The valley of the Weald
has been worn piecemeal, drop by drop,
through the superincumbent chalk, first
down to the level of the greensand in its
outer parts next the chalk downs; then down
to the Weald clay.
t the period when southern Britain first assumed something like its existing shape and conformation, a great boss or upward wave of the land-surface rose slowly from the sea in a long continuous swell from the Thames valley to the central axis now occupied by the Forest Ridge of Kent and Sussex, and subsided thence once more by a graceful curve to the chalky cliffs at Brighton and Eastbourne. Of this primitive land-surface, an unbroken and undenuded portion still remains in the flowing contour of Salisbury Plain; while remnants of the wave subsist further east at either end in the gradual rise of the North Downs from London to Box Hill, and the gradual descent of their sisters the South Downs from the Devil's Dyke or Chanctonbury Ring to the sea at Worthing.
But in south-eastern England as we know it today the intermediate or central portion of this great boss, once a continuous chalky plain has been worn away by rain and rivers, wind and landslip, leaving in between the deeply scooped valley which we call the Weald, a valley bounded on either side by the steep escarpments of the broken chalk, so familiar to all of us between Guildford and Red Hill on its northern bank, and between the Inwes Downs and Chanctonbury Ring on its southern border.
What has caused the carving out of this deep depression—this profound valley? . . . The true answer to that curious problem in earth-sculpture gives us in brief the key to all the subsequent physical, historical, and artistic peculiarities of the Surrey Weald. On its terms hangs everything else Wealden. How far back we must go in time in order clearly to understand to the very bottom the determining causes of it: it runs like a backbone through Surrey and Sussex, and finally topples over into the waves of the Channel in the steep clifl's of the Castle Hill at Hastings, and the tall bluifs of Ecclesbourne and Fairlight Glen. From that central line we may picture to ourselves the primitive tableland of re-risen England as sloping ofi gradually on either side towards the Thames in one direction and the Channel in the other. But the curious part of it all is that at the present day the centre of upheaval is more or less occupied by a great hollow, the Weald, while the subsiding slopes to right and left now rise as comparatively high hills in the North and South Downs, and the range of heather clad sandstone heights from Leith Hill and Holmbury to Black Down and Hindhead.
Why is this? Why should geology thus outrage common sense? Simply because the Weald is a denudation valley. In other words, it is a water-worn hollow from which a vast amount of superincumbent material has been gradually removed and washed away by the slow action of rain and rivers. The central part, being the most upheaved, was also necessarily the most broken and loosest : the side portions, on the other hand, damp clay on either side, intersected in the midst by a. sandstone range. To north or south, the observer looks down upon the champaign country from the escarpment of the chalk downs, as at Denbies and the Dyke, or still more directly from the similarv but yet nearer escarpment of the greensand, as at Leith Hill Tower and the Ewhurst windmill. On a very clear day at Box Hill, almost the whole series of here described may be taken in by the eye at a single glance, and their relations observed with marvellous distinctness. First comes the chalk on whose top the observer actually stands, rising up by compressed by weight and lateral pressure, were the hardest and most resisting, the last to give way before the incessant drip of the slow-eating water. The valley of the Weald has been worn piecemeal, drop by drop, through the superincumbent chalk, first down to the level of the greensand in its outer parts next the chalk downs; then down to the Weald clay in the succeeding two belts; and finally down to the Hastings sands along the central axis formed by the Forest Ridge.
The Weald’s Two Great Belts of Cold Damp Clay
At the present time therefore the Weald proper consists of two great belts of cold damp clay on either side, intersected in the midst by a sandstone range. To north or south, the observer looks down upon the champaign country from the escarpment of the chalk downs, as at Denbies and the Dyke, or still more directly from the similarly but yet nearer escarpment of the greensand, as at Leith Hill Tower and the Ewhurst windmill. On a very clear day at Box Hill, almost the whole series of strata here described may be taken in by the eye at a single glance, and their relations observed with marvellous distinctness. First comes the chalk on whose top the observer actually stands, rising up by a slow ascent from beneath the Thames valley, and cut off abruptly with singular preci pitancy in the denuded escarpment at his very feet. Next follows the northern belt of green sand, forming the Deepdene Hills, the Nower, and the Leith Hill range away to westward. Then succeeds the northern belt of Weald clay, a flat and low-lying district, its soft mud having yielded much more readily to the action of the water than the compara tively harder chalks and sandstones. Beyond, again, rises the Forest Ridge, in the midst of all, a single upheaved range of Hastings sands. Southward, the series repeats itself once more: the southern belt of Weald clay ; the southern belt of greensand hills; and far away upon the dim horizon, the chalk reappearing at last in the rounded outlines of the hazy South Downs. . . .
