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
It is only on the southern side that Leith Hill makes a clear show of
its height. The northern slopes are gentle, falling gradually for three
or four miles into the Holmesdale valley. The broken contours of the
sand show richly clad with woods, parks, commons, heather, bracken,
patched too with quagmires and ragged gravel pits, seamed with lanes and
hedgerows, so that all the most shaggily picturesque features of Surrey
come here mixed together, in contrast with the smoother and barer
outlines of the chalk Downs, like a mastiff lying side by side with a
collie. The native wildness of this hill has been a good deal cut and
polished, indeed; and a thick setting of private grounds, while throwing
its rough facets into relief, has the fault of barring access by certain
enviable nooks. But the upper part is left free; and by right-of-way or
the liberality of owners, several lines of approach are open from
different sides.
What may be termed the standard way up, the plainest and easiest, is the
road from Dorking, a mainly gentle rising of some five miles to the
[Illustration: FRIDAY STREET, ON THE WAY TO LEITH HILL.]
tower. At the west end of Dorking's High Street, one turns up the
Horsham Road, then at the fork on the right a board beacons the course
to Leith Hill by a line of deep lanes along its east side, after a time
skirting the edge of the Redland Woods, inside of which a footway may be
taken. Had the pedestrian kept further along the Horsham Road, from
Holmwood Common a couple of miles out, he might strike up through those
woods to reach the upper way as it comes near the village of
Coldharbour. Two or three miles of walking would be saved by taking the
train on to Holmwood station, from which pleasant avenues mount through
private grounds to Coldharbour.
This village stands 800 feet high, on a shoulder of the hill, about a
mile from the tower, not yet in sight on its rugged head. Opposite the
inn turns up a sandy lane, on which cyclists will have to push, winding
to the bare knoll crowned by the tower. A better road, edged by the
amenities of a park drive, leads round the southern face to the hotel.
But those who depend on vehicles sit in no need of guidance. Henceforth
I address myself to the amateur or miniature Alpinist, who does not
shirk a walk of some dozen miles or so. To him the road above mentioned
may be suggested as best for coming down, perhaps by failing light and
with stiff limbs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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