EARLS WOOD 147 



where movement is unrestrained and free as air, and 

 the vision is bounded only by Leith Hill in one direction 

 and the blue haze of distance in another. 



It is Holmesdale — the vale of holms, or oak woods — 

 upon which you gaze from here ; that 



Vale of Holmesdall 



Never woune, ne never shall, 



as the braggart old couplet has it, in allusion to the 

 defeat and slaughter of the invading Danes at Ockley 

 a.d. 851. 



In one of its periodic funks, the War Office, terrified 

 for the safety of London more than for that of 

 Holmesdale, purchased land on this hill -top for the 

 erection of a fort, and — in a burst of confidence — sold 

 it again. The time is probably near when the War 

 Office, like another " Sister Anne," will " see somebody 

 coming," when this or another site will be re-purchased 

 at a much enhanced, or scare, price. 



Earls wood Common is a welcome change after 

 Redhill. It gives sensations of elbow-room, of freedom 

 and vastness, not so much from its own size as from 

 the expanse of that view across the Weald of Surrey 

 and Sussex. The road across Earlswood Common is 

 an almost perfect " switchback," as the cyclist who is 

 not met with a southerly wind will discover. You can 

 see it from this view-point, going undulating away 

 until in the dim woody perspective it seems to 

 end in some tangled and trackless forest, so 

 densely grown do the trees look from this 

 distance. 



It was here, at a wayside inn, that the present 

 historian fell in with a Sussex peasant of the ancient 

 and vanishing kind. 



He was drinking from a tankard of the pea-soup 

 which they call ale in these parts, sitting the while 

 upon a bench whose like is usually found outside old 

 country inns. Ruddy of face, with clean-shaven lips 

 and chin, his grizzled beard kept rigidly upon his 

 wrinkled dewlap, his hands gnarled and twisted with 