It is the Weald clay, filling up the larger part of the great glen thus hollowed out, that makes the Weald what it is — a thick and pasty mud laid down in the delta of some mighty river of secondary times, whose basin probably equalled or exceeded that of the Ganges, the Amazon, or the Mississippi. In wet weather this clay becomes completely water-logged and sticky: it is impermeable to rain, and it drains badly; so that it produces a cold and inhospitable soil, friendly to oaks, holly-bushes, and blackthorn, but ill fitted for gardening or the higher agriculture. Hence the historical condition of the trackless Weald, ever the most backward part of southern England, and still incredibly rural and unsophisticated, in spite of its nearness to London and the Thames on the one hand, as well as to Brighton, the south coast and the Channel on the other/
England has no soil for British oaks like this cold Weald. William Smith, the father of geology, chose for it indeed the name of Oak-tree clay. And from the dawn of history (whenever that may be) a vast oak forest covered with its dense tangles the whole broad area of the Wealden valley. It stretched for 120 miles in length from Hastings and Sandgate, where it touched the sea, right across the face of Kent and Sussex, far into the heart of Hants and Surrey.
From time immemorial hardly a town of any sort has broken the solitude of this vast waste: and even at the present day, save on the sea-coast, it can scarcely boast of anything better than a large village. WVhere the woodland abutted on the sea at Pevensey and Dungeness, low marshes marked the subsidence of the clay beneath the Channel. The Romans knew the tract as the Forest of Anderida, a Latinized form of the original Celtic name Antrerl, which means “uninhabited”; and an uninhabited woodland it must indeed have been until the legionaries first drove through it the great Roman roads which still hear the names of the Stane Street and Well Street. For ages the forest had entirely cut ofi the country of the Regni (the Sussex seaboard) from the country of the Cantii (the Kentish Downs) and the country of the Atrebates (the North Downs of Surrey and Eastern Hampshire). . . .
Surrey in the Middle Ages
Slowly through the middle ages, however, man’s habitations penetrated, bit by bit, into this great belt of stubborn clay. Old museways of unknown origin still thread its sticky morass, sometimes, as at Holmwood, mere rubble paths but sometimes, as at Ockley, regularly paved with flat flagstones. The swineherd was no doubt the first pioneer of civilization among the forest glades. The acorns of the Weald fed huge herds of pigs, and the spots selected as swine pastures among the deep oak wood were known as dens, a word which still gives a terminal syllable to no less than fifty-nine distinct places in the area of the Weald. Tenterden, Biddendem Frittenden, and Horsemonden are among the best-known of these ancient pig feeding gvillages. As late as the reign of Charles II. a special tribunal known as the Court of Dens held its sittings at Alding ton to determine disputes arising out of the right of forest pasture.
Next to the swinehcrds came the charcoal-burners and wood cutters, by whose aid small patches of tentative cultivation gradually began to invade the ancient wood land. The spots thus early cleared by the woodman’s axe bear to this day names ending in field, a “felled” space, or, as we say nowadays in America, “a clearing." Henfield, Linfield, Itchingfield, Wivelsfield, Uckfield, and Ifield are well-known examples of these old forestine villages. Still later, as pasture land emerged from the wood, came the herdsman, to whom we owe the folds, or fenced and inclosed pastures, of which Cowfold, Slinfold, Hadfold, and Paddingfold are familiar instances.
To this day, in fact, the local nomenclature of the ancient forest region of the Surrey border bears everywhere eloquent wit ness to its former wild and tree-clad condition. “In the district of the Weald," says Mr. Isaac Taylor (to Whom all students of English place-names owe endless obligations),
almost every local name, for miles and miles, terminates in burst, ley, field, or den. The hursts and charts were the denser portions of the forest [untouched by the axe] : the lays Were the [cleared] open forest glades where the cattle love to ie: the dens were the deep wooded valleys, and the fields were little patches of ‘felled’ or cleared lands in the midst of the surrounding forest. From Petersfield and Midhurst, by Billinghurst, Cuckfield, Wadhurst, and Lamberhurst, as far as Hawkhurst and Tenterden, these forest names stretch in an uninterrupted string.
