Heritage time of year again in Surrey, so last week we made a start of sorts by visiting Dorking. A visit which has already produced a number of posts under the group search key 'dka'.
Visits to the interior of Pippbrook House, first noticed at reference 1, had sold out, so we had to make do with driving around it. Rather smaller than I had expected, Victorian Gothic, but not as ugly as the big house in Nonsuch Park. Probably not helped by having had its pleasure gardens ripped away.
Next stop the large church with its tall spire, another Victorian gothic rebuild. Handsome enough inside, in a rather austere sort of way. Probably far too big for today's parochial needs, but I think that they do what they can to make use of the space - which will be very expensive to heat in the winter to come. Will they have to close it down?
A sample of the decorative work, and a reminder of the days when the big men in provincial towns raised their own regiments. The days when regiments had a hometown, in the way they probably have not since the downsizing and consolidation after the second world war. I remember FIL telling us that when he joined the Medical Corps in 1940 or so, he was assigned to a unit which had been mainly raised in Leeds and it took him some little while to understand much of what they were saying.
A view of the interior.
The memorial to one of the tenants of Deepdene, once Dorking's big house. A lady of the middling sort, from the US, but one who had a knack for marrying well. Presumably good looking, good company or something. See reference 2.
I think tastes in these matters must have changed.
Onto the house once occupied by Mullins the bootmaker, a chap who carried his family off to the New World in the Mayflower. He perished, along with most of his family, in the course of the first winter. His house is now a tea shop where they were able to do us very decent toasted teacakes, much better than average. It is even possible that they were not toasted fresh out of the freezer.
Dorking is something of an antiques town, presumably reflecting both the loss of regular trade and the high density of rich people, and opposite the tea shop we had a shop with a substantial display of silver. We wondered who on earth would buy such stuff? Who would bother to use it? And it they did, who would clean it?
My own parents bought a canteen of silverplated cutlery when they married, somewhere out of Piccadilly. Contemporary cutlery of the 1940's, not cod-Georgian at all. Cutlery which lived in a canteen in the dining room and which was used for everyday purposes. There was nothing else. I suppose someone polished it from time to time. And polishing silver was the sort of job dumped on boys in the days of bob-a-job - which I might say I loathed. But using anything other than stainless steel these days would strike me as odd. A rather silly and vulgar display.
A curious building on the edge of the town centre, one that Pevsner manages, even for him, to be impressively rude about. I rather liked it. The chap behind the pet shop counter explained that it had been built as a public service building and had done time in the past as a fire station, a library and as a theatre. Pevsner notwithstanding, now a listed building, so I guess the pet shop people got it on the cheap. Just like the pet shop people in East Street who took on what had been our Ford dealer's showrooms.
A reminder of the havoc wrought by the Great War. And being an honourable was no protection. Even being the sons of an ennobled builder.
After the diversion to catch the Wellingtonia on Westcott Street, a visit to the Dorking Museum, which I thought dull - apart from the coffin carriage already noticed. Furthermore, the male trusty was wittering on to the female trusty the whole time we were there.
A blast from the past. Or, at the least, a puff. I could not bring myself to ask the trusty what it was all about.
Thoughts turned to lunch at this point and we though that something in the sandwich department was what we needed. But all the places which we came across were offering things that were far too complicated and far too expensive. We ended up buying something in the M&S food hall, in my case a small loaf of white bread and some Italian charcuterie - for which they may well have their own word. In her case, a readymade. The white bread was described as a boule and was adequate, but rather badly undercooked. Charcuterie fine - and also taking the prize from Sainsbury's for the grocer who can cut cooked meat the thinnest.
The view from our bench is snapped above. We thought that, just as in Epsom, the Dorking town worthies have not yet grasped that there is far too much retail space in most towns and it needs to be shrunk, or at least given over to some new purpose, yet to be identified. Hard to see a future for add-ons like this one. I suppose the worthies cannot see past all the business rates that they would like to collect when we turn the corner.
After lunch, an attempt to visit the site of the demolished Deepdene House, taking in on the way the rather splendid oleaster snapped above. We also came across a proper Post Office, red brick with lots of stone trim. How is that Dorking still has one while Epsom is reduced to a counter at the back of a convenience store? In fairness, I should say that the convenience store people are both pleasant and efficient.
While the once grand Deepdene House fell into the hands of British Rail before being demolished in favour of offices in the 1960's. See reference 3. Tragic according to Pevsner.
All we were able to find on this occasion was some rather flashy looking flats, in two blocks, plus a view of gardens, ending in what looked like the entrance to a tunnel, snapped above.
A bit grander, away from the dustbins.
But an interesting old town. We shall be back to try and find the various heritage trails on offer, some of them through the grounds of what was Deepdene House.
PS: the Blogger spell checker does not like words like 'readymade' to be spelt with a space between the two halves. I have been pulled up several times in the course of this post. No idea what the official, UK line is in such matters.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/08/wellingtonia-91.html.
Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Spencer-Churchill,_Duchess_of_Marlborough.
Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepdene_House_and_Gardens.
Group search key: dka.
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