172 



THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



have recollections of the laughing workmen, durino- 

 the rebuilding of the tower in 1874, throwing marble 

 figures out of the windows, and speak of the fragments 

 being buried in the churchyard. 



For the rest, Reigate Church is only of mild interest ; 

 excepting, indeed, the parish library, housed over the 

 vestry, containing among its seventeen hundred books 

 many of great interest and variety. The collection 

 was begun in 1701 by the then vicar. 



A little-known fact about Reigate is that the 

 notorious Eugene Aram for a year lived here, in a 

 cottage oddly named <: Upper Repentance." 



The road leaving Reigate, by Parkgate and the 

 Priory, passes a couple of cottages not in themselves 



remarkable but 

 bearing a curious 

 device intended to 

 represent bats' 

 wings, and inscribed 

 " J. T. 1815." They 

 are known as 

 " Bat swing Cott- 

 ages," but what 

 induced "J. T." to 

 call them so, and 

 even who he was, 

 seems to be un- 

 known. 



Over the rise of 

 Cockshut Hill and 

 through a wooded cutting the road comes to Wood- 

 hatch and the " Old Angel " inn, where the turnpike- 

 gate stood, and where a much earlier gate, indicated 

 in the place-name, existed. 



Woodhatch, the gate into the woods, illustrates 

 the ancient times when the De Warennes held the 

 great Reigate, or Holm, Castle and much of the 

 woodlands of Holmesdale. The name of Earlswood, 

 significant to modern ears only of the great idiot 

 asylum there, derives from them. Place-names down 



TABLET : BATSWING COTTAGES. 



