Farnham has expanded to the south-east, and not prettily. But it is the key to the great stretch of pine wood, heather and bogland which lies to the south about Frensham, Tilford and Crooksbury Hill; and it is the best centre from which to visit Waverley Abbey and Moor Park, and to take long walks over some of the wildest country in the county. A week would not be long enough to explore the dozen square miles south of the town.
Wrecclesham lies to the south-west, almost on the Hampshire border, and still makes green pottery of patterns which were favourites in the sixteenth century. Further south runs the tiny Bourne, the stream by which Cobbett and his brothers had so good an education, as we have just seen, in the sand. The Bourne, which runs dry in summer, has few associations as a stream; one, perhaps, will remain with it. Readers of The Bettesworth Book and Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer will perhaps not be very wrong if they fix on this sandy valley as the Surrey which Bettesworth knew best. Than the Memoirs, I think, no more discerning study of an old labourer's fight to keep on his own legs, out of the workhouse, earning his own money with his spade and hoe, belongs to any Surrey village.
Pierrepont House and Bridge.
Deep country begins south of the Bourne, with the first Surrey bridge over the Wey, or rather one of the two Weys that are to join at Tilford. Untouched as yet by any town, the little river runs here over gravel and sand, clear and weedy. Trout lie under the bridge below Pierrepont House, in George III's day a seat of Evelyn Duke of Kingston, who named it after his family. He was the Duke who married the beautiful Countess of Bristol when her lawful husband was still alive: perhaps she used to stare into the Wey at Pierrepont and wonder whether it was worth doing.
Beside Frensham Pond.
Frensham stands a little distant from the river, just a cottage or two and a church. But the church holds a famous relic—an enormous caldron of beaten copper. Nobody knows its age; everybody has a story about it. It was brought by the fairies, is one tradition; it was nothing of the kind, is another. Mother Ludlam, the witch of Moor Park, four miles away, used it for boilings and philtremakings, according to one story; yet another connects it with a great stone which used to lie in the neighbourhood. John Aubrey, the antiquary, who "perambulated" Surrey in 1673 and 1674, gives the legend in full:—
"In the vestry of the church, on the north side of the chancel, is an extraordinary great kettle or caldron, which the inhabitants say, by tradition, was brought hither by the fairies, time out of mind, from Borough hill, about a mile from hence. To this place, if any one went to borrow a yoke of oxen, money, etc., he might have it for a year or longer so he kept his word to return it. There is a cave where some have fancied to hear music. On this Borough hill (in the Tithing of Cherte, in the parish of Frensham) is a great stone lying along, of the length of about six feet: they went to this Stone, and knocked at it, and declared that they would borrow, and when they would repay, and a Voice would answer when they should come, and that they should find what they desired to borrow at that Stone. This caldron, with the trivet, was borrowed here after the manner aforesaid, but not returned according to promise; and though the caldron was afterwards carried to the stone, it could not be received, and ever since that time no borrowing there....
"The people saw a great fire one night (not long since), the next day they went to see if any heath was burnt there, but found nothing."