A HISTORY OF SURREY 



WOTTON 



Odetone and Wodeton (xi cent.) ; Wodetone, Wo- 

 dinton and Woditon (xiii cent.) ; Wodeton (xv 

 cent.) ; Wodyngton, Wootton, and Wotton (xvi 

 cent, and onwards). 



Wotton parish is bounded on the north by Effing- 

 ham and Little Bookham, on the east by Dorking, 

 Capel, and Ockley, on the south and west by Abinger. 

 It formerly had a detached portion on the Sussex 

 border, now attached to Abinger (see Abinger parish). 

 The parish is still over 6 miles long from north to 

 south, and never more than a little over a mile broad, 

 and in places less. It contains 3,782 acres of land and 

 14 of water. The church is 3 miles west-by-south of 

 Dorking, and 9 miles east-by-south of Guildibrd. The 

 Redhill and Reading branch of the South Eastern 

 Railway and the road from Dorking to Guildford pass 

 through the north of it. Two branches of the 

 Tillingbourne rise in the northern slopes of Leith 

 Hill, and run first from south to north and then 

 east to west towards the Wey, uniting at Wotton 

 House. The streams on the other slope of Leith 

 Hill run to the Arun. The parish has the usual 

 apportionment of soil in this part of Surrey. 

 The northern boundary is on the summit of the 

 chalk, here 5 77 ft. above the sea, the parish then 

 crosses the Upper Green Sand and Gault ; the church, 

 manor-house, and such compact village as exists are on 

 the Lower Green Sand, and it reaches across this soil 

 on to the Wealden Clay. It is now purely agricul- 

 tural and residential, but iron mills, a wire mill, and 

 perhaps gunpowder mills formerly existed in it. 1 



The most striking feature of the parish now is un- 

 doubtedly the natural beauty which makes it the 

 favourite resort of all lovers of the picturesque near 

 London. The traveller, on foot or horseback (the 

 road is not one for wheels), passing from the chalk 

 country sees in front of him an ascending mass of 

 broken sand hills, thickly planted with conifers and 

 other trees upon their northern side. Leaving Wotton 

 House on the right a bridle road leads through a 

 forest of beeches alongside a succession of trout- 

 pools, up the valley where John Evelyn first began 

 the ornamental planting of his brother's grounds. 

 Friday Street Pond, an old millpond with a cluster of 

 cottages by it, is a Swiss lake in miniature. Passing on by 

 another hamlet, King George's Hill, so named from a 

 now extinct public-house, the path leads out on to 

 the heather-covered common of Leith Hill. A view 

 opens gradually to the west, as the ground ascends, 

 but it is not till the traveller reaches the southern 

 brow of the hill that the panorama bursts suddenly 

 upon him. The summit of Leith Hill is the highest 

 spot in the south-east of England, 967 ft. above the 

 sea. The tower, which is not on exactly the highest 

 point, but somewhat south of it, was intended to bring 

 the height up to 1 ,000 ft., and has more than done so. 

 It was built by Mr. Richard Hull of Leith Hill Place, 

 in or before 1765, who acquired from Sir John Evelyn 

 of Wotton the top of the hill, part of the waste of the 



manor of Wotton. 1 Two rooms were fitted up in it by 

 Mr. Hull, and a staircase led to the upper room. Mr. 

 Hull, dying in 1 772, was buried under the lower room, 

 by his own direction. A stone in the wall of the tower 

 used to record the fact. After his death the tower 

 was uncared for and became ruinous and a haunt for 

 disorderly characters. In 1796 Mr. Philip Henry 

 Perrin of Leith Hill Place repaired it and raised it a 

 few feet, adding a coping, but built up the door, filled 

 up the interior for half the height with earth and stones, 

 and left the upper part a mere shell. In 1 864 Mr. W. 

 Evelyn of Wotton again repaired it, built the upper 

 room, added a battlement, and made the top accessible, 

 first, by means of a turret and staircase, then, when that 

 was closed for a time, by an outside wooden staircase, 

 and then by the turret stair again. The view from the 

 top of the tower is more comprehensive than that 

 from the hill, looking over the trees to the north, 

 which obstruct the latter. The ground falls very 

 abruptly to the south, giving a peculiar impression of 

 height above the Weald below. The greater part of 

 the county of Sussex, much of Kent as far as Ashford, 

 Essex, the Laindon Hills, Middlesex, St. Paul's Cathe- 

 dral, Highgate, Hampstead, and Harrow, Hertfordshire, 

 Dunstable Down in Bedfordshire, the Chilterns in 

 Buckinghamshire, Nettlebed in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, 

 Hampshire, Inkpen in Wiltshire, and the sea through 

 Shoreham Gap, are visible in clear weather.* But though 

 the view from the tower is necessarily the most ex- 

 tensive in Surrey, those from the western parts of 

 Leith Hill are more picturesque, looking as they do 

 over the more broken foreground afforded by Holmbury 

 Hill. The small ditches round the tower, sometimes 

 ignorantly mistaken for an ancient encampment, were 

 made by the Royal Engineers, who were encamped 

 here in 1844, correcting the Ordnance Survey. The 

 cottages near the foot of the hill are collectively known 

 in the neighbourhood as The Camp. 



In addition to the ground near the top of the hill, 

 there is a very large extent of open country, covered 

 with heather and conifers, in Wotton parish. The 

 part on the east side of the parish is called Broadmoor. 



A fine polished neolithic flint found near the tower 

 is preserved at Leith Hill Place. The present writer 

 has found a very considerable number of flint flakes 

 and a few implements not very far from the tower. 

 In Deer Leap Wood, to the north of Wotton House, 

 in what was part of the park attached to it, is a mound 

 with traces of a double ditch round it. The mound 

 is about 12 to 14 ft. high, and about 90 yds. in cir- 

 cumference. It seems to have been dug into, but no 

 record of exploration is to be found. It is marked as 

 a barrow on the 6-in. Ordnance map. 



At the southern foot of Leith Hill, a jar containing 

 about thirty gold coins of Henry VIII, Edward VI, 

 and Elizabeth was found in 1837. The coins are at 

 Wotton House. 



Tillingbourne, or Lonesome, as it used to be called, 

 or earlier still Filbrook Lodge, is the property of the 



1 V.C.H. Surr, ii, 236, 312, &c., and tate, Leith Hill Place, q.v., under successive storation, and the Court Rolls of the manor 



Evelyn's Letter to Aubrey vol. 

 Aubrey's Surr. 



of changes of ownership till Mr. Wedgwood 

 sold it to Mr. Evelyn in the last century. 



speak of the tower as existing in 1765. 

 3 Copy of the bearings of various points 



Mr. Hull bought the land on which the The inscription on the Tower gives the taken by the Royal Engineers in 1844, in 

 Tower stands. It remained part of his e- date 1766, but the 66 is an evident re- the possession of Mr. Maiden. 



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