Clambering down to the road again, and through the gate already mentioned, a beautiful downhill road leads to the hamlet of Coldharbour, nestling amid the foothills and the Alpine valleys in miniature that surround Leith Hill. All the way hence to Dorking are trees: plantations of Scotch firs, larches, and other trees that give an added mountainous character to the scenery. And lonely withal, and steep. Redlands Wood is passed through, and a long, steep hill, danger-boarded. With caution, however, and a reliable brake, there is no reason why this should not be ridden. So, coming swiftly down into the flatlands, we are in Dorking before we know that town is so near.
Turning to the right and through the main street, we are soon out in the open country again, and turning to the left at Betchworth Park, and under the shadow of Box Hill, and in view of the line of yews marking the course of the Pilgrims’ Way, reach the left-hand turning for Burgh Heath and Ewell. Toilsome is the ascent of Betchworth Hill, by which the summit of the North Downs is gained, but beautiful the backward view when this excelsior business is done. Downhill again, however, into Pebble Coombe, and up to Banstead Downs, whence—oh, happiness! you may coast, feet up, with or without a following wind, nearly all the way down into Ewell; some four miles, that is to say, along the best of roads, through open heaths that, whether they are called Burgh Heath, Banstead Downs, Walton Heath, or Epsom Downs, are only portions of one vast high-lying plateau dipping towards the valley of the Thames. Sign-posts are not wanting on these heights—a fortunate circumstance, because the wayfarers are not many.
RIPLEY AND THE SURREY COMMONS
The Londoner of the southern and western suburbs is fortunate in the many breezy and picturesque stretches of wild commons that form a more or less continual girdle around those districts, at a distance of from fifteen to twenty miles from town. The Surrey Commons, more than those of Kent, are secluded and free from the bean-feast parties that render Keston and Hayes Commons somewhat less desirable than they would otherwise be. It is true that in the neighbourhood of Esher and Oxshott those who have the conduct of the extensive Crown lands that border the commons are beginning to exploit their healthy sites for villa-building; but although this red rash of “desirable residences” among the dark green of the pine-woods is looked upon with disfavour by the rambler in these hitherto unfrequented spots, what cannot be cured must be endured with the best grace at command.
Esher Station is the key to this district for those who hail from town, and sets you down on a common to begin with. In fact, the London and South-Western Railway runs along “common or commonable lands”—as the Parliamentary Bills of the railway companies express it—from Surbiton, and practically cuts Ditton Common in half: more shame to the Parliamentary Committees that ever permitted the deed. But then the South-Western has, for some reason or another, always been allowed to cut up and practically destroy the open spaces along its route, so that there is scarce a common in the south-western suburbs but that line has a cutting through or an embankment across it, with level crossings innumerable, at which those who use the roads must needs wait the pleasure of the railway, until the crowded traffic of passenger and goods trains has passed by!
We gain the old Portsmouth road in a few hundred yards from Esher Station, and, turning to the right, climb the hill to the village, through Littleworth Common. Reaching Esher, the way to Oxshott lies to the left, past that old coaching inn the “Bear,” and the old and long-disused parish church that modestly hides itself behind the inn.
The lodge gates of Claremont Park, beside the road, on the lovely common of Esher, are now passed, and within this, perhaps the best-wooded park near London, stands the great classic mansion begun by Lord Clive in 1768. Macaulay tells with dramatic effect how “the peasantry of Surrey looked with mysterious horror on the stately house which was rising at Claremont, and whispered that the great wicked lord had ordered the walls to be made so thick in order to keep out the devil, who would one day carry him away bodily.” Clive made an end by committing suicide in his gloomy mansion in Berkeley Square in 1774. Claremont is now, of course, Crown property; but the arms of Clive still remain on the pediment of the mansion.