Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/396

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��road in 1755.' Up to that time it was not available for wheeled traffic in bad weather,* and to judge from the traces of the old road it needed courage to drive along it at all. Till the bridge at Burford Bridge, together with the approach to it, was raised some twenty years ago, it was fre- quently overflowed by the Mole in time of flood.

The old west and east line of com- munication across the country by the chalk downs passed south of the vil- lage, past Bagden Farm and Chapel Farm, to a ford on the river south of Burford Lodge, at the foot of Box Hill.

The London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway line from London to Portsmouth also passes through the Mickleham valley. The line was com- pleted in 1867. There is a station at West Humble in Mickleham, now called Box Hill and Burford Bridge, to dis- tinguish it from Box Hill on the South Eastern line, more than a mile distant.

Mickleham is fairly rich in anti- quities. In 1788 William Bray, the historian of Surrey, became possessed of some brass Roman coins of the later Empire, which had recently been ploughed up on Bagden Farm, 4 and neolithic flakes are not uncommon both about this place, near Norbury, and on Box Hill. The ancient road which, as the Roman Stone Street, runs from Sussex past Ockley to Dorking (q.v.) headed for the Mole valley through a gap in the chalk, though it does not appear that it has been actually traced between Dorking and Burford Bridge. A ford over the Mole is still visible at the place where Bur- ford Bridge stands, and a little further north, at Juniper Hall, a lane leaves the present road on the right and ascends the downs. It is called Pebble Lane. At the point where it emerges upon the high ground it becomes a well-marked track carried on a cause- way over declivities. Flints with ce- ment clinging to them occur upon it, as farther south on the same road in Capel (q.v.). It is still a bridle road, and leads in nearly a straight line to Epsom race-course. After this point it is supposed to have led to the right, in a curve following the top of the downs, past Ban stead to Woodcote. It probably represents a British track- way utilized by the Romans as the line of a small road, though the Ro- man way probably continued straight on at Epsom towards Ewell, and so to London. In 1780, when Juni- per Hall was being built, two skeletons

' Act 28 Geo. II, cap. 45.

8 Manning and Bray, Surr. iii, App. p. Hi.

4 Ibid. p. xlvii.

��PONO-LIKC OffftlSSIOH* IN THC nC FILLING WITH

FLOOO nfic ey

I ft FILTH A TlOfl

��fees*, "*"^

���COURSE OF THE RIVER MOLE,

SHOWING THE LARGER

" SWALLOWS."

��302

�� �