Once more upon the hills, we can follow the line of yews which are seen at intervals along the ridge from St. Martha’s Chapel by Weston Wood and the back of Albury Park, turning a few steps out of our path to visit Newland’s Corner, the highest point of Albury Downs, and one of the most beautiful spots in the whole of Surrey. The view is as extensive as that from St. Martha’s Hill, and is even more varied and picturesque. Over broken ridges of heathery down and gently swelling slopes, clad with beech and oak woods, we look across to Ewhurst Mill, a conspicuous landmark in all this country, and farther westward to the towers of Charterhouse and the distant heights of Hindhead and Blackdown; while immediately in front, across the wooded valley, rises St. Martha’s Hill, crowned{81} by its ancient chapel. Here we can watch the changes of sun and shower over the wide expanse of level country, and see the long range of far hills veiled in the thin blue mists of morning, or turning purple under the gold of the evening sky. Some of the oldest and finest yew trees in all Surrey are close to Newland’s Corner—the ancient yew grove there is mentioned in Domesday—and their dark foliage offers a fine contrast to the bright tints of the neighbouring woods and to the snowy masses of blossom which in early summer clothe the gnarled old hawthorn trees that are studded over the hill-side. We can follow the track over the springy turf of the open downs and up glades thick with bracken, till it becomes choked with bushes and brambles, and finally loses itself in the woods of Albury.
Here, in the middle of the Duke of Northumberland’s park, is the deep glen, surrounded by wooded heights, known as the Silent Pool. A dark tale, which Martin Tupper has made the subject of his “Stephen Langton,” belongs to this lonely spot. King John, tradition says, loved a fair woodman’s daughter who lived here,{83} and surprised her in the act of bathing in the pool. The frightened girl let loose the branch by which she held, and was drowned in the water; and her brother, a goat-herd, who at the sound of her scream had rushed in after her, shared the same fate. And still, the legend goes, at midnight you may see a black-haired maiden clasping her arms round her brother in his cowhide tunic under the clear rippling surface of the Silent Pool.
A little farther on is the old church of Albury—Eldeburie, mentioned in Domesday, and supposed to be the most ancient in Surrey. The low tower, with its narrow two-light windows, probably dates back to very early Norman times, but the rest of the church is considerably later. The south chapel was richly decorated by Mr. Drummond, who bought the place in 1819, and is now used as a mortuary chapel for his family. Albury formerly belonged to the Dukes of Norfolk. The gardens were originally laid out by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, the accomplished collector of the Arundel marbles, and whose fine portrait by Vandyck was exhibited{84} at Burlington House in the winter of 1891. His friend and neighbour, Mr. Evelyn, helped him with his advice and taste, and designed the grotto under the hill, which still remains. “Such a Pausilippe,” remarks the author of “The Sylva,” “is nowhere in England besides.” But the great ornament of Albury is the famous yew hedge, about ten feet high and a quarter of a mile long, probably the finest of its kind in England. So thick are the upper branches of the yew trees that, as William Cobbett writes, when he visited Albury in Mr. Drummond’s time, they kept out both the rain and sun, and alike in summer and winter afford “a most delightful walk.” The grand terrace under the hill, “thirty or forty feet wide, and a quarter of a mile long, of the finest green-sward, and as level as a die,” particularly delighted him; and the careful way in which the fruit trees were protected from the wind, and the springs along the hill-side collected to water the garden, gratified his practical mind. “Take it altogether,” he goes on, “this certainly is the prettiest garden that I ever beheld. There was taste and sound judgment at every step in the{85} laying out of this place. Everywhere utility and convenience is combined with beauty. The terrace is by far the finest thing of the sort that I ever saw, and the whole thing altogether is a great compliment to the taste of the times in which it was formed.” The honest old reformer’s satisfaction in these gardens was increased by the reflection that the owner was worthy of his estate, seeing that he was famed for his justice and kindness towards the labouring classes—“who, God knows, have very few friends amongst the rich;” and adds, that he for one has no sympathy with “the fools” who want a revolution for the purpose of getting hold of other people’s property. “There are others who like pretty gardens as well as I, and if the question were to be decided according to the laws of the strongest, or, as the French call it, droit du plus fort, my chance would be but a very poor one.”
