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
The way I should choose for walking up Leith Hill from Dorking is by a
valley opening about two miles west of the town, at which end is the
Dorking station of the South-Eastern line. From the Box Hill station of
this railway and the Dorking of the Brighton line, which puzzlingly
adjoin one another beyond the other end, an omnibus plies to Westcott,
by a pretty road past Bury Hill and Milton Heath, above that most
picturesque old mansion, Milton Court.[A] From the Church on Westcott's
sloping Green one holds on pretty straight by a lane joining the
high-road near the gate of the Rookery, a mansion known as the home of
Malthus, that reverend bogey of sentimentalists like Cobbett. His father
before him was also a literary notability, and author of the
"improvements" which made this demesne celebrated. One need not be shy
of turning into the lordly avenue and by the rhododendron walks that
lead up the ornamental waters of the Pipp Brook, for boards show a
permitted way past the house, while, alas! on my last visit a placard at
the gate bore the warning _Mene_, _Mene_, _Tekel_, _Upharsin_, a notice,
to wit, that these choice grounds are destined to go the way of all
eligible building sites within reach of infection by Cobbett's "wen."
Above the house, one gets out of the park over a high bank, beyond which
comes a change both of estate and watershed, for the Pipp Brook flows to
the Mole, whereas the slopes westward drain into the Tillingbourne,
tributary of the Wey.
[A] Not to confuse the reader with too many routes, I throw a very
pleasant one into a footnote. Just before he reaches Westcott, from
the road into it leads off, left, "Milton Street," a charming hybrid
between park avenue and cottaged lane. Passing through an iron
turnstile at the top of this, then presently, turning right over a
plank bridge, he finds a long reach of meadow path which, in the same
general direction, with a trend left, leads him over two stiles and up
a slope to a fork of lanes. Across the road here, a stile marks the
continuation of the path winding on to a lonely farm. Through the yard
of this, he turns left on a track soon entering the woods, where its
left branch in half an hour or so leads shadily to Coldharbour, while
divergences a little to the right might (or might not) bring him in
view of the tower.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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