Their northward range into Surrey is marked by the low belt of Weald clay below the sandstone ridge of Holmbury and Leith Hill, where a long line of forest names runs across the county by Siddinghurst, Chiddingfold, Dunsfold, Nanhurst, Riding hurst, Cranley, Farnhurst, and Brockhurst, to Polingfold, Ewhurst, Tanhurst, Ockley, Holmwood, Charlwood, Oakwood, Horley, sand.
The Short-lived Prosperity of Tudor Iron Mining and Smelting
At a period when coal was not yet mined, the proximity of the forest, with its abundant charcoal supply, to the ore of the hillsides, gave unusual opportunities for the primitive mode of smelting. During the Tudor period, accordingly, furnaces and iron works began to spring up all over the Weald. The Forest of Anderida set up afresh as an incipient Black Country. The “hammer ponds ” which occur abundantly in every part of this region were heads of water used to work the forges; the best-known instances are at the Thursley hammer-ponds and at Abinger Hammer. During these palmy days Crowhurst, Bletchingley, and Lingfield. Could anything better show the essentially woodland nature of this Weald belt than such a long succession of forest-named villages, in whose names even the most unphilological eye will readily detect the oak, the holly, the fern, the ling, the crane, the red deer, With the discovery of the Weald iron-beds, the wider industrial development of the Weald region first began. The ore is found in the greensand hills, and still more in the bands of clay-ironstone which traverse the Ashburnham Beds division of the Hastings of the Weald industry, iron made the fortune of more than one Elizabethan family. Great mansions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries lie thick upon the soil. Villages and towns of a small sort began to cover the ground, and stately manor-houses rose among the glades and dens so long given over to the brook and the crane, or to the swineherd and the drover. Even the tombstones in the churches were made of cast-iron, as one may still see in the chancel at Crowhurst.
This burst of prosperity, while the Weald was “on the boom," did not however last long. Northern coal and northern ironstone midst of the surrounding forest. From Petersfield and Midhurst, by Billinghurst, Cuckfield, Wadhurst, and Lamberhurst, as far as Hawkhurst and Tenterden, these forest names stretch in an uninterrupted string." Their northward range into Surrey is marked by the low belt of Weald clay below the sandstone ridge of Holmbury and Leith Hill, where a long line of forest names runs across the county by Siddinghurst, Chiddingfold, Dunsfold, Nanhurst, Riding hurst, Cranley, Farnhurst, and Brockhurst, to Polingfold, Ewhurst, Tanhurst, Ockley, Holmwood, Charlwood, Oakwood, Horley, sand. With the discovery of the Weald iron-beds, the wider industrial development of the Weald region first began. The ore is found in the greensand hills, and still more in the bands of clay-ironstone which traverse the Ashburnham Beds division of the Hastings of the Weald industry, iron made the fortune of more than one Elizabethan family. Great mansions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries lie thick upon the soil. Villages and towns of a small sort began to cover the ground, and stately manor-houses rose among the glades and dens so long given over to the brook and the crane, or to the swineherd and the drover. Even the tombstones in the churches were made of cast-iron, as one may still see in the chancel at Crowhurst.
This burst of prosperity, while the Weald was “on the boom," did not however last long. Northern coal and northern ironstone drove the product of the Weald furnaces at last out of the market. The Black Country shifted its head quarters to Staffordshire. Then the forest region, now partially cleared, relapsed once more into its accustomed quiet. But like every dog, the Weald had had its day, and made the best of it. The villages, the churches, the manor-houses remained: even roads of certain sort existed: and the abundance of oaks, both isolated and in plantations, give the district to this day a peculiarly park-like and dignified character. At the best of times, indeed, the Weald lay remote from the rest of the kingdom. Its "lanes of bottomless clay,” as Cobbett calls them, never made a good means of communication with the outer world. Late in the last century, the family travelling coach still dreaded the deep mud of the Surrey Weald. And even now there are villages, like Aldfold and Newdigate, so extraordinarily secluded that one can hardly believe one’s self, when one comes upon them suddenly, within the thirty mile redius from Charing Cross. [154-67]
Bibliography
Allen, Grant. “Surrey Farmhouses.” Illustrated by W. Biscombe Gardner. span class ="book">The English Illustrated Magazine of Art. 6 (1888-1889): 155-71. Hathi Trust version of a copy in the Pennsylvania State University Library. Web. 6 March 2021
Last modified 7 March 2021