Surrey: Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope MoncrieffMoncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
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Surrey: Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope Moncrieff
Moncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
Surrey (England) -- Description and travel
This is not the only fine point of view about Croydon. Just outside of
the town, to the south-east, above Selsdon Road station, the high wooded
bank called Crohamhurst is now a public park, about which pleasant
footways lead over a country too rapidly being built over. On the other
side, beyond the Duppas Hill Park, the Wandle is our guide to half-rural
scenes of Waddon and Beddington, already mentioned as we passed by
Mitcham.
The main road runs Croydon into Purley, passing the aerodrome station
for Paris. A fork of it is the oldest Brighton Road, which leaves the
county below East Grinstead. From Croydon it goes by Caterham, dropping
through a hollow in the Downs to Godstone Green, with its good old inns,
then by Tilburstow Hill, a bold knob of the sand ridge, on to a stretch
of the Weald, from which once more it rises to the Forest Ridge of
Sussex. But we have already crossed this road at its best points; and
fresh scenes will be opened out by taking a more devious line a little
to the east, on which articulate guide-posts and more or less articulate
men may be consulted to keep one in touch with straighter roads to
Brighton.
From the main road, this line diverges by a fork to the left at the "Red
Deer," no longer the south terminus of Croydon trams. Past spreading
suburbs it mounts up to Sanderstead, whose pretty Church stands at a
height of 500 feet upon a sandy patch, from which our road soon passes
on to the chalk tableland. An hour's sharp walk would bring us to
Warlingham above the Caterham valley, where the Church, with its ancient
yews, has among other old features a faded fresco of St. Christopher. A
mile or two farther on, the chalk is broken by gravel pits and traces of
ancient excavation on Worms Heath; then the road rises to 800 feet on
Nore Hill, and still higher as by Botley Hill, the unpretending Mount
Blanc of the Surrey Downs, about seven miles beyond Croydon, it reaches
the sharp drop to Titsey, on the brow where five roads meet, between
Tatsfield to the left and Woldingham to the right. This is the point we
gained in passing along the edge of the Downs by Harden Park, above the
Pilgrims' Way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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