A HISTORY OF SURREY 



of a road than elsewhere. The Roman road to the south-west, which 

 crossed the Thames at Staines, ran through north-west Surrey to Sil- 

 chester and had a branch to Winchester. The Stone Street from London 

 to Chichester cut the old Pilgrims' Way, a British track, just north of 

 Dorking, and the Pilgrims' Way ran along the chalk downs past Guild- 

 ford and Farnham and thence bent south-westward to Winchester. The 

 Stone Street itself continued through the forest of Andred to Chichester, 

 and ways along the South Downs and the coast connected it with 

 Clausentum on Southampton Water, and so with Winchester beyond. 

 The first way offered them the shortest line. But the first and 

 second were entirely inland. The third would bring them again to 

 the sea, where they could meet their ships coming round from the 

 Thames, and could attack Winchester from their real base, their fleet. 

 So, according to the chronicle, they came over Thames into Surrey. 

 Ethelwulf with his son Ethelbald had probably been guarding the south 

 coast, and came up the Stone Street to intercept the march of the 

 Danes. He took his stand on the northern skirts of the great forest, 

 where he could close the narrow defile of the Roman Stone Street where 

 it entered the forest, and where he had a cross road by which he could 

 easily march upon the Pilgrims' Way. It is a still faintly traced Roman 

 road, which came from somewhere on the Sussex coast, and went north- 

 westward up the hills near Ewhurst towards Guildford or Merrow 

 Downs, and probably onward towards Staines. Had the Danes turned 

 off from Dorking, he might have caught them by this road at the 

 passage of the Wey. But the invaders had no desire to avoid a battle. 

 They perhaps occupied the ancient British camp of Anstiebury, which 

 crowns a now wood-clad sand hill, 800 feet above the sea, four miles 

 south-south-west of Dorking. Local tradition used to call it the Danish 

 Camp. The ensuing battle was fought ' hard by Ockley Wood.' It 

 still lives in the memory of the country side, and the traditional place 

 of slaughter is Ockley village green, where ' the blood stood ankle deep.' 

 This is the current version but is unlikely, for Ockley Green must have 

 been a swamp and a thicket then ; it easily becomes the former still in 

 a wet season. Rather we must look for the actual site of the battle on 

 the higher and drier and more open slopes above Ockley towards Leith 

 Hill. Here human remains in the last stage of decay were discovered 

 in iSSa. 1 The Danes were defeated after a great struggle and, looking 

 at the circumstances, were probably cut to pieces. Tradition tells of 

 the destruction by the inhabitants near Gatton of a body of fugitive 

 Danes escaping from some defeat. There was an old cross-country road 

 from Ockley through Gatton. It was in the words of the chronicle 

 ' the greatest slaughter among the heathen men which we have heard 

 of to the present day.' Asser copies this and expands it : ' there the 



1 By the late Mr. Sparkes, tenant of Etherley Farm. The writer possesses a fragment of one of two 

 rude coffins of hollowed out oak trees which were found nearly fallen to pieces. Something like organic 

 remains stretched in a line on each side of them across the field. In the coffins were bones very 

 fragmentary and much decayed. 



332 



