GUILDFORD CASTLE, SURREY.
GUILDFORD Castle, of which the keep was always the most prominent, and is now the chief remaining, feature, is in position, age, structure, and dimensions, a very remarkable fortress.
It is true, indeed, that though of great age, neither the town nor the castle have played any great part in English history. The town was never walled; the castle never stood a siege. No considerable battle was ever witnessed from its towers; no parliament or great council was ever held within its hall. Though always a royal manor, and long maintained as a royal residence, it was used also as a prison, and is but rarely mentioned, either in the records or by the chroniclers. The castle was not garrisoned in the great civil war, and so escaped being dismantled and blown up by either king or parliament. Its state of decay is due to the effects of time, powerfully aided by the local greed for building materials. Nevertheless, though wanting in many of the points of interest often attaching to English military buildings, Guildford Castle has certain peculiarities of its own not unworthy of notice, and which it is the object of this notice to set forth and explain.
The great chalk range which forms the bulwark of London and the southern limit of the vale of the Thames, from its mouth to the border of Hampshire, is contracted towards the west into a narrow but elevated ridge, which extends from Reigate nearly to Farnham and, resting upon the firestone and gault of the Weald of Kent and Surrey, supports the clay and gravels of the London basin.
This ridge, generally unbroken, is traversed by two well-known gorges about twelve miles apart, of which the eastern is occupied by the Mole at Dorking and Mickleham, and the western by
“The chalkey Wey, that rolls a milky wave.”
The Wey, the tributaries of which rise widely over much of Surrey and the eastern part of Hampshire, is, where it cleaves the chalk, a considerable stream, much less milky than in the days, or rather in the verse, of Pope; and twelve miles below the pass it falls into the Thames at Weybridge.
The town of Guildford is placed upon the right or eastern bank of the river, well within, that is, north-east of the gorge, and within and a little above the town is the castle. As the ridge is here steep and lofty and the gorge deep and moderately narrow, it might be supposed that this pass would at all times have been important to whoever wished to defend London and the Thames from invaders from the south. In position it is to the south of London what Berkhampstead Castle is on the north; both are placed in gorges of chalk, both upon tributaries of the Thames; both are late Norman castles, founded upon earlier English earthworks; and both were for centuries held direct by the Crown. Guildford, however, unlike Berkhampstead, though the nucleus of a large town, has no military history. Although Surrey and Sussex are by no means deficient in traces of early occupation, the immediate neighbourhood of Guildford is in this respect almost a blank. An early trackway has been talked of as taking the ridge of the Downs, and traces of an irregular, and therefore British, camp are said to have been formerly observed on St. Martha’s hill; but the long chalk crest and slopes of the Downs, so tenacious of the slightest works ever executed on their surface, are not known to exhibit any traces of the encampments or pits or other works usually attributed to the British, which, considering the dense forest that certainly extended to the foot of the high ground on the south side, and probably on the north, is very singular. Antiquaries, indeed, have placed the capital of the British Regni at Guildford and the city of Vindomis at Farnham, but nothing beyond general probabilities have been brought forward in favour of either supposition. It is curious, also, to observe how completely Celtic names have disappeared from the neighbourhood. Even the rivers, the first to receive and the last to change their names—the Wey, the Wandle, and the Mole—are Saxon, as are the names of Guildford, the chief town of the county and district, Farnham, the ancient episcopal seat, and the villages about them.
Neither are there any very decided marks of Roman occupation in Guildford. The Castle Hill at Hescomb, Hilbury in Puttenham, and Holmbury in Ockley, are said to be rectangular, and therefore Roman earthworks; but neither of the two great Roman roads from the south passes through Guildford. The Watling Street leads from Canterbury, by Rochester, to Southwark; and the Icknild Street, from Chichester, takes the pass of Mickleham in its way to the same destination. It is very curious that a town so remarkable in position, so strongly posted, and so directly in the way from the south-west to London, and withal so sheltered, and placed close to pastures so fertile, should exhibit no marks of occupation by the Romans or the earlier or later Britons.