106 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



like a football goal, at what used to be a horse-pond, 

 there is to-day the prettily-planted garden and pond 

 of Thornton Heath, with a Jubilee fountain which 

 has in later years been persuaded to play. 



Midway between Norbury and Thornton Heath 

 stands, or stood, Norbury Hall, the delightful park 

 and mansion where J. W. Hobbs, ex-Mayor of Croydon, 

 resided until he was convicted of forgery at the 

 Central Criminal Court in March, 1893, and sentenced 

 to twelve years penal servitude. ' T 180," as he was 

 known when a convict, was released on licence on 

 January 18th, 1898, and returned to his country-seat. 

 Meanwhile, the Congregational Chapel he had presented 

 to that sect was paid for, to remove the stigma of being 

 his gift ; just as the Communion-service presented to 

 St. Paul's Cathedral by the company-promoting Hooley 

 was returned when his bankruptcy scandalised 

 commercial circles. 



The estate of Norbury Hall has since T ISO's release 

 become " ripe for building," and the mansion, the lake, 

 and the beautiful grounds have been " developed ' 

 away. Soon all memory of the romantic spot will 

 have faded. 



Prominently over the sea of roofs in the valley, and 

 above the white hillside villas of Sydenham and 

 Gipsy Hill, rise the towers and the long body of the 

 Crystal Palace ; that bane and obsession of most 

 view-points in South London, ' for ever spoiling the 

 view in all its compass," as Ruskin truly says in 

 " Prreterita." 



I do not like the Crystal Palace. The atmosphere 

 of the building is stuffily reminiscent of half a century's 

 stale teas and buttered toast, and the views of it, near 

 or distant, are very creepily and awfully like the 

 dreadful engravings after Martin, the painter of such 

 scriptural scenes as " Belshazzar's Feast " and horribly- 

 conceived apocalyptic subjects from Revelation. 



At Thornton Heath — where there has been nothing 

 in the nature of a heath for at least eighty years past — 

 the electric trams of Croydon begin, and take you 



