red, white, and blue, were carried out in procession to the music of a traditional tune, to be kicked off by the town crier at the Church passage. The red ball having been first worried by the boys, at 3 P.M. the blue ball was taken in foot by the men; and at 4 P.M. a grand final struggle, hundreds strong, began with the white ball, going on till the chimes rang at 6 P.M. These Saturnalian scrimmages proved as hard to extinguish as the bonfire-revels at Lewes on Guy Fawkes Day; but this year a dozen extra policemen appear to have been too many for young Dorking’s half-hearted conservatism; and for an illustration of the old Shrove Tuesday sports, one must go all the way to St. Colomb in Cornwall, where the ceremonial Hurling Match between “Town” and “Country” is still honoured in the observance.
These footballs were inscribed with the legend, “Wind and water is Dorking’s glory.” From some winds Dorking is well sheltered; but the lower part of the town has only too much water in the ponds filled by the Pipp Brook, at one time an attraction of the place, being stocked with perch, carp, and tench, that supplied the dish called “water souchy,” a stew of fish in esteem with London citizens. Sanitarians now shake their heads over this damp and misty flat, and Dorking’s recent growth is rather upon the high ground behind the long, spacious main street. In point of picturesqueness its situation is most admirable, shut in among such heights as Ranmore Common, Box Hill, and the broken swell of parks and woods rising southwards to Leith Hill.
Much of this beautiful country is enclosed in renowned demesnes; most famous of them Deepdene, lying close behind the town. That paradise of almost European reputation takes in the adjoining Betchworth and Chart Parks; and the wood on the opposite face of Box Hill also belongs to the property, that in a circumference of a dozen miles makes a magnificent collection of English and exotic timber. The nucleus of it was the deep hollow or “Long Hope,” which Mr. Charles Howard, in Cromwell’s time, laid out as an amphitheatre of garden terraces, an open-air conservatory of flowers and rare plants, visited with due admiration by his neighbour John Evelyn, and also by Aubrey, who declared the sight “worthy of Cowley’s Muse.” At the beginning of last century the estate was bought and extended by “Anastasius” Hope, author of a celebrated Eastern romance, and liberal patron of such artists as Flaxman and Thorwaldsen, with whose works he stored the mansion begun by him. As a guest here, Disraeli is understood to have written Coningsby. Another owner of note was Mr. Beresford Hope, the proprietor of the Saturday Review. In the hands of his heirs the estate fell among the Philistines, and after a succession of tenancies this lordly demesne has been turned into an hôtel de luxe. But if strangers cannot gain the lofty beech terrace, commanding such a rich woodland prospect, and from a lane outside must be content with a tantalising peep of the rhododendron show within, they may take a public path to the Glory Wood behind the town; or, on its east side, in the valley of the Mole, they find the avenues of Betchworth Park open as a way to Brockham; while the grounds of Box Hill, and some of the finest outskirts of Leith Hill, such as the Nower park-slopes, offer free rambles.
To follow the Roman Road’s course southwards from Dorking, one takes the Horsham Road over Holmwood Common below the eastern flanks of Leith Hill. On the right hand of this highway, a straight line under the Redland Woods is marked on the O.S. map as Stone Street, which here, indeed, needs an antiquary’s eye to trace it over private enclosures. Above it, by lanes winding through the woods, is reached the lofty village of Coldharbour. This name, often occurring on or near an old road, is believed to denote an inn, like the caravanserais of the East, that supplied only bare walls. Evelyn reviles a poor Alpine inn as a “cold harbour, though the house had a stove in every room.” It is not improbable that a deserted Roman villa or military station would be turned to account as such a place of more or less imperfect shelter. Ruskin, in one of his rashest excursions ultra crepidam, opined that the Camberwell Coldharbour Lane might have been called after coluber, from its snake-like windings; but he seems not to know how many Coldharbours there are in England, and that several of them stand near Roman roads, whose character was anything but serpentine. Beside this lofty village is the Camp of Anstiebury, traditional harbour for an invading force of Danes, who sallied forth to be slaughtered on the slopes of Leith Hill or on Ockley Green below.
