314 



OLD WEST SURREY 



from six to seven miles long. They were descendants of 

 wandering gipsy people : all smugglers and poachers, and 

 the terror of the quiet farm people about Ewhurst. 



An old woman, who died in 1888 at the age of eighty- 

 two, related how, when she was a girl, when smoke was 



Old Track, now a Good Road 



seen rising from a certain empty cottage on the heath- 

 covered slopes above, they all knew that ' the Peaslake men 

 were having a night of it ; ' feasting on a stolen pig or 

 poultry, and they ' lay trembling in their beds.' These 

 rough people seem to have been the natural enemies of 

 the agricultural folk below. 



