Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 7.djvu/113

 NOTES ON THE LOCAL HISTORY OF PEPER HAROW.

GEORGE C. BRODRICK.

HE Local History of Peper Harow, like that of every other village community, has been mainly shaped by the features of the surrounding country. Long before the earliest age revealed to archaeology, we may be sure that the sites of Guildford and Farnham were connected by the natural causeway of the Hog's Back, as well as by the winding channel of the rivers Till and Wey. The slope of Peper Harow Park forms the southernmost point of the region enclosed by these natural boundaries—a region in which pasture-land must always have been scarce, except along the banks of the river, and in which very few patches of rich soil, dotted over a broad expanse of woodland, marsh, and heather, could have invited the unskilled labour of primitive husbandmen. Of the first human settlement in this region we have no record, unless it be the name of the "Wey " itself, which is held to be of Celtic, and not of Saxon, origin. Nor should we expect to meet with massive primeval monuments in a district which, so to speak, led nowhere, in which timber was so plentiful, and in which durable stone was equally scarce. Nevertheless, a considerable number of stone arrowheads and other flint instruments have been collected, especially in the parishes of Puttenham and Wanborough, some of which are now deposited in the Charterhouse Museum. The Roman occupation has left its mark in the camp, of which the outlines have been traced by the Rev. C. Kerry, on Puttenham Common, as