If Bunyan really drew his Pilgrim's Progress from his memories of the pilgrims and their fairs on the Way, he may have had other scenes in his mind which suggested other names. The Delectable Mountains may have been the blue line of the Sussex Downs, or the hills by Black Down and Hindhead. The Slough of Despond may have been the marshy pools of Shalford Common, or the ponds under the hill by Chilworth; and Doubting Castle, spelt Dowding Castle, is actually a name to be found on the Surrey map, south of Epsom Downs on Banstead Heath. But whether Bunyan ever saw it there is another matter.
From Shalford Common the road runs almost straight to Bramley. But it is worth while to leave the main road as it crosses the single railway line from Shalford to Bramley and Cranleigh, and to turn to the right down the little road that leads to Unstead Farm, a delightful brick and timber building, with exceptionally graceful chimney-stacks and latticed casements, behind which, in summer, there should surely be the largest bowls of roses. I saw the old house last in a frosty December sunset, surrounded by floodwater, with farm horses splashing up the road, and plovers crying round the edges of the stream. It looked desolate enough; but three hundred years ago it was a fine house, at one time the property of the Austens of Shalford, and later passing into the hands of the trustees of Henry Smith, the "Dog Smith" who gave so much to Surrey charities, and about whom Aubrey heard a quaint legend. "He had the nickname of Dog-Smyth, because he kept no house, but dined at friends' houses, and then desired a bit for his dog, which was to refect himself." Was he merely a crochety old gentleman who always went about with his dog, or did he keep the dog's dinner for himself? Another story about him was that once, when he was a poor boy, he was whipped through one of the Surrey parishes—accounts differ as to whether it was Chilworth, Tatsfield, or Wanborough—and that he struck that particular parish out of his will, but left large sums to all the others. He certainly left a large fortune to Surrey parishes, and no bequests have found their way to Chilworth, Tatsfield, or Wanborough, but that is the only foundation for the old story.
A mile south-west of Unstead Farm lies Bramley, which has grown up round the station of the single railway line running to Guildford. The restored church holds some good glass, but the prettiest thing in Bramley is an old mill which, with its medlar tree overhanging the water, its ducks and pigeons, its octagonal brick dovecot and lichened roofs, and its sweet-water grape vine clambering on the old walls, has a rich grace of colour and age setting it, in modern Bramley, a thing apart.
Bramley is almost joined by Wonersh to the east: Wonersh with its quaint other names, Wogheners, which was perhaps the original form, Wonish, Ignorsh, and Ognersh. Wonersh was once a very important village. It was one of the centres of the wool trade in the county, and of Wonersh, as of Guildford, Aubrey has the same sad story to tell of cheating clothiers. But, as we have seen, the real cause of the decay of the Surrey wool industry was something quite different. Perhaps one of Wonersh's rival clothiers started the story of the stretched cloth; perhaps it was never a libel.
One of the features of the village is an enormous wall, built by one of the Lords Grantley who had Wonersh Park, and put up the wall, apparently, to prevent neighbours and passers-by from gazing with too great enthusiasm at his lordship's grass and trees. It was a brother of the third Lord Grantley, George Norton, Recorder of Guildford, who married the famous Mrs. Norton, one of the three beautiful granddaughters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
Besides Lord Grantley's wall, the village holds some charming old cottages, several of them carefully restored, and two or three square-set, solid eighteenth-century houses. There is also a slender brick chimney of elaborate design of which Wonersh residents are justly proud. The village, indeed, conveys the impression of being affectionately cared for, which is not always the case with villages which belong so much to builders long dead; but nothing, perhaps, is a better example of the care with which the past is preserved than the church, which is a perfect piece of restoration and scholarly rebuilding combined. It is the work of a Surrey architect, Sir Charles Nicholson, a neighbour at Chilworth, who carried out his difficult task in 1901, and has since written an interesting little pamphlet on the church's history. Two or three peculiarities distinguish the interior. One is a crypt, paved with fourteenth-century encaustic tiles, which Aubrey describes as "a vault strongly barricaded with iron." Another is a magnificent Flemish chandelier, not a common adornment of a chancel. A third is a high tomb of Sussex marble, which bears no inscription. But the person buried in it must have been of considerable distinction, for the cassia in which the remains Were embalmed still sweats from the marble in wet weather—a grisly barometer. Possibly within may rest the remains of one of the Westons or Carylls, both of which were great families of the neighbourhood. It was John Caryll, buried in this church, on whom was written an epitaph quoted by Aubrey, but not now to be found. The eight lines of rhyme ended with what was perhaps thought appropriately cheerful resignation:—
"And now, which long before he did desire,
Caryll sings Carrolls in the Heavenly Choire."
North of Wonersh rises Chinthurst Hill, a knoll conspicuous for miles round, especially in winter, when the bleached grass of its wind-swept, pine-crowned cap gleams strangely white in the sun. North of Chinthurst Hill, again, on the far side of the open stretch of Shalford Common, stands one of the most perfect timbered houses—perhaps it is the most perfect—in the county. This is the famous Tangley Manor, which according to the legend was one of King John's hunting boxes, and is now as delightfully picturesque a country house as is to be seen in the south of England. Like other old mansions in the county, Crowhurst Place, for instance, the building of it belongs to two periods. It is a house, or rather a hall, within a house. The hall is the older part. It was a feature of English country life previous to the sixteenth century that the labourers and dependants of the great country estates ate, and in the earliest days even slept, in the hall of the mansion. When that system of common hall life ended, it nearly always happened that the great hall was cut in two, by a floor and bedrooms built in the upper part. This is what has happened at Tangley and at Crowhurst Place, and in each case the remains of the hall can be traced in the superb oak tie-beams which cross the bedrooms from side to side of the house. The hall is cased by a more modern building, a rich timber framework with the date 1582 carved sprawling on the wood. The garden has every charm that can belong to lichened brick walls, loop-holed and many-gated, and through the garden round the house runs a moat, in which trout swim, or once swam. John Evelyn of Wotton knew the Tangley manor moat and garden; possibly some of the daffodils which brighten the grass in April are descendants of bulbs he planted. On a pane of glass in one of the bedrooms he has scratched his name and the date "John Euelyn, 1641."
Beyond Tangley Manor to the north the railway runs a loose parallel to the little Tillingbourne, through Chilworth, Albury, Shere and Gomshall. But the villages of the Tillingbourne belong to another chapter.