On the south side of Leith Hill, showing such a bold face to the flats of Ockley, the line of the Roman Road coincides with the modern one, still known as “Stone Street causeway,” that had been ascribed by country-folk in Aubrey’s time to the work of the Devil. This road runs straight for about three miles, then, beyond its forks, the line of the old way is marked on maps as leading about as far ahead, across the Sussex border, into the valley of the Arun. As a practicable path, however, it seems to have fallen much out of use, overlaid by the woods and grounds of this generation. In the fork one can see no trace of it now, but, if one here take the right-hand road crooking up to the hamlet of Oakwood Hill, below this an inscription, Shut the Gate, shows the bridle-way preserved as drive of a modern mansion. Beside this house it passes as a green lane to be almost choked as it tunnels the copses that soon obscure its line for a stranger, though local wayfarers make out a right-of-way to Rowhook. Mr. Malden, the Surrey historian, who has patiently explored part of its lost course, finds that some ancient lanes take no heed of that older track, which he supposes to have been early abandoned as leading into the Wealden wilds, almost uninhabited at the date of Domesday.
Ockley itself is one of the pleasantest of Surrey villages, clustered about a broad green, beside which Stone Street has grown into a lordly avenue, shadowing what seems a Roman-like massiveness of paving. About it, within the bounds of Surrey, green byways wind among swelling ridges and clumps of timber thick-set on the edge of the Weald. Two or three miles southward, on the right hand of Stone Street’s line, woodland paths lead to the sequestered chapel of Oakwood and on to Oakwood Hill, whence, half a dozen miles south-west, might be reached in Sussex the Baynards or the Rudgwick station of a line from Guildford, near the new quarters of the Bluecoat School converging with that other from Dorking, on which Warnham, the home of Shelley’s youth, has a station about as far to the south-east of Ockley. Eastward, one can seek the secluded Wealden villages caught in a network of the Mole’s branches, through which the free foot or wheel can thread a devious way to the Brighton road, or bend round into the Holmesdale valley. Westward, zigzag roads under the wooded crests of the sand-hills take one to Ewhurst, to Cranleigh, and on to Godalming, or by Bramley or Wonersh to Guildford. To the north rises the stiff ascent of Leith Hill, from which let us survey its choice surroundings.
VII
LEITH HILL
THE reader is now to be conducted on and about what, to my mind, makes the bouquet of the county’s scenery. Leith Hill is the highest point not only of Surrey, but in this corner of England, the topmost knoll on its southern brow being 965 feet above the sea, crowned by a tower that adds nearly 100 feet to the natural elevation. The tower was built in the eighteenth century by a local squire named Hull, apparently a “character,” who had himself buried in it, to the scandal of his neighbours. It has since been restored and opened by the present proprietors, the Evelyns of Wotton. Till lately it was garrisoned by an old dame who tramped up daily in tourist weather, and kept a supply of rudimentary refreshments, grateful to those who had made a hot ascent. But such a simple Brockenhaus is now supplemented by a small and snug hotel on the shelf below, which may be reached by wheels; then from it there is one stiff tug up the steep bank, the approaches from behind being less arduous.
It is only on the southern side that Leith Hill makes a clear show of its height. The northern slopes are gentle, falling gradually for three or four miles into the Holmesdale valley. The broken contours of the sand show richly clad with woods, parks, commons, heather, bracken, patched too with quagmires and ragged gravel pits, seamed with lanes and hedgerows, so that all the most shaggily picturesque features of Surrey come here mixed together, in contrast with the smoother and barer outlines of the chalk Downs, like a mastiff lying side by side with a collie. The native wildness of this hill has been a good deal cut and polished, indeed; and a thick setting of private grounds, while throwing its rough facets into relief, has the fault of barring access by certain enviable nooks. But the upper part is left free; and by right-of-way or the liberality of owners, several lines of approach are open from different sides.