onies, along the ridge in the sun and the
wind and the rain; by their side and after them, along the ridge and
under it, travelled the knight and the clerk and the friar and the
summoner, as they travelled from the Tabard Inn to St. Thomas's shrine
with Chaucer; and we may follow them, beginning with Surrey's western
town, and journeying at the end from the Tabard again, with the pilgrims
passing to the east.

CHAPTER II

FARNHAM

The joining of the ways.--Georgian poke bonnets.--The Castle.--Kings
at Farnham.--Poet Soldiers.--A glorious battle.--The Bishop's
artillery.--Paradise and the Bull's Eye.--Izaak Walton.--Cobbett's
education.--An old alehouse.--Hopgrowers in difficulties.--King
Charles's cap.--Elmer's pheasants.

Westernmost of all Surrey towns, Farnham stands at the joining of the
ways. Traders from Cornwall, pilgrims from Winchester, horse-dealers
driving their ponies from Weyhill Fair, have met on the roads that run
into Farnham from the west and south and north. Farnham Castle, for
seven centuries a Bishop's palace, links Surrey to the See of
Winchester. The Farnham oasthouses and hop-grounds bridge the crossing
from the fertile Hampshire border to the Bagshot sands and the wild and
sterile moors of Frensham and Hindhead. The town, set in its cultured
plot of vines and flower-beds, with its historic castle, its tranquil
church, and the Wey watering the pastures under its walls, stands like a
garden between the military rigidity of Aldershot and the wind that
blows over the Thursley heather.

No town in Surrey has two such old and orderly main streets as Farnham.
Here and there modern taste for a noisy pattern has broken the quiet
level; a bank has piled up a huge building of timber, handsome but out
of keeping; the new Corn Exchange is out of keeping and hideous; and in
1866 municipal enterprise pulled down the old market house, which stood
at the junction of the main streets and was a fascinating little
building perched on pillars. But much that is ancient and simple in
square red brick remains. The plain, low-roofed houses, with their flat
facades and crumpled, lichened tiles, succeed one another down Castle
Street and West Street with a delightful monotony. The elaborate carved
and painted doorways, knockers, lunettes, doors and steps are quite a
model exhibition. The two streets wear a Georgian air of poke-bonnets
and long purse-strings. Or they are Georgian, at all ev