Why has Epsom so broad a main street? In the great days the open way was narrower. Down the centre of the road as we see it Mr. Parkhurst planted a long walk of elms, and there they stood from James the Second's day till the nineteenth century. Then Sir Joseph Mawbey, lord of the manor, cut them down and sold the timber. He made a good bargain too; for the townpeople were grieved at losing their trees, and to quiet them he promised to give L200 to help build a market-house, but he never did it, and kept the cash. The trunks of the fallen trees must have made a pleasant prospect for the New Inn, the fine red-brick building which in Parkhurst's day was built for a tavern, and which still stands, but has now fallen to shops. But in the days when the city aldermen brought their wives to show off their finery, and the young sparks threw their money about at Epsom, what a bustling, handsome, pursy, turtle-soup sort of place the Wells must have been. John Toland, writing in 1711, describes Epsom Wells at their height. Eudoxa is his mistress, and to Eudoxa he pictures all Epsom's charms. I quote a few passages from a long letter:-- "Here are two bowling-greens with raffling shops and musick for the ladies' diversion, as at Tunbridge; but the ladies do not appear every day on the walks as there. Here you see them, on Saturdays, in the evening, as their husbands come from London; on Sundays at church, and on Mondays in all their splendour, when there are balls in the Long-rooms; and many of them shake their elbows at Passage and Hazard with a good grace." Surely they never forgave Toland for writing that. Here he writes on the ladies' husbands:--"By the conversation of those that walk there, you would fancy yourself to be this minute on the Exchange, and the next at St. James's; one while in an East India factory, and another while with the army in Flanders, or on board the fleet in the Ocean; nor is there any profession, trade, or calling that you can miss of here, either for your instruction or diversion."