The ChiclcUngfold. 341 



THE CHIDDINGFOLD.* 



A COUNTRY quite near London^ the Chiddingfold in 

 yet anything but the resort of cockneydom. A quiet 

 little Hunt in a nook between the Surrey Union,, Mr. 

 Combe, Lord Leconfield, and the Crawley and Horsham, 

 its sphere is limited to the edge of the Surrey Hills, 

 and to the earliest strip of the Weald which crosses 

 the south of that county and the north of Sussex. Its 

 coverts are too extensive and too closely packed to 

 allow much scope for a gallop, or for the disporting 

 of such a multitude as finds an outlet with the Queen's. 

 It has an open corner in the south-east, in the 

 neighbourhood of Cranleigh ; and there is more room^ 

 again, in the extreme north, between Godalming and 

 Puttenham. The Cranleigh corner takes the type of 

 the more open parts of the Crawley and Horsham 

 country ; and the fences, besides being more strongly 

 built, are guarded with ditches. But elsewhere, 

 whether on the light soil of the hills or the stiiff clay of 

 the weald, the Chiddingfold is without doubt a very 

 " woody '' country. Its hills are, with the exception 

 of The DeviPs Punchbowl, not so rough — nor is 



* Vide Stanford's " Hunting Map," Sheet 22, and Hohson's 

 Foxhunting Atlas. 



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