On this day in 1867 the Court Minutes recorded that:
“It was Resolved On the motion of Mr Sallis seconded by Mr Carter That the sum of Ten pounds be contributed by the Company towards the proposed pic nic excursion of the members of the Court and their Ladies and friends to Weybridge”
The sum of £10 in 1867 would be equivalent to around £1,400 today. That the “pic nic” went ahead before 8 August is recorded in the Company accounts for 1867/68, but no detail is given as to how the party made their way to Weybridge, why that location was chosen, and what sights the party saw while they were there.
Given the Company’s own history one of the attractions may have been the remains of Oatlands Palace, acquired in 1538 and rebuilt by Henry VIII for his future Queen, Anne of Cleves. But with the recorded weather for July and August 1867 including many fine, dry days, an outing to rural Surrey was likely to have given welcome respite from the heat and smell of a London summer during which Joseph Bazalgette’s revolutionary sewerage system, begun after the Great Stink of 1858 and officially opened in 1865, was yet to be completed. Weybridge provided a charming riverside setting, with the River Wey feeding into a more attractive and less malodorous section of the Thames.
The River Wey Navigation, created between 1651-1653 and connecting Godalming with the Thames at Weybridge had long provided trade connections to London. The Wey & Arun Canal, completed in 1816, linked the Thames to the English Channel via the Wey Navigation. From 1829, a passenger coach service ran from London to Chertsey, passing through the Oatlands Park estate before noon and again around 4pm on the return leg to London. Competition for coach, river and canal came from the railways with the opening of a line in 1838, connecting Weybridge with London and providing the possibility for London businessmen to live in the country and commute to the City, as well as making a daytrip for a larger party of Barbers, their ladies and their acquaintances easier.
That the perils of ‘pic nics’ were clearly a subject of humour is shown in the Punch cartoon below, published just months after the Barbers’ excursion and Phiz’s ‘The Picnic Disturbed’ of 1880. Surrey resident H.G. Wells was to make a fictionalised Weybridge even more perilous in 1897, having it destroyed by Martian attack in The War of the Worlds.
