Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/360

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��through to the bottom. Nothing else was found but a little loose charcoal, and two or three small pieces of hand-made pottery.

Epsom Well, to the discovery of which the place owed its later fame, is on Epsom Common, some distance from the village. It is in the London Clay. Water charged with sulphate of magnesia is not un- commonly found in this soil, as at Jessop's Well, on Stoke D'Abernon Common, which is probably as power- ful as the Epsom spring. The situation of Epsom, however, on the edge of the downs, made it a pleasant resort, and so gave greater fame to its waters. The current story is that the well was discovered in 1618 by one Henry Wicker, who observed that cattle would not drink of it. Dudley North, third Lord North, asserts in his Forest of Varieties, published in 164 5, that he first made the Tunbridge Wells and Epsom waters known to the world at large. Aubrey drank the water in 1654. After the Restoration the Epsom Wells became a fashionable resort, Epsom being nearer to London than Tunbridge Wells. Nonsuch, so long as it remained standing, was a royal house in the near neighbourhood, and it was an easy ride from Hampton Court. Charles II, James II, as Duke of York, and Prince George of Denmark, all visited Epsom. Pepys, of course, went there ; he paid his first visit in 1663, when the town was so full that he had to seek a lodging in Ashtead. In 1667, he writes, on 14 July, 'to Epsom by eight o'clock to the Well, where much Company. And to the town, to the King's Head ; and hear that my lord Buckhurst and Nelly ' (Nell Gwrnne) ' are lodged at the next house, and Sir Charles Sedley with them ; and keep a merry house.' In 1663 he had remarked on the large number of citizens ' that I could not have thought to have seen there ; that they ever had it in their heads or purses to go down thither.' The New Inn in High Street dates from about this period. It is now called Waterloo House, and is occupied by shops. It is now mainly an 18th-century two-story building of red brick with plastered quoins, and a low gable in the middle of the front ; in the roof are attics lighted by good dormer windows. There is a good gable end over the original entrance, which led into a narrow courtyard in the centre, whence there is an exit at the opposite end. On the first floor, approached by a fine staircase with carved balusters, was the Assembly or Ball Room, now cut up by partitions. In 1690 Mr. Parkhurst, lord of the manor, built an Assembly Room at the Wells, erected other buildings, and planted avenues of elms and limes, which were mostly cut down for timber in the early igth century. The popularity and fashion of Epsom at this time is suffi- ciently attested, not merely by the names of visitors, but by the announcement in the Gazette, 19 June 1684, that a daily post would go to and from Epsom and Tunbridge Wells respectively and London during the season for drinking the waters, that is, during May, June, and July. This was the earliest daily post outside London.

In 1711, Toland, the famous deistical writer, gives a very flowery description of the beauties of Epsom in a letter to ' Eudena.' But by this date Epsom had come to rely upon its general attractions for pleasure seekers, rather than upon its medicinal waters. A quack doctor named Levingston sank a rival well, of no particular quality, near the town in

��1706, built an Assembly Room and shops near it, and in 1715 got a lease of the old well and closed it till his death in 1727. Queen Anne visited Epsom during this period, but the place decayed as a fashion- able resort. The neighbouring gentry, however, used to visit the old well when it was reopened, after 1727. Clearly it continued to be a very different kind of place from any other country town in Surrey. In 1725 Bishop Willis, in his Visitation questions, asked for the names of resident gentry in every parish, and for Epsom, Lord Yarmouth, Lord Guilford, Lord Baltimore, Sir John Ward, eight gentlemen, and eight well-to-do widows are returned, whilst nothing like the same number are returned for any other parish ; eight for Kew is the nearest to it. The invention of sea-bathing, about 1753, was finally fatal to Epsom as a watering-place. The Old Well House, however, was not pulled down till 1804, when a private house was built on the spot, a successor to which still occupies the ground. A part of the old brickwork seems to survive in one of the greenhouses in the garden.

Among the recreations of Epsom in its glory were gambling, cudgel-playing, foot-races, cock-fighting, and catching a pig by the tail, besides horse-racing. Robert Norden's map, of the 1 7th century, marks ' the Race,' extending in a straight line from Banstead Downs on to Epsom Downs. In 1648 a horse-race on Banstead Downs, evidently a usual occurrence, was made the prelude to Lord Holland's rising against the Parliament. 4 The races were one of the regular diver- sions of the company at the Wells, and they used to witness two or three heats in the morning, return to dinner in the middle of the day, and come up to the Downs for more heats in the afternoon. These were run in 1730 either on the old straight course, or on what Toland in 1711 calls the ' new orbicular course.' In those days the runners started above Langley Bottom behind the Warren, and, going outside the Bushes, ran by way of Tattenham Corner to the winning-chair. The original Derby course was the last mile and a half of this track, the starting-post being out of sight of the grand stand. The Derby and the Oaks races were founded in 1780 and 1779 respec- tively, and were called after the Earl of Derby and his seat at Banstead.

In 1846 Mr. Henry Dorling, the clerk of the course, made, on the advice of Lord George Ben- tinck, a course for the Derby, the whole of which lies on the eastern side of the Warren and in full view of the stands. This, which is now known as the old course, was used until 1871. For the present Derby course, first used in 1872, the horses start on slightly higher ground at the high-level starting-post, and run into the old course at the mile-post. The first half-mile and the last five furlongs of this track are in the manor of Epsom ; that part of it above the Bushes, from the City and Suburban starting-post to the old five-furlong start, lying on Walton Downs within the manor of Walton, is owned by the Epsom Grand Stand Association.

The antiquities and history of the race-meetings have been sufficiently treated already. 5 The popularity of the races survived the popularity of the watering- place. Dr. Burton 6 speaks enthusiastically of the crowds of spectators, even from London, and, as he is writing in Greek, is irresistibly reminded of the Olym-

��4 V.CJi. Surr. i, 41 7, &C.

��6 See y.C.H. Surr. ii, under 'Sport.' 272

��6 In Itir Surricnse, 1752.

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