XXVII The Burford Bridge Hotel
One of the pleasantest short runs out of London by motor car is to Box Hill and the little hotel which lies just below it. In summer the most picturesque way of getting to the hotel is either by one of the Brighton coaches, which make it their lunching place, or by the coach which goes to Box Hill and back in a day. And by no means an uncomfortable, and certainly the cheapest, way of going down to the hotel is to do as I did one Sunday—journey by the L.B. & S.C. Railway, getting glimpses of Epsom and the great rolling common land of Ashtead, of little rivers, and old mills, and wooded downs, on the way.
The Burford Bridge Hotel, which takes its name from the wide brick bridge near by, over the River Mole, stands alongside the high road where it curves from the hill-side down to the level. It is a picturesque building, for when the Surrey Trust, of which more anon, took the house, it was a mere wayside inn. It has been gradually built on to, and is now more a group of houses of white rough-cast and slate roofs than one house. It has rambling tiled-roofed stables and a garage alongside it, and is surrounded by tall trees. Behind it, just where the hill begins to rise, are its gardens, with turf terraces and geraniums in terra-cotta pots on white pedestals. A great cedar stands in the midst of one of the lawns and another lawn is a bowling-green. Some of the trees on the hill-side stretch out great branches which give shadow to the garden-seats.
Creepers climb over the house, there are rose-bushes by the paths, and out beyond the bowling-green an orchard of old fruit-trees is on the banks of the Mole, a brown stream in which the weeds wave gently as it moves with a pleasant rustle through the down country on its way to join the Thames. There are two dovecotes in the garden of the hotel, and the flutter of white wings in the sunlight is pretty to see. Behind the gardens is Box Hill, one part of which is steep, grassy down scored with white footpaths, the other half stony slopes so steep as to be almost cliffs, up which the woods and undergrowth climb. On the Sunday of my visit the dark green of these woods was scarcely touched by the russet and orange of the autumn tints.
In the old portion of the house there are small rooms on the ground floor, and above, a dozen little bedrooms with flower-boxes in their windows and bell-pulls hanging by the fireplaces; for though there is electric light all over the house, the old-fashioned bell-pulls and the long line of bells in the corridor have been left as an old-world touch. Out into the garden there juts a newly built part of the house, with a large dining-room on the ground floor and bedrooms above. The dining-room is panelled with chestnut wood to within a couple of feet from the ceiling. It has on one side recesses, one of which forms an ingle-nook for the fireplace, and opposite to them, in the wall facing the garden, are many French windows which give on to the lawns. At one end of this pleasant room is a great bow-window looking down the length of the lawns and orchard, and the tables in this bow are the ones most sought after. The strips of red carpet on the polished wooden floor deaden the sound of the feet of the waiters as they go to and fro, the chairs are handsome ones of red leather, and as they bear on their backs a scroll with “The Gaiety” on it, I presume they were bought when the Gaiety Restaurant breathed its last.
All the classes for which the old inn, turned hotel, caters are provided for. There is a refreshment-room for the chauffeurs, a bar for the rustics. There is also a very pleasant sanctum, which I should have called the bar parlour, but which is dubbed the lounge, in which are the heads of some of the foxes killed by the local pack of hounds, and a photograph of a meet at the hotel, some coaching prints, a picture of a racehorse and its jockey, some little stags’ heads which were in the house when it was bought by the Trust, a grandfather clock, some Japanese bronzes and Wedgwood vases, some old-fashioned wooden arm-chairs and some big leather ones. It is in this comfortable room, with a long stretch of window looking on to the road, that the worthies of the neighbourhood assemble to talk over local politics and other important matters. There is a little ante-chamber to the dining-room with comfortable seats in it, a coffee-room and a drawing-room which runs the full width of the old house and is the room in which the ladies staying in the house sit after dinner.
The Surrey Public House Trust, which bought the Burford Bridge Inn, and in whose hands it has become one of the most flourishing small country hotels in England, is an association of noblemen and gentlemen of Surrey who have bought a dozen inns and hotels in the county, and who run them on the sanest and soundest possible lines. The sale of alcoholic drinks is not looked to as the principal source of profit, and as none of the houses owned by the Trust are tied houses, the goods, eatable and drinkable, are purchased in the best and cheapest markets. The company has as its manager at Burford Bridge Mr “Mike” Hunt, who comes of the family who were the lessees of the Star and Garter at Richmond in its palmy days. Mr Hunt, plump, light-haired, with a moustache somewhat resembling that of the German Emperor, knows all there is to know of hotel management, and the eight and a half years he has been at Burford Bridge are the years in which the hotel has risen to its present fame. He knows pretty nearly every motorist who uses the Brighton road, and is a keen supporter of local sport.
The road to Dorking at certain times of the day, especially on Sundays, is alive with motor cars and motor cycles, and the cars at lunch-time and at tea-time cluster in front of the hotel like swarming bees. In the big dining-room the lunch that is served is an excellent one. There is a choice of two soups, one thick, one clear; fish—on this particular Sunday there were some excellent lobsters—a great choice of cold meats and one hot meat dish, and a choice of puddings. A cut from the cheese is the ending of lunch, and then a cup of coffee served under one of the trees on the lawn. Half-a-crown is the charge made for this very ample meal.
If you are making a day of it, as I did on this Sunday, it is pleasant in the afternoon to stroll past the station, near which a little wooden chapel stands thatched with reeds, and on through country roads where the little roses of the brambles were turning to blackberries, and past garden hedges where the box and holly mingle, out towards Updown Woods. Once away from the clatter and roar of the main road one is soon in the heart of the most beautiful country in Surrey, and one comes back to the hotel, when the rush of the motors returning to town is lulling, to find a little blue mist coming up from the valley before the distant wooded hills, and all the rooks winging their way homeward to their rookery in the great trees, and in the broad meadow by the Mole across the road, scores and scores of rabbits out for a frolic.
This is the dinner that I ate on that Sunday evening at Burford Bridge:
Consommé à la Reine.
Thick Giblet Soup.
Boiled Turbot, Sauce Hollandaise.
Roast Leg of Mutton.
French Beans. Potatoes.
Roast Duckling or Roast Partridge.
Salad.
Beignets Soufflés.
Tartlets Confiture.
Cheese, etc.
The giblet soup was excellent, the turbot fresh, and, though the mutton might have been the more tender for another day of hanging, the partridge and the salad were capital and the beignet made with a very light hand. The price of the dinner was 4s. 6d., and I drank with it a pint of Rüdesheimer, which cost me 2s. 9d.
A large party of ladies and men who were staying in the hotel had a table in the centre of the big room and were very merry over their meal. Two pretty girls and a young man, motoring up to London, who stopped at the hotel to eat a dinner on their way, two pleasant-faced ladies staying at the hotel, and various couples of men, were some of the diners that night. After dinner I watched the departure of the motorists, who were completing their journey up to London, sat for a while by the fire in the drawing-room, for there was sharpness in the September night air, and at ten o’clock, gently tired by my afternoon’s walk on the hills, went up to bed in a clean little bedroom with some good old prints on its walls. Next morning the sound that woke me was the cawing of the rooks on their way to the fields.