IN AND ABOUT EPSOM 145 



common land left, and must be truly grateful 

 that golf caught on in the South so late. Had 

 it been followed a hundred years ago as it is now, 

 there would not have been a bit of our wastes 

 left. 



A lovely bit of mixed woodland is this en- 

 closed Leatherhead Common, otherwise known as 

 Pachesham Park. Just over the way towards 

 Epsom is Ashtead (which adjoins Epsom) 

 Common, a big bed of very stiff clay, in which 

 oaks flourish, wild flowers grow luxuriously, and 

 thorns are much at home. The water lodges, 

 being mopped up as with a sponge, and gives 

 the unwary many fancy surprises in the way of 

 impasses where the grass grows green. About 

 here, too, is iron, and so is the stuff that makes 

 Epsom salts ; in fact, on the edge of Ashtead 

 Common is the old Epsom Wells, and in plenty 

 of places you can get the delightful beverage first 

 hand for the finding. Cross the Common to the 

 village and you are soon in Ashtead Park, an 

 ancient walled-in deer park, on whose borders 

 are some rare pretty old-fashioned farmery 

 houses. You can cut up a byroad from the 

 park to the old Roman road which runs from the 

 paddock to Mickleham, or, bearing on the low 

 ground towards Epsom, pass in the gates of the 

 Woodcote, and through its beautiful domesticated 

 downland up to the corner of the Durdans estate. 

 A little bit late as vegetation was, still, in all this 

 I have catalogued was much to enjoy, and I 

 ought to have enjoyed myself accordingly, but 

 while I served my purpose in clearing the race 

 traffic, being smothered five miles away from it, 

 put me right out of heart. Instead of being 

 truly grateful for the good I got out of the parks 



K 



