100 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



An inscription on another side shows us that her 

 weeping was ended in 1837, when she died, aged fifty- 

 two ; and now there is no turf and no flowerets, and 

 the tomb is neglected, and the cats make their midnight 

 assignations on it when the electric trams have gone 

 to bed and Brixton snores. 



On the right hand side, at the summit of Brixton 

 Hill, there still remains an old windmill. It is in 

 Cornwall Road. True, the sails of its tall black tower 

 are gone, and the wind-power that drove the machinery 

 is now replaced by a gas-engine : but in the old 

 building corn is yet ground, as it has been since in 

 1816 John Ashby, the Quaker grandfather of the 

 present millers, Messrs. Joshua & Bernard Ashby, 

 built that tower. Here, unexpectedly, amid typical 

 modern suburban developments, you enter an old- 

 world yard, with barns, stables and cottage, pretty 

 much the same as they were over a hundred years ago, 

 when the mill first arose on this hill-top, and London 

 seemed far away. 



And so to Streatham, once rightly " Streatham, 

 Surrey," in the postal address, but now merely 

 " Streatham, S.W." A world of significance lies in 

 that apparently simple change, which means that it 

 is now in the London Postal District. Even so early 

 as 1850 we read in Brayley's " History of Surrey ' 

 that " the village of Streatham is formed by an almost 

 continuous range of villas and other respectable 

 dwellings." Respectable ! I should think so, indeed ! 

 Conceive the almost impious inadequacy of calling the 

 Streatham Hill mansions of City magnates 

 " respectable." As well might one style the Alps 

 " pretty " ! 



But this spot was not always of such respectability, 

 for about 1730 there stood a gibbet on Streatham Hill, 

 by the fifth milestone, and from it hung in chains the 

 body of one " Jack Gutteridge," a highwayman duly 

 executed for robbing and murdering a gentleman's 

 servant here. The place was long afterwards known 

 as " Jack Gutteridge's Gate." 



