SUTTOX 150 



once known as Been Hill, and on that basis was 

 fantastically reared the name of Benhilton. One 

 cannot but admire the ingenuity of it. 



" Sutton for mutton " : so ran the old-time rhyme. 

 The reason of that ancient repute is found in the 

 downs iii whose lap the place is situated ; those thymy 

 downs that afforded such splendid pasturage for sheep. 

 Sutton Common is gone, enclosed in 1810, but the downs 

 remain : and yet that rhyme has lost its reason, and 

 Sutton is no longer celebrated for anything aboye its 

 fellow towns. Even the famous " Cock " is gone — 

 that old coaching-inn kept by the ex-pugilist, " Gentle- 

 man Jackson." Long threatened, it was at last 

 demolished in 1898, and with the old house went the 

 equally famous sign that straddled across the road. 

 The similar sign of the " Greyhound ' still remains : 

 the last relic of narrower streets and times more 

 spacious. 



Leaving Sutton i4 town," as we call it nowadays, 

 the road proceeds to climb steadily uphill to the 

 modern suburb of " Belmont," where stands an old, 

 but very well cared-for, milestone setting forth that 

 it is distant k " XIII. miles from the Standard in 

 Cornhill, London, 1745," from the Royal Exchange the 

 same distance, and from Whitehall twelve miles and 

 a half. The neighbourhood is now particularly 

 res2)ectable, but I grieve to say that the spot is marked 

 on the maps of 1796 as " Little Hell,"" which seems to 

 indicate that the character of the people living in the 

 three houses apparently then standing here would not 

 bear close inspection. With the " Angel " placed at 

 one end, and this vestibule into Inferno situated at 

 the other, Sutton seems to have been accorded 

 exceptional privileges. 



" Cold Blow," which succeeds to Little Hell, is a 

 tremendous transition, and well deserves its name, 

 perched as it is on the shivery, bare, and windy heights 

 that lead to Burgh Heath and Banstead Downs 

 " famous," says an annotated map of 1716, " for its 

 wholesome Air, once prescribed by Physicians as the 



