The steep south faces of the Downs look into the Holmesdale Valley of greensand and gault, across which, within a rifle-shot, rise a line of sandy hills whose more rugged and shaggy outlines often form the loveliest scenes in Surrey, to some tastes, certainly the wildest, though many corners have been tamed by grounds and gardens among stretches of bristling common and straggling pine wood. These heights stand usually lower than the Downs; but at more than one point, as Leith Hill, they are the most mountainous prominences of the south-eastern counties. Hants, Sussex, and Surrey meet about Hindhead and its neighbour Blackdown, next in height to Leith Hill, where an illustrious settler has famed the view over
Green Sussex fading into blue
With one grey glimpse of sea.
But here a prosaic describer must note how it is only from some point of vantage, and at some rarely clear hour, that through a gap the sea comes in view of Surrey hills, since their prospect southwards is usually bounded by the line of the South Downs, crossing Sussex to end in the bluff of Beachy Head.
Between stretches the Weald, a strip of which, except in that south-western corner filled by the broadened sand heights, belongs to Surrey and makes its southern zone of fresh features. This wide plain once lay shaded under the great Andredeswald, that was the Black Country of England before coal and steam came into play, and still earlier it raised a barrier parting the South Saxons from kindred invaders. Its hursts and woods hint how the clay soil bore a primæval forest, notably of oaks, patches of it still preserved in the parks dappling an expanse of farm land long ago cleared to feed the furnaces that cast cannon and other iron work, specimens of which may be found in churches and homes about this district. Less picturesque, on the whole, than the zones to the north, the Surrey Weald is more remote from metropolitan sophistication, and keeps perhaps a larger proportion of the old weathered cottages and moated granges, which æsthetic citizens love to look on rather than to inhabit. It must be the Weald Fuller has in mind when he speaks of Surrey’s skirts as “rich and fruitful,” but its inward parts “hungry and barren,” though these, even in his day, “by reason of the clear air and clean ways, full of many genteel habitations.”
Some brooklets of the Weald run southward to the English Channel, else, nearly the whole of Surrey drains into the valley of the Thames, a river to make the landscape fortune of any county. If ever its scenes have a fault, from the artist’s point of view, this may appear to be the absence of water; yet some of its noblest prospects are where the Mole and the Wey break through the sand or chalk ridges to reach the river plain. Surrey has smaller streams less widely known. Ruskin, to deaf ears, lamented the defilement of the Wandle, its source, its curving course, and its mouth all now within the limits of Greater London. Do Putney boys trace to its head the Beverley Brook, as Charles Lamb’s companions tried to play explorer up the New River? How many of the most schooled Londoners could tell through what parishes and by what suburban settlements flows the Hogsmill River, or the Bourne, or the Burway Ditch? A Brixton householder may hear the name of the Ephra without guessing how its course is below his feet. There are veteran ramblers in Surrey who know not the Deanoak Brook, nor the Blackwater. The motorist scorching along the Tillingbourne Valley road comes home ignorant what beautiful banks he has skirted, while one goggled eye was all upon his gear, and the other on the look-out for police traps.
The fact is that Surrey has plenty of water, often lost in the picturesque roughness of its contours. In smoother counties any hillock may disclose some Ouse or Avon shining miles away, whereas here the windings and branchings of the Wey and Mole go often unsuspected till one come close upon them. Below Surrey’s bare, bony prominences, its veins will lie lost in the plumpness of the valleys. Both chalk and sand hills, dry as their tops may seem, are full of springs, escaping not only in streams, but into stagnant or slowly trickling pools, that sometimes form a chain of lakelets, or, as in the case of Virginia Water, have
been improved into trim sheets to leave no note wanting in the landscape scale. Even within the wider bounds of London sparkles a lake like that of Wimbledon Park, where in hard winters ice is coined into silver. Sandy commons, as well as marshy bogs, are unexpectedly found dotted with ponds, often beautifully hidden behind a curtain of foliage, as the “Silent Pool” of Albury, invisible to the cyclist spinning by within a hundred yards. The modest titles of some of these Surrey lakes may well deceive a stranger who has not opened his eyes upon the “Waggoners’ Wells” of Hindhead or the “Ponds” of Frensham. On the south side of the county, where they once lay among thick woods, such waters often preserve the title of “Hammer Ponds,” from the days when they were dammed up to work iron forges.
Surrey’s character for variety is carried out by the way in which green openings and barren scrubs are mixed up with the elaborate works of man. Who shall say where London begins or ends? If we think to get clear of it at Wandsworth, we find it breaking out again at Wimbledon. The country lad tramping up to those streets paved with gold, may meet them at Mitcham, and a little farther on lose himself on Figgs Marsh. The widest definition of Great London is the Metropolitan Police District, taking in all parishes fifteen miles from Charing Cross, the Postal District being a little more restricted. But still, beyond these bounds, we come upon settlements of citizens making their homes an hour’s journey from the smoke and din of their work-place. Favourite sites for such colonies are the edges of commons so frequent on the south side of London, in Surrey to be counted by hundreds, open woodlands, stretches of copse and heath, well-worn playgrounds, down to the patches of green that seldom fail to grace the smallest hamlet. Several of these public pleasure-grounds run into London, where the south-western resident can make a round over Clapham, Wandsworth, Putney, Wimbledon, Mitcham, Tooting, Tooting Bec and Streatham Commons, with tramways or ’buses to bridge him from one open space to another. It is on the farther side of the county, of course, that we must look for the widest and wildest expanses of ground, not waste so long as it serves to keep jaded citizens in touch with the charms of untamed nature; yet even here begin to gather the shadows of villadom, and the haunts of vipers are dug out for tram-lines through brick and stucco avenues.
Of Surrey’s population, over two millions, the greater part is concentrated on some fifty of the 755 square miles that make its measurement. In this county lie half a dozen of the metropolitan boroughs, to which may be tacked on Croydon, Richmond, and Kingston, and many a village promoted to be a “choice residential suburb.” The last census notes a slight decrease in what it terms the outer belt of suburbs; but that seems to mean only a shifting farther into the country, as trains and trams bring a wider circle within the area where the builder can claim fresh nooks as “ripe for development.” The once rustic “box” of the early Victorian citizen is apt to have come down in the world. Perhaps nine-tenths of my readers may look blank when reminded how Mr. Quirk’s “Alibi House” was at Camberwell, and Mr. Tagrag’s “Satin Lodge” at Clapham; yet surely they are aware of the miniature Walworth Castle, in which Mr. Wemmick kept an aged parent. “Lovell the Widower’s” home at Putney, and the palatial Roehampton villas of Thackeray’s city magnates may still stand high in house agents’ books. But in ex-suburbs, as a rule, such pleasure-houses of a former generation are in no demand now, their sites often covered by shabby streets, shops, or blocks of flats; while leagues farther out, at Purley, Tadworth, or Claygate, spring up a fresh crop of smartly painted villas, in lines or knots, with white walls, red roofs, green water-butts and “modern conveniences,” to tempt Londoners who can afford fresh air for