Ewell is a convenient starting-point for this trip for South Londoners,
and has the additional advantage of being served by two railways.
Only in the spring of the year, when the Epsom races are on, and the
Derby brings riotous crowds down by road as well as rail, do Ewell and
Epsom wake out of their customary quiet. For the rest of the year they
are old-fashioned places, even in these villa-building latter days.
Ewell, as its name in some sort implies, is a place of springs and
running waters, with crooked streets and with an ancient ivy-mantled
church tower, all that is left of the old parish church, standing
solemn beside the modern building. Just inside the churchyard gate
notice a stone to one who lost his life by falling from a horse at
Shipton-under-Wychwood, Oxon; and, close by, a monument with urn and
a kneeling figure in relief on a pedestal to James Lowe, born 1798,
who “met his death from an accident the 12th October 1866. He was the
inventor of the segments of the screw-propeller, in use since 1838,
and his life, though unobtrusive, was not without great benefit to his
country. He suffered many troubles, but bore them lightly.”
Epsom, “town” we should presumably call it, a mile and a half down
the road, hints little or nothing to the passing cyclist of its
horse-racing fame, save perhaps for stray glimpses gained of the great
Grand Stand perched upon the windy Downs, more than a mile away to the
left; and if little be told by external appearances of this intimate
relation with the foremost classic race in England, still less would
the stranger gather that Epsom is a Place with a Past; a past, as a
fashionable Spa, scarce inferior to Bath in the days of good Queen
Anne. Epsom wells and Epsom salts have had their day and ceased to be.
[Illustration: Ewell Old Church Tower]
[Illustration: Map—EWELL to Leith Hill]
Suburbia is extending its frontiers in this direction, and breezy
Ashtead, two miles farther on, down a pleasant road, is now set
within the marches of the suburbs, where the opposing camps of
market gardeners and speculative builders are pitched cheek by jowl,
and bricks and plaster are banishing the broccoli and the peas. At
Leatherhead the incursions of villadom are lost in the intricacies of
the old-fashioned little town and in the embowering foliage that owes
its density to that beautiful stream, the Mole. Leatherhead is situated
at the junction of many roads. It is what military men would call a
“strategical point,” and, touring on a cycle through the southern and
south-western districts outside London, you come to it, whether you
will it so or not, again and again. And, just because it is a pleasant
place, you do not regret the necessity. The streets of Leatherhead are
narrow, and slope steeply towards the river Mole; also, they curve
in somewhat puzzling fashion. Our way, however, lies straight ahead,
passing that queer old inn the “Running Horse” on the right, where the
landlady, Elynor Rummyng, gave short measure in the reign of Henry the
Eighth, and was rolled in a barrel for her pains. A very old painted
sign, fixed on the front of the house, and now glazed to protect it
from the weather, shows a portrait of this iniquitous person, who,
if the artist is to be credited, was a phenomenally ugly specimen of
humanity, with predatory beak-like nose, covered with warts. Here we
cross the Mole by a long bridge, and presently, keeping straight ahead,
ascend a sharp rise, which leads on to the rather exposed upper road
to Great Bookham and Effingham, those places being singularly provided
with parallel roads less than a quarter of a mile apart. A cross-road
to the right, when two miles out of Leatherhead, gives access to
Great Bookham village. The church, which is interesting, appears to
be generally locked up, except during service. In the churchyard
notice the very beautiful modern churchyard cross to the memory of Guy
Cuthbert Dawnay, killed by a buffalo in Masailand.
Regaining the upper road, Effingham is reached in a mile. The church
will be noticed standing, with the tiny village, off to the right. The
place gave a title to Lord William Howard, created by Queen Mary “Lord
Howard of Effingham,” and it was the son of this nobleman who, as Lord
High Admiral, commanded the little fleet that destroyed the Spanish
Armada. Knowing this, the tourist approaches Effingham with due
reverence and great expectancy. Unhappily, there is nothing whatever
in village or church to connect them with the Admiral or others of the
Howards. The church itself is utterly modernised.
