A fragment of precinct-wall is left, and the “Abbey Mill” of to-day is the direct descendant of that which occupied the same site in the old times, while the cut originally made by the monks to feed it still flows from near Penton Hook to the Thames again, near by, under the old name of the “Abbey River.”
Weybridge, two miles below Chertsey, is a place of which it is difficult to write with enthusiasm in pages devoted to villages. It is no longer a village, and yet not a town; and is, indeed, like most of the places to which we shall henceforward come, a suburban district.
What constitutes such? The answer is that it largely depends upon the distance from London. Here we are some twenty miles from town, and by reason of that fact, and all it means, the suburban residences are expensive and imposing, and stand, many of them, in their own somewhat extensive grounds. Thus, the original village and village green, to which these developments of modern times have been added, remain not altogether spoiled, and come as a pleasant surprise to that explorer who first makes acquaintance with Weybridge from the direction of the railway station, from which a typically conventional straight suburban road leads, lengthily and formally. On the village green stands a memorial column to a former Duchess of York, who died in 1820, at Oatlands Park, near by, and has another monument in the church. The column is intrinsically much more interesting for itself than as a monument to a duchess whom every one has long since forgotten, for it is nothing less than the original pillar set up at Seven Dials in London, about 1694, and thrown down in 1773. It remained, neglected and in fragments, in a builder’s yard, until it was purchased for its present use, and removed hither in 1822. Another memorial of that forgotten duchess is found in Weybridge church, a great modern building, built in 1848, and enlarged in 1864, with an additional south aisle. It stands on the site of an older church, is remarkable rather for size than excellence, and contains some really terrible stained glass. The sculptured memorial to the Duchess is by Chantery, but it is not a very good example of his work. She is represented kneeling, with her coronet flung behind. This, and other memorials removed from the older building, are all huddled together in the tower. Among them is a truly dreadful brass, representing three skeletons—among the very worst products of a diseased imagination to be found in the length and breadth of the land. It ought to be destroyed; and it really seems as though some one had entertained the idea, for the head of one of the figures has disappeared.