The comfort that came to the White Monks was the dissolution of the Abbey in the month following. After the dissolution the buildings fell gradually to pieces, generously helped by builders of other houses. When Sir William More was giving Loseley near Guildford the shape we see to-day he carted waggon-load after waggon-load of stone from the ruined church, and Sir William More was perhaps not the first and certainly not the last of the spoilers. The neighbourhood quarried from the ruins until only a few years ago. When Aubrey saw the Abbey in 1672 he found the walls of a church, cloisters, a chapel used as a stable, and part of the house with its window-glass intact, and paintings of St. Dunstan and the devil, pincers, crucibles and all. To-day most of the ruins have fallen flat. There is some beautiful vaulting left, and massive heaps of stone show the corners and boundaries of the church and other buildings. Ivy-stems, coils of green gigantic pythons, climb about the walls and broken doorways; pigeons nest on the window-ledges and clatter like frightened genii out over the field.
Above Moor Park, a landmark for miles round, Crooksbury Hill lifts like a dark pyramid. Crooksbury Hill has a dozen different wardrobes. You may wake to find her grey in the morning, you may leave her behind you grey-green with the sun full on her flank, you may turn at noon to find the sun lighting her deep emerald; she is sunniest and hottest in a shining blue; and in the evening with the setting sun behind her she cloaks herself in purple and black as if her pines belonged to Scotland. She cannot see so far as Chanctonbury Ring, which is the watching comrade of all walkers in the country of the South Downs, and she has not the height of Leith Hill or Hindhead; but she is the grave and constant companion of all travellers for many miles round her, and measures for them the angle of the sun or the slope of the stars, as do all good landmarks for those who love a landmark like a friend.
A Dip in the Hog's Back.
CHAPTER V
THE HOG'S BACK
Whitewaysend.—Tongham.—A carillon of sheep-bells.—Timber-carting.—Falling on board a transport.—Cottages under the Hog's Back.—Puttenham. The Maypole at Compton.—The two-storied sanctuary.—A great picture.—Bird-baths.—Swarming bees.—The Hog's Back; a noble highway.
If any of the pilgrims from Farnham were drawn aside down the banks of the Wey to the hospitality of Waverley Abbey, they probably rejoined the rest at the foot of the Hog's Back, perhaps near Whitewaysend. That is a name with some meaning, for here first the road from Farnham runs up on to the great chalk ridge which traverses the county from west to east. The break in the colour of the roads under the ridge is from bright yellow sand to staring white, but the full white does not begin until the road is almost at its highest level, at the cross-roads above Tongham.