294 NATURAL HISTORY OF SUNNINGIIILL. 



poachers and vagabonds, who lived no one knew how, (although they 

 shrewdly suspected,) the race may be said to be nearly extinct, and the 

 numbers are no greater than are usually found in every village. 



The appropriation and division of the common ground soon shewed 

 itself; workmen were employed to throw up banks, sink ditches, and plant 

 the crowns of the hills; and broad belts of incipient woods formed lines 

 of demarkation, and of course on the government property this was on a 

 large scale, but not until many years after, although the government 

 banks were "stickers" to the followers of the chase, and it took a bold 

 man and a good horse to jump them. The greater part of Sunninghill 

 was purchased by a gentleman named Simpson, an East India merchant, 

 and formed an estate known as Sillwood or Sellwood Park, containing 

 about eleven hundred acres, nine hundred of which were waste; this was 

 laid out with admirable taste, and was kept up for many years in beau- 

 tiful style: it has since changed hands, a railway bisects it, and all those 

 changes which years effect have taken place. The village, then consisting 

 of but a few houses very much scattered, has become tolerably populous, 

 the people not being remarkable for any particular trade, except that, I 

 grieve to say, in common with many others in England, the "Beer Act" 

 has had the most baneful effect, and "Tom- and- Jerries," as they are 

 familiarly called, have spread drunkenness and ruin chiefly among the youth 

 of the parish. Of course there are the usual amount of small shops, 

 and one of some pretensions, established in 1780, could produce, I believe, 

 any article you chose to ask for in any department, commencing with 

 "Irish Butter" and ending with "Books Neatly Bound!" 



The view from some parts of the village is exceedingly picturesque and 

 extensive, looking into the Surrey country from Epsom Downs to Guildford, 

 which is hidden from the prospect of the village itself by some high heath 

 hills, known as Ribsdown; from the summit of these the view is almost 

 unrivalled. You appear to look down into a garden, the fields around 

 and beyond the town of Chobham being seen in miniature from that 

 elevation. Guildford with its ancient towers of St. Mary's and Chantry 

 Down is distinctly visible, and you look along the whole ridge of hills 

 covered with cultivated fields, which extends to the "Devil's Punch Bowl," 

 and then "Hind-head" and "Black Down," and known as the "Hog's 

 Back." To the west and north you look over the whole expanse of 

 moorland country which I have described, and beyond it rise the blue 

 hills of Buckinghamshire, marked by the hill above High Wycombe and 

 those eminences which lie just within the boundary of Berkshire, at a 

 place called "Wargrave," near Henley-on-Thames. North-east, Windsor 

 Park looks like a soft moss-bed, and west rise the rugged and pine-clad 

 ridges of Bagshot Park. Due east the valley where London lies may be 



