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. CHAPTER IX THE VILLAGES OF THE TILLINGBOURNE Chilworth.--Gunpowder and Banknotes.--Cashier for fifty years.--The Evelyns' Powdermills.--Albury's chimneys.--A Yew hedge quarter of a mile long.--Sherborne ponds: the Silent Pool.--King John and Sabrina drowned.--Trout fed on Sandwiches.--Shere.--The prettiest village of all.--The Tillingbourne.--William Bray, aged 97.--A Yeoman's Will.--Shere Registers.--From Ann to Carbetia.--Gomshall.--Starving a Retainer.