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
For the Pilgrims' Way we have only to keep the brow of White Hill,
looking over to the southern ridge on which Bletchingley stands. After
crossing the road from Caterham to Bletchingley, it is continued by a
lane turning off beside a tower and past the mansion called Arthur's
Seat, to the War Coppice, once an ancient camp, but now, like the
Cardinal's Cap on White Hill, offered as a too eligible building site.
Except by peeps, the view to the south becomes obstructed; and we look
over the Harestone Valley, down which a pleasant path runs northward to
Caterham. At Gravelly Hill and its Water Tower, new road-making seems to
transmogrify the Way, that on the slope beyond must have taken a
scramble into the deep hollow through which runs the high-road to
Godstone. Perhaps the original track is represented by a narrow lane
descending on the south face of the Downs.
Across that quarried hollow, we again ascend the Downs for their last
half-dozen miles in Surrey. A little below the milestone goes off a
charmingly devious lane up Winder's Hill and along the south side of
Marden Park, past its white shooting "Castle" so conspicuous on the
brow, then the lodge gate, through which there is a bridle-way running
to Caterham or on to the farther end of the park, two miles north.
Evelyn tells us how this fine demesne was made from a "barren warren"
and a poor farm in a hardly populated parish, by that "prodigious rich
scrivener" of his own time, Sir Robert Clayton, a Lord Mayor of London,
whose virtues, or at least his fortunes, are attested by the monstrous
monument covering a whole chancel wall of Bletchingley Church on the
ridge to the south. Here, admiringly says our authority on such matters,
the wealthy citizen so changed the face of hill, valley, and "solitary
mountain," that before long Marden looked like "some foreign country"
which would "produce spontaneously pines, firs, cypress, yew, holly, and
juniper," not to mention "an infinite store of the best fruit."
The sylvan riches of Marden Park may be sampled from a lovely lane
winding round the outside of its enclosure to gain the open edge of the
heights. The Pilgrims' Way here dropped to a lower level, passing by
what is still called Palmer's Wood and another wood on the face of the
Downs, again hugely scarred by chalk cuttings. It next runs right
through the middle of Titsey Park, where a Roman villa was discovered
near its course. Titsey Place was the old seat of the Greshams, a name
well known in City annals, whose monuments are preserved in the new
church on the east side of the park. From this point eastwards the Way
is a modern lane easily followed for miles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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