Surrey: Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope MoncrieffMoncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
History
Surrey: Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope Moncrieff
Moncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
Surrey (England) -- Description and travel
Following the Wey from Newark Priory, again we find its industrious and
its idle channels at cross purposes with each other, the latter making
one particularly extravagant bend eastward, so as to infect with its own
devious character the roads that must tack towards bridges. At the
Anchor Lock, and its quaint old inn, one might turn off to the right,
across a feeble branch, for the little church of Wisley, and by it push
on to Wisley Common, with its fir-girdled lakelet on the Ripley road,
and its "Hut" hostelry, a combination of a snug hotel and of a "Trust"
model public-house. Beside this road, on the west edge of the common, a
board shows the way among pine woods to a new feature of the Wey valley,
the Horticultural Society's Gardens, transplanted from Turnham Green,
already a sight worth seeing, but not open without an order from a
Fellow. The nearest stations are Effingham and Horsley, each about three
miles off to the south-east; and over the common the high-road leads on
in a couple of miles to Street Cobham, near which the Mole comes within
a mile or so of the Wey.
Striking off from the Wey Navigation on the other side, for instance by
a footpath from a bridge half a mile beyond the Anchor Lock, one could
soon reach Byfleet station on the main line, beyond which are the golf
links of New Zealand and the woods of Anningsley. Now the straggling
river waters the scattered hamlets of Byfleet, in which parish Henry
VIII. is said to have been nursed at Byfleet Park. The main village,
half an hour's walk from the station, lies below the wooded ridge of St.
George's Hill, that now stands up to the right as a last stronghold of
the heaths and pines of Surrey on the edge of the Thames valley.
Here the Wey Navigation seems to swerve needlessly to the left, meeting
the branch with which it makes a junction beside the railway line. This
branch is the Basingstoke Canal, of late years fallen into disuse, and
in parts almost dried up, or choked with weeds; but there have been
rumours of its being restored to activity. The tow-path of the united
canal gives hence a plain walk to Weybridge, safe from the "Gadarene
grunt" of the motor-car. The old channel takes an extremely crooked
course nearer the flank of St. George's Hill, which at its southern end
one might mount to pass through the private grounds as the pleasantest
path to Weybridge station, a mile beyond which the Wey makes its last
twist into the Thames. Thus ends a river that has led us through the
heart of Surrey, itself a goodly stream, and often decked out in such
rich green attire as would beautify the most frumpish canal.
IV
UP THE MOLE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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