At the roads that here run right and left stands a large inn, the
“Prince Blucher.” Turn to the left, and then, after proceeding for
nearly a mile, take the second to the right. We are here on very high
ground, having cycled for a long while almost imperceptibly uphill.
Away to the left the successive hills of the North Downs are seen:
Box Hill and the others towards Reigate, with their wooded crests and
the characteristic chalky scars on their southern face, softened to a
Corot-like mellowness in the golden sunshine of an autumn afternoon. At
the turning to the right, at which we have now arrived, the road goes
suddenly down and deteriorates alarmingly, being knobbly and narrow,
and partly overgrown with grass. This is Effingham Hill, and unless
you would acquire reasons for vividly remembering the place in the
way of being thrown off, it is distinctly advisable to walk some way
down. This descent leads to a farm in a deep hollow. Through the stony
farmyard, and walking up an equally stony rise on the other side, a
straight flat road is reached, running for half a mile. Then, where
roads right and left appear, turn to the right, and so downhill to
where a sign-post stands at the bottom. Turn at this point to the left,
along a secluded road through copses which lead presently to the crest
of a hill marked by the red danger-board of the Cyclists’ Touring Club.
These are the so-called White Downs, and this White Down Hill. There
are, as every cyclist knows, degrees of danger on hills so marked by
the C.T.C. Some are so little dangerous that this red warning-board
is often disregarded; but this particular hill is a mile long, very
steep, rough, and strewn with flints and lumps of chalk, and with a
sharp curve when nearly at the bottom. It is, therefore, superlatively
dangerous, and no one should on any account attempt to ride it. It is
no hardship to walk down this hill, for it is no less superlatively
beautiful than dangerous. It is a hollow road, or rather lane, with
rugged chalky sides, into which the trees have thrust great gnarled and
knotty roots, like the fangs of teeth, with steep hillsides stretching
away overhead. Great beeches and lesser hazels and hollies make a
perfect tunnel of foliage, through whose framing the eye looks down to
the Weald, far below.
[Illustration: EVERSHED’S ROUGH.]
When this descent is accomplished, the road leads over a railway
bridge, whence, to the left, the most beautiful views of the Downs,
with the spire of the church on Ranmore Common above and that of
Dorking Church below, are spread out. Notice a brickfield on the right,
and look for a green road, also on the right, a few yards beyond. This
leads to a piece of common land, known as “Evershed’s Rough,” the scene
of the fatal accident to Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Winchester, on
19th July 1873, when, riding horseback, he was thrown by his horse
stumbling. The place is marked by a granite cross ten feet high, simply
carved with the initials “S.W.” and a shepherd’s crook, in relief,
with the date inscribed in smaller letters. The rebuilt parish church
of Dorking, whose lofty spire can be seen from near this spot, is
also a memorial to that energetic prelate, whom men called in life
“Soapy Sam.” Some day, doubtless, when our civilisation and its records
have alike perished, say a thousand years hence, the antiquaries of a
new era will be disputing as to the origin and meaning of this lonely
cross, with its weatherworn initials and shepherd’s crook.
Cross-roads presently appear down the road. Here a sign-post points
ahead for Abinger, with the added information that the first turning
to the left should be taken. Turning accordingly, as bidden, a pretty
lane is reached, with a very beautiful old pond, fringed with rushes,
on the left. This is Abinger mill-pond, and the rust-red roofs of the
mill itself can be seen rising from a hollow on the farther side; an
old, old building which Nature has long since reclaimed as her own,
with lichens growing everywhere, and ferns and wild plants that only
the botanist can name luxuriating amid the dampness of the disused
mill-wheel.
It is a steep and tiring ascent along a sandy lane to Abinger, where a
little church on one side of the road, the “Abinger Hatch Inn” on the
other, and a few cottages, comprise the village. Three miles straight
ahead is Leith Hill, the tallest in the south of England, rising to
a height of close upon a thousand feet. The route lies past Abinger
Common, with its well and picturesque well-house in the Norman style,
built and dedicated to St. James by Mr. Evelyn of Wotton in 1893. The
way to the summit of Leith Hill is through pine-woods and along a road
of such excellent surface and so gradual a rise that this hilltop
expedition is not at all fatiguing. It leads by degrees half round the
hill, and brings one to a point where the road is crossed by a white
gate, directly under the tower that crowns the hilltop. To leave one’s
cycle here against a tree-trunk, and to clamber up the chalky final
ascent to where the tower stands on its flat plateau, is the best plan.
