Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/395

 COPTHORNE HUNDRED

��MICKLEHAM

��1725 it was let for IJ/. a year for the use of the poor. In 1807 it was sold, and a new house of industry built, which existed until the passing of the Poor Law of 1834.

In 1692 Edward Hudson left 3 a year to the trustees of Skeet's Charity to provide beef for the poor at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and l to the vicar and parish clerk for saying evening prayer on the eve of those festivals.

In 1777 Elizabeth Rolfe gave the interest of 400 to maintain a monument in the church and for distribution among ten poor families.

In 1786 William Denne left 250 for coals to the poor.

In 1797 John Lucas, the founder of the school,

��endowed a midwife with 100, and left 100 for bread, the latter sum being diverted to the school in 1815.

In 1812 Richard Toye left 1,200 for monthly grants to six poor and aged persons.

In 1842 Richard Emberton left 300, the interest to be laid out in beautifying the church.

In 1843 James Roberts left 89 los. for the benefit of four poor widows with dependent families. 109

Mr. John Sandes, after 1725, left a rent-charge of 5 or. for bread.

In 1715 Dr. Shortrudge gave a benefaction to the vicars of Letherhead, Great Bookham, Effingham, and Shalford.

The total of the charities amounts to 300 a year.

��MICKLEHAM

��Michelham and Micelham (xi cent.) ; Mikeleham (xii cent.) ; Mikelham and Micheham (xiii cent.) ; Mykeleham (xiv cent.).

Mickleham is a small parish and village midway between Dorking and Letherhead, and 21 miles from London. It measures about 3 miles east and west and 2 miles from north to south, and contains 2,825 acres.

The village lies in the Mole valley, and the parish comprises the valley and the downs rising on either side of it, where the Mole makes its way in a deep depression through the chalk downs. The soil in the valley is river alluvium, calcareous rubble, sand, and Wealden Clay washed down by the Mole, and on either side is chalk, with some small patches of brick- earth on the higher parts. The valley is peculiarly picturesque (see Frontispiece of Vol. II). On the west side the well-wooded slopes of Norbury Park rise in places steeply from the stream, and at its southern extremity on the east the side of Box Hill is almost precipitous in places, particularly 'The Whites,' overlooking Burford, which con- sists of loose chalk thickly overgrown with box and yew. Elsewhere it sweeps upwards in smooth, grassy slopes, studded with box, yew, and other dark- foliaged trees and shrubs. Amid thick woods of box, yew, and beech on the summit, overlooking Dorking, is a fort and magazine recently constructed, and still more recently abandoned. The well-known view from the top extends southward over the Weald, which, from that height, seems to drop away into a plain bounded by the South Downs, while to the south- west Redlands, and other hills near Dorking, covered with wood, rise to the greater height of Leith Hill. Ranmore Common and Norbury face the spectator from the east across the valley. The top of Box Hill is not more than 700 ft. above the sea, but the steep descents to the east and south, and the absence of any high ridge of sand immediately in front of it, give an impression of greater elevation. Dr. Burton, who in 1752 wrote in Greek of his travels through Surrey and Sussex, calls it, with pardonable exaggeration, the brow of a mountain.

On a spur of Box Hill, overlooking Juniper Hall,

��is a round tower, said to have been built by Mr. Thomas Broadwood.

It is in Mickleham chiefly that the River Mole burrows in the way which has suggested the popular etymology of its name. 1 From the foot of Box Hill at Burford to Norbury Park there are holes, called swallows, through which the water sinks, making its way by subterranean clefts in the chalk. Some of these swallows are in the bed of the stream, others in bays in the banks of the river, which' only come into operation in times of flood. One of the largest of these latter is in Fredley Meadows, some 200 yards up-stream from the railway bridge, close to which, before the pathway from Dorking to Mickleham was diverted, stood the wooden ' Praybridge.' Near Thorncroft, in Letherhead, the water rises again in the bed of the stream. In normal summers the bed of the river for 3 or 4 miles is dry ground and stagnant water. In the grounds of Bur- ford House and Fredley are hollows some way from the stream, in which the water rises when the river is full. The peculiarity of the river, that its whole volume normally ran underground for some miles, has been exaggerated. The Mole is well known by the notice of poets, Spenser and Drayton writing at length upon it, and Milton and Pope mentioning it. Miss Drink- water-Bethune of Thorncroft privately printed a poem, 'The Mole or Emlyn Stream,' in 1839, with sensible topographical and antiquarian notes, which deserves to be better known.

In Norbury Park is a famous grove of giant yews of great age, known as the Druid's Walk, which no doubt mark part of the track which, leaving the main east and west road, called in modern times 'The Pilgrim's Way,' near Bagden Farm, crossed the river near the Priory, and thence led over Letherhead Downs to Epsom and London. Norbury is also noted for some giant beeches.

On Box Hill, and north of it upon Mickleham Downs, is a great deal of still open grass-land, though plantations and inclosures upon the downs have cur- tailed it greatly in recent years.

The main road from Dorking to London traverses the Mickleham valley. This was made a passable

��109 The above are recorded in the church.

1 Perhaps the oldest form of the name

��known is Emlyn Stream (Emele aqua) ; Lansd. MS. 435, foL 1302, in a grant of 1331. The name 'Mole' may come

3OI

��from ' Molinae Aqua ' ; compare the Welsh ' Melin.'

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