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 Park of Wotton, with "its rising grounds, meadows, woods, and water
in abundance," might well be styled by its best known owner "one of the
most pleasant seats in the nation." The mansion, still belonging to his
descendants, a good deal enlarged and altered since he made it "the
raree-show of the whole neighbourhood," contains part of his
collections, portraits, manuscripts, and other memorials of him, and
such a treasured relic as the prayer-book used by Charles I. on the
scaffold; but there is no admission to strangers, except occasionally in
summer by tickets issued at a Dorking library. One has, however, a
right-of-way through the lodge gate, presently leaving the drive by a
path passing close beside the house and up into the woods for Friday
Street. A little to the east of this line, reached by a lane behind the
inn, is the already mentioned way up the ornamental waters of the
Tillingbourne hollow. But the untired wanderer, who can steer a course
without beacons, will do well to make for Friday Street, a little hamlet
so ancient that it is supposed to have had the Saxon goddess Friga as a
godmother: the name occurs again some nine miles to the south, across
the Sussex border. This group of hermitages lies charmingly in a deep
glen half filled by a sheet of water, from the top of which goes up
another way to the tower; but in case of doubt it would be well to bear
left into the Tillingbourne's course.
The shortest way from Gomshall station to Friday Street, about three
miles, is by Abinger Church, standing above the west side of this
hollow. On the main road, half a mile east of the station, one reaches
Abinger Hammer, a name left by the now extinct iron working. On the
green here, take the right-hand byroad for Felday, then at the top of
its first slight rise, a path to the left running pretty straight over
fields to a solitary farm, behind which a lane leads on to the
churchyard of the high and dry hamlet styled Abinger Hatch. The church
of Abinger has been well restored, but preserves some ancient features.
On the Green beyond are the parish stocks, said to have been used almost
within living memory. The inn here has been smartened and enlarged of
late years, a hint how strangers appreciate the charms of a seclusion
that begins to be broken in on by building. Hence one turns left to
descend into the hollow of Friday Street. The road to the right is for
Felday, whence, on the west side of Leith Hill, mounts one of its most
lovely approaches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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