Those who are not already high enough can ascend this tower at the
cost of a penny a-head, and some six thousand persons annually avail
themselves of the privilege. It was originally built in 1766 by a Mr.
Hill, of Leith Hill Place, who, dying in 1772, was, according to his
injunctions, buried here, under the flooring, when the interior of the
tower was filled up with cement and stone. The stone tablet recording
that he “led the life of a true Christian and rural philosopher”
still remains, and so does the legend (true or untrue) that he was of
opinion that the world would be reversed on the Day of Judgment, and so
directed that he should be buried head downwards.
[Illustration: LEITH HILL.]
The tower, having become ruinous, was restored by Mr. Evelyn, who
added the staircase turret. By the sight of it, crowning the summit,
Leith Hill can be identified many miles distant, and the view from
this hilltop is extraordinarily widespread. The whole of the counties
of Surrey and Sussex, as far as the South Downs, is stretched out flat
like a carpet, to where the wall of the South Downs alone prevents
the sea being disclosed along the length of the Sussex coast. At one
point, indeed, it _can_ be seen, and that directly in front, where a
notch in those distant hills discloses a something that may be sky and
may be water, you think. But as you look, on a sunny afternoon, and
continue looking, the sunlight streams down momentarily and wakens a
million facets to life, all flashing like diamond-points or flecks of
fire. They are the ripples of the English Channel, transfigured by this
radiance, and the notch through which you see them is Shoreham Gap.
There are nearer stretches of water that thus mirror the sun’s rays.
Frensham Ponds, away in the west, eighteen miles away as the crow
flies, glitter like burnished steel, and in sharp contrast with black
and sullen Hindhead. Down below, somewhere amidst the woods that are
set round about this hill of hills, is another lake, and near it the
clustered chimneys of a great mansion. For the rest, the weald at the
foot of the tumbled masses of the North Downs is vague, formless,
inchoate. There are towns there, we know, and villages, hamlets, roads,
and railways; but they are all lost in immensity. Perhaps, if you take
literature in your pocket when cycling, the reading of Tennyson’s
“Vastness” is appropriate here, for it echoes the sense that comes to
one on this hilltop of the littleness of one’s self. (Mem.: If you wish
to retain a good conceit of yourself, keep to the plains!)
Clambering down to the road again, and through the gate already
mentioned, a beautiful downhill road leads to the hamlet of
Coldharbour, nestling amid the foothills and the Alpine valleys in
miniature that surround Leith Hill. All the way hence to Dorking are
trees: plantations of Scotch firs, larches, and other trees that give
an added mountainous character to the scenery. And lonely withal,
and steep. Redlands Wood is passed through, and a long, steep hill,
danger-boarded. With caution, however, and a reliable brake, there is
no reason why this should not be ridden. So, coming swiftly down into
the flatlands, we are in Dorking before we know that town is so near.
Turning to the right and through the main street, we are soon out in
the open country again, and turning to the left at Betchworth Park, and
under the shadow of Box Hill, and in view of the line of yews marking
the course of the Pilgrims’ Way, reach the left-hand turning for Burgh
Heath and Ewell. Toilsome is the ascent of Betchworth Hill, by which
the summit of the North Downs is gained, but beautiful the backward
view when this excelsior business is done. Downhill again, however,
into Pebble Coombe, and up to Banstead Downs, whence—oh, happiness! you
may coast, feet up, with or without a following wind, nearly all the
way down into Ewell; some four miles, that is to say, along the best of
roads, through open heaths that, whether they are called Burgh Heath,
Banstead Downs, Walton Heath, or Epsom Downs, are only portions of
one vast high-lying plateau dipping towards the valley of the Thames.
Sign-posts are not wanting on these heights—a fortunate circumstance,
because the wayfarers are not many.