Four villages and a group of powdermills stand on the banks of the Tillingbourne, which runs its short race of clear spring water from the northern slopes of Leith Hill to the Wey by Shalford. There are scarcely a dozen miles of the Tillingbourne altogether, but it runs through the prettiest string of villages in the county. Friday Street is at its source; Abinger Hammer, with two large millponds, is next; Gomshall lies a mile to the west of Abinger Hammer, Shere a mile to the west again, and Albury beyond Shere. Chilworth stands last on the bright little stream, hardly a village; not much more than a station, some powdermills, and reedy ponds. The quickest road from Guildford to Chilworth is the railway. The best road is over the downs. The road which Cobbett took when he came from Kensington was over Merrow Downs to Newlands Corner, and it is worth while to climb up Newlands Corner to look at the view as Cobbett saw it, with the pale distances of eight counties on his horizon, and the dark, tall chimneys of the powdermills he detested smoking below him. "Here we looked back over Middlesex," he writes, "and into Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, away towards the north-west, into Essex and Kent towards the east, over part of Sussex to the south, and over part of Hampshire to the west south-west." He might have added Oxfordshire. Nothing in Surrey delighted Cobbett more than "the narrow and exquisitely beautiful vale of Chilworth," at which he used to gaze from these downs. Only Hawkley Hanger, just over the Hampshire border, filled him with greater pleasure. But the Chilworth powdermills goaded him to fury:--