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The Charlotteville Jubilee Trust “On the Toby” Sunday April 10th 2005Sponsored walk from Dorking Hospital (home of the Dorking Spike) to the Guildford Spike along the North Downs Way. Both buildings once provided a night shelter for vagrants until the middle of the twentieth century. Today we retrace the 12 mile route between the two hostels raising funds to restore the Spike for a variety of exciting uses and learning lots of interesting facts.
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An
enjoyable walk, setting out from Dorking at 10:00 and walking along the
North Downs Track way for most of the journey. The views were
spectacular as the weather was fine and with the trees were still bare
from the winter.
The walk was two stages, the first was from Dorking to Newlands Corner around 9.5 miles taking around 4.5 hours to complete. This year there were only 7 brave enough to walk this stretch, hopefully next year we will have a few more! At Newlands Corner we were greeted by a mass of neighbours who had laid on a splendid picnic giving us a good excuse to sit down for a while. We set out again at 14:00 and completed the last leg of 2.5 miles in just over the hour. This time our numbers were swelled by children and neighbours enjoying the short walk into Charlotteville. A pleasant surprise awaited us at the Spike - a champagne (sparkling white actually) reception. A tough walk and one of the shorter ones that were forced on vagrants less than 100 years ago. No champagne reception for them; a cold muddy bath, itchy uniform and gruel or bread and cheese if they were lucky. |
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On the way up the downs from Dorking
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| Charlotteville's
That Way
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Russell Chamberlin writes: On
the high ridge of the North Downs – along the ancient trackway once
known as The Pilgrims’ Way but now known,
rather more prosaically,
as the North Downs Trackway -
a group of people was resolutely striding along last Sunday. From a distance, they looked like any other people enjoying the Downs on that lovely April morning. The flowers of the blackthorn were tumbling down like a white waterfall. The daffodils were trumpeting. The forysthia gleaming. The wind was blowing. The walkers were, indeed, enjoying the walk. But they were also walking with a purpose. Each of them, bore, not “a banner with a strange device” but wore a T-shirt with a logo. The logo, designed by Jane Thomson, showed part of a brick wall and, on the wall, the words “The Spike”. The letter “i” in the word “Spike” was, itself, in the form of a pointed tool or, spike. This was an instrument used by the wretched users of the casual ward or “spike” in the 19th century workhouse on what is now Warren Road in Guildford to earn their keep by shredding old ropes. On
Sunday, April 10, walkers showed support for the Charlotteville Jubilee
Trust by retracing the steps of the tramps or vagrants who, by law, were
obliged to walk from one workhouse
to another in order to be entitled to a night’s lodging. On this
occasion the group was walking from the site of the workhouse in Dorking
to the site of the workhouse in Guildford to raise funds for the
restoration of the Guildford “Spike” to be used as a community centre.
The organiser of the walk, Josh Goodwin, expects the walk to become a
popular annual event. |
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| Picnic at
Newlands Corner
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Ready for the last 2.5 miles
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| Reception Committee at the Spike | |
