136 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



Eastern, and then joins the old Brighton line territory 

 just before reaching Earlswood station. 



All these engineering manifestations give the old 

 grim neighbourhood of Smitham Bottom a new 

 grimness. The trains of the Brighton line boom, 

 rattle, and clank overhead into the covered way, 

 whose ventilators spout steam like some infernal 

 laundry, and from the 80-foot deep cuttings close 

 beside the road, steamy billows arise very weirdly. 

 Presiding over all are the beautiful grounds and vast 

 ranges of buildings of the Cane Hill Lunatic Asylum, 

 housing an ever-increasing population of lunatics, 

 now numbering some three thousand. Sometimes the 

 quieter members of that unfortunate community are 

 seen, being given a walk along the road, outside their 

 bounds, and the sight and the thoughts they engender 

 are not cheering. 



Along the road, where the walls of the cutting 

 descend perpendicularly, is the severely common- 

 place hamlet of Hooley, formerly Howleigh, consisting 

 of the " Star " inn and some twenty square brick 

 cottages. Just bevond it, where a modern Cyclists' 

 Rest and tea-rooms building stands to the left of the 

 road, the first traces of the old Surrey Iron Railway, 

 which crossed the highway here, are found, in the 

 shallower cutting, still noticeable, although disused 

 seventy years ago. Alders, hazels, and blackberry 

 brambles grow on the side of it, and its bridges are 

 ivy-grown : primroses and violets, too, grow there 

 wondrously profuse. 



And here we will, by way of interlude, turn aside, 

 up a lane to the right hand, toward the village of 

 Chipstead, in whose churchyard lies Sir Edward 

 Banks, who began life in the humblest manner, 

 working as a navvy upon this same forgotten railway, 

 afterwards rising, as partner in the firm of Jolliffe & 

 Banks, to be an employer of labour and contractor 

 to the Government : in short, another Tom Brassey. 

 All these things are recorded of him upon a memorial 

 tablet in the church of Chipstead — a tablet which 



