Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
To come to Chilworth, which lies on the south side of St. Martha's Hill,
most people would have gone along the level road to Guildford and come
round through Shawford under the hills; but we, having seen enough of
streets and turnpikes, took across over Merrow Down, where the Guildford
race-course is, and then mounted the "Surrey Hills," so famous for the
prospects they afford. Here we looked back over Middlesex, 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 and South-West. We are here upon a bed of
chalk, where the downs always afford good sheep food. We steered for St.
Martha's Chapel, and went round at the foot of the lofty hill on which
it stands. This brought us down the side of a steep hill, and along a
bridle-way, into the narrow and exquisitely beautiful vale of Chilworth,
where we were to stop for the night. This vale is skirted partly by
woodlands and partly by sides of hills tilled as corn fields. The land
is excellent, particularly towards the bottom. Even the arable fields
are in some places, towards their tops, nearly as steep as the roof of a
tiled house; and where the ground is covered with woods the ground is
still more steep. Down the middle of the vale there is a series of
ponds, or small _lakes_, which meet your eye, here and there, through
the trees. Here are some very fine farms, a little strip of meadows,
some hop-gardens, and the lakes have given rise to the establishment of
powder-mills and paper-mills. The trees of all sorts grow well here; and
coppices yield poles for the hop-gardens and wood to make charcoal for
the powder-mills.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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