208 OLD WEST SURREY 



they see this, that the land must be limed. Farms through- 

 out the district had their own kilns for burning the lime. 

 The extensive property to which the grand old farm, whose 

 barn is shown at p. 24, with many other farms, belonged, had 

 several of these kilns. Wheat from this farm was carted to 

 the Guildford market, a distance of seven miles, and the 

 waggons brought back chalk from a pit on the same property 

 near Guildford. 



Many of these kilns have been destroyed, but a fair 

 number remain. They were built in steeply-sloping ground 

 by or near a roadside, where the loads of chalk could be 

 drawn up to their top level. They are interesting wayside 

 objects, and some of them that have been overgrown with 

 brushwood, or that stand in what has become woodland, 

 grown up during the sixty years or more that have passed 

 since they were used, have an air of mystery that still brings 

 back to me the thrills of fearful joy that they excited in my 

 childish mind. One in particular, already thickly wooded, 

 and only dimly showing its low, round-arched portal under 

 the dark overgrowth of holly and bramble, I used to think 

 was the entrance, through interminable underground passages, 

 to some such castle of mystery as those that are described in 

 Mrs. Radclifte's romances. 



The larger blocks of chalk were built up inside the kiln 

 (which is circular in plan and open at the top), in the form 

 of a rough arch, corresponding more or less to the opening, 

 and the smaller pieces of chalk were filled in above. The 

 space underneath was crammed with furze faggots, and a 

 certain amount of burning converted the chalk into lime. 



Every field on a farm has its name ; as a rule every 

 farm that had a limekiln, unless it had other rough land or 

 adjoined a common, had its furze-field. 



