THE SURREY RILLS.
IF the student of the outward development of London will take a map he will see that it was always certain that the city on the Thames would develop in a particular way towards the south. In a line roughly parallel with the sea coast of the Channel, from west of Farnham, eastward almost to Canterbury, runs the ridge of the North Downs, the Way which from time beyond memory has been part of the great trading and travelling road of the South of England. Along that high chalk ridge, clear from the swamps and forests of the clay below it, rode the merchants and soldiers of centuries before Christ to the days of the Civil War ; British traders carrying tin to the Port of Thanet, Ctesar's legions marching to the Thames, Simon de Montfort riding with his barons to Reigate. For three centuries and more, from the day when Thomas h, Becket's tomb became the second shrine in Christen. dom to the Dissolution, the Way was the main route of pilgrims travelling to Canterbury and back. And through all those years, beginning with the castles set up by the de Tonebriges and the de Warennes, the Way became a line of centres of activity ; churches and chapels were built on it or by its side, towns and villages clustered near the churches, roads came out from the metropolis to the towns, After the roads came the railways, spreading like a fan to the line of the ridge, and on each side of the railways, for ten and fifteen miles out from the London terminus, houses crowded themselves into suburbs and the suburbs almost back again into the town.
And so the ridge of the chalk downs became a definite stage in the journey south, and a stage with peculiar con- ditions and circumstances of its own, unlike any other stage on the other three sides of London. The ridge is high: it looks out over the Weald to the South Downs, and beyond the South Downs is the sea. If you are lucky you can even catch the blue of the sea from Leith Hill, through Shoreham Gap—though to be sure you may climb Leith Hill a dozen times and see nothing more than cloud or mist. You must wait for the day and the hour. But the fascination of the distance remains. Along all that ridge, from Whitewaysend to Guildford, from Guildford to St. Martha's Chapel and Rewlands Corner, from Box Hill above Dorking to the beeches which crown the chalk at Reigate, from the break in the chalk at Merstham to the wind that blows on the tiny churches of Woldingham and Tatsfield, you may stand and look out to the Downs on the line of the sea ; and you can get a eight like that within twenty miles of London. No wonder, then, that men want to build houses on the ridge ; no wonder that out of the towns along and under the ridge the bricks should mount higher and higher, or that prices for the sites which remain or are in the market along the ridge should go higher with them. But there must follow a stage, for all that, when the value of such sites comes to be questioned in two ways. In the first place, the beauty of the site vanishes for everybody, except the owner of the house, as soon as a house is placed upon it. In the second place, with each site along the ridge that is occupied, the value of the neighbouring sites is affected. The men and women who want to have houses along the ridge look not only for a fine view to the south, but to the preservation of the neighbourhood of the hill. There would be little fascination in living in a row of semi-detached villas in what is now the wildest stretch of open country along the ridge of the Downs. And so to-day, when- ever• a building site of any extent in what is still undeveloped country along the Downs comes into the market, competing forces spring up to an extent which, perhaps, a dozen years ago was not foreseen, or which, if it was foreseen, was in many cases deliberately disregarded. We have now reached a stage when the further placing of houses along the ridge can only spoil and disfigure the ridge as a whole, and can only lower the value of property in the neighbourhood.
This is particularly and most markedly the case with cer- tain broad areas of free and open down which lie above or near the larger centres of population. The outstanding example of the danger which threatens the beauty of the chalk ridge is the possible loss of Coley Hill. Colley Hill is part of the North Downs above Reigate, and some sixty acres of it, embracing part of the summit, the steep sides, and the lower slopes, have come into the building market. Its owner, however, has given to the National Trust the option of purchase of these sixty acres for a sum of £7,508, this option to expire on the 15th of the current month. The National Trust, as soon as the option was obtained, appealed for a sum of £7,700—the extra amount of £200 being required for the heavy stamp duties now neces- sary for the transfer of lauded property. In addition to the appeal of the National Trust, Mr. Arthur 'Tower, of Wiggie, Redhill, has organized the collection of a shilling fund, and has thrown into the raising of the sum he has set himself- 50,000 shillings—an immense amount of energy and hard. personal work, which deserves the success we sincerely hope he will achieve. There is more than one urgent reason why Colley Hill should be saved from the speculative builder. In the first place, it adjoins an area of twenty acres of ground, which is already secured for the public and held as a park by the Town Council of Reigate. The joining up of these eighty acres would mean the acquiring of an exceptionally large open space on the outskirts of Reigate and within close range of London. In the second place, if Colley Hill is built over, not only will the stretch of hillside lose its wildness and beauty, but the whole neigh- bourhood suffers by the loss of one of its chief attractions. To take a lower point of view than the desire to preserve what is beautiful, owners of residences in the neighbourhood would find, if Coney Hill goes to the builder, that their own build- ings have lost the views and the walks which made them valuable. There are other corollaries. The Pilgrims' Way, which runs a double path over Colley Hill, would be enclosed and spoiled along half a mile of a track which ought to bo to-day, and in the years to come, as open to the sun and wind as when Chaucer's Knight and Ploughman and Prioress rode out from the ' Tabard Inn' to Canterbury. It was only a few weeks ago that another of our national relics, the British camp on St. George's Hill, was threatened by a building scheme which, we are glad to hear, has been modified so as to preserve the ancient ramparts. But the Pilgrims' Way, which is now threatened, is a. national relic in as true a sense as the camp on St. George's Hill. To enclose it, even if enclosure preserves the actual track-way, is to despoil and ruin what should be untouched and free. The Way has been cut and barred in more places than one already. The more reason for jealously preserving what has been left.
It must be recognized doubtless that Colley Hill is not the last of the open spaces of the Surrey Hills, which may come into the building market and be offered to the public, and the speculator to bid against each other. Other sites, in the same way, will in turn be offered to the highest bidder. But that is the best possible argument for acquiring such a site as Colley Hill at once while there is yet time. If Colley Hill goes the next stretch of the Downs is the more likely to go after it;
there will be one incentive the less for keeping the hills as we see them to-day. If, on the other• band, we can lave Colley Hill we shall save, not only land, but a. tradition ; we shall buy mere than the sixty acres offered for sale; we shall have provided an example for those who are to come after us. An example is needed, and the price asked for what is offered to-day is not high. Much of the needed £7,700 has already been sub- scribed; the rest, in large and in small amounts, we earnestly trust will reach the voluntary collectors before the option of purchase expires on Thursday week. We need only add that
donations may. be sent either to Mr. Trower's Shilling Fund, or direct to the Secretary of the National Trust, 25 Victoria
Street, S.W.; or to F. M. Jefferson, Esq., the Treasurer to the Reigate and Redhill Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society, at the Loudon County and Westminster Bank, Reigate.
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