fields outside, including aeroplane noises from Gatwick airport. Slightly puzzled how one heard loud roarings of aeroplanes revving up at the end of their runway, then it went quiet, and then one sometimes saw them climbing up in the distance, perhaps to the northwest. On what appeared to be a lot shallower flight path up than is usual at Heathrow. Perhaps out in the country you don't need to waste all that fuel.

Perusing reference 1 this morning, I thought perhaps Gatwick was having one of its take off east days, maybe a third of total days, taking one year with another. I dare say it would all have been clearer had I been able to watch one of those aircraft movement websites at the same time as watching the real thing, but I doubt whether my telephone would have been quite up for that.

While this morning, I was puzzled by this web site, reference 7. Aeroplanes seemed to fly in from the east OK, fly along the runway and then carry on. Programming error on the website? Aeroplanes pulling out and up at the last moment? Seems a bit unlikely. Which all goes to show that you should not believe everything you see on the Internet.

Then if Gatwick only has the one runway, how do they carve it up between landings and takeoffs? Perhaps I need to read reference 8 before our next visit.