Boxhill

The Lookout at the summit of Box Hill is due to the generosity of Mr Leopold Salomons of Norbury Park. It was given so that ‘the public has the privilege of using the hill to view the southern part of the county, and counties beyond’; it is dedicated to the memory of George Meredith. Mr Salomons bought the land to be held in safe-keeping for the nation, and to save it from urban developers. He kindly presented it to the people to be managed by the National Trust.
An extract from from"Dorking Town and City Memories".

The popularity of Box Hill, once called the White Hill from its chalk bluff and affording a splendid view across the Weald from its summit of just over 600ft, reached an apogee during the late Victorian and Edwardian era, when the railway and the bicycle brought it within easy reach of day trippers from London. Ascending the precipitous, winding track through the box woods from Burford Bridge on the River Mole below, on a cumbersome safety bicycle while clad in the heavy clothing of the day must have been hard work. No doubt those who accomplished the feat were glad of the refreshment booths in the background. Even in the 17th century, Daniel Defoe had been shocked at the behaviour of some ladies and gentlemen who visited the summit in carriages on Sundays, but all is perfectly decorous here, with some apparently making the journey by donkey (centre right).
An extract from from"Surrey Revisited Photographic Memories".

‘in this town is a great plenty of cherries, particularly a wild cherry that Mr John Evelyn tells me, it makes a most excellent wine, little inferior to the best French claret, and keeps longer; and no where are finer Caves for the Preservation of their Liquor than in the Sand here’.
An extract from from"Dorking Town and City Memories".

This hotel nestles at the foot of Box Hill, alongside the rushing traffic of the main London to Dorking road. Part of it dates back to the 16th century, when it was known as The Fox & Hounds, and incorporates wooden beams taken from the ships of the Spanish Armada. But the bulk of the building was constructed in 1800. Lord Nelson, along with Lady Hamilton, spent his last night ashore here before travelling on to Portsmouth and embarking on HMS Victory for the Battle of Trafalgar. In the second floor bay-windowed room (framed between the two garden umbrellas), Keats completed his epic poem Endymion. Queen Victoria stayed here as a girl, and the novelist Robert Louis Stevenson was also a frequent visitor. Although the Scots pine on the right has now been removed, the one on the left still towers over the spacious gardens at the rear of the hotel.
An extract from from"Surrey Revisited Photographic Memories".

Other local churches, claimed to be ‘old and steady’, are Shere, Leigh, Mickleham, Abinger, Wotten and Betchworth: they have stood for centuries. St Barnabas’s on Ranmore sits 700 feet above Dorking on Ranmore Common. Sir Gilbert Scott designed it in 1859 as the estate church for George Cubitt, the first Lord Ashcombe. In the churchyard lie the founder of Denbies Estate, and his three grandsons, Henry, Alick and William, who lost their lives in the First World War. St Joseph’s Catholic Church, designed by Frederick Arthur Walters, was erected in 1895 in Falkland Grove, off Coldharbour Lane.
An extract from from"Dorking Town and City Memories".