England, commands a magnificent prospect, extending across the beautiful undulating downs beyond Windsor Castle on one side and London on the other. There are, moreover, many other fine points of view from the higher portions of the common, and the town itself, though deserted by all but its comparatively few residents except in race week, retains even now a certain picturesque appearance, with its clock tower rising up in the main street. The once much frequented assembly-rooms are now divided up into shops, and of the ancient church, in which the aristocratic drinkers of the waters used to worship, the tower alone remains. There are, however, several well-preserved eighteenth-century mansions in the neighbourhood, including Woodcote House, in which is a room with a ceiling painted by Verrio, and Pitt Place, in which Thomas, the second Lord Lyttelton, died suddenly on November 27, 1779, at the very time, it is popularly believed, predicted by the ghost of a girl he had wronged, who appeared to him as he was going to rest three days before the end. [Sidenote: Banstead] The village of Banstead, that gives its name to the famous downs, and is associated with the memory of Hubert de Burgh, is finely situated 536 feet above the sea-level and commands a view even finer than that from the grand-stand on the racecourse. Its history can be traced back to Norman times, but it retains scarcely any relics of the past, its {171} ancient church having been almost entirely rebuilt and most of its old houses pulled down. It is, however, in touch with much charming scenery, and from it may be reached many beautiful hamlets still far beyond the furthermost limits of outlying London. {172} CHAPTER VIII WANDSWORTH, PUTNEY, BARNES, AND OTHER SOUTHERN SUBURBS A century ago a charming little hamlet, traversed by the limpid stream of the Wandle, after which it is named, and surrounded on every side by breezy undulating commons, the thriving, bustling, and, in its poorer quarters, somewhat squalid town of Wandsworth has now little that is attractive about it except two or three ancient mills which, with the tawny-sailed barges, generally grouped at the mouth of the river that here joins the Thames, present a really picturesque appearance. There is, moreover, something dignified about the massive eighteenth-century church of All Saints in the modern High Street, and it contains several interesting monuments, notably one to Alderman Smith, a native of Wandsworth, whose memory, though he passed away as long ago as 1627, is still held dear in the neighbourhood, for he bequeathed large sums of money for the relief of the poor, and also for giving them work, proving his recognition of the importance of the problem of the unemployed, which {173} public-spirited philanthropists had evidently much at heart even at that early date.