The gilded geometry of Surrey cricket: Metropolitan wealth, green space, and sporting dominance

“ There is no southern county seat that looks its part better than Surrey’s, even since in our day its time-honoured features have been much overlaid by new ones, while everywhere it wears an air of roominess and thrivingness not always associated with the picturesque. Being only thirty miles from London, reached by three, nay four railway lines, it has become a favourite place of residence for business men and of retreat for officers, whose houses go on spreading up the dry and airy slopes of the Downs, above the old town rooted in the hollow of the Wey. ”

“ The north border of this “south land” is the winding Thames, its rich banks rising to wooded eminences like St. Ann’s Hill and St. George’s Hill, the swell of Richmond Park, the Ridgeway of Wimbledon, and those suburban eminences from which the Crystal Palace shines over Kent. The east side of this zone is masked by the spread of Greater London, rich and poor; and the west side, too, becomes more thickly dotted with villages and villas; while to the south that giant octopus goes on stretching its grimy tentacles over the green fields turned into “eligible building sites.” ”

“ What a summer’s delight there lies in any one such progress. Suppose you took your route from the metropolis through the south and west. How delightful are the richly cultivated fields, the green hop-grounds, the hanging woods of Kent; how pleasant the heathy hills and scattered woodlands of Surrey; the thickly-strewn villas of the wealthy, the vine-covered cottages and village greens of the poor. Are not the flowery lanes and woody scenery of Berkshire, and the open downs of Wiltshire worth traversing? ”

“ The whole county betrays its metropolitan dependence in the many trim enclosures around modern mansions and villas, among which holds up its head here and there some lordly old hall like Sutton or Loseley, some once strong castle like those of Guildford or Farnham. There are not a few ivied manor-houses still standing; some fallen to the estate of farm-houses, some restored or enlarged to be choice residences for new owners. ”

“ But in ex-suburbs, as a rule, such pleasure-houses of a former generation are in no demand now, their sites often covered by shabby streets, shops, or blocks of{12} flats; while leagues farther out, at Purley, Tadworth, or Claygate, spring up a fresh crop of smartly painted villas, in lines or knots, with white walls, red roofs, green water-butts and “modern conveniences,” to tempt Londoners who can afford fresh air for living in. ”

“ From the undulating streets and suburban rows we usually pass on to a plain, presenting market-gardens and dairy-farms, where the open ground is not required for playing fields. Private groves and hedgerows make a show of timber; and when branches are bare, a frequent feature of the scenery will be those goal-posts which a critically observing foreigner has mistaken for gallows. Here we are in the first zone of Surrey, a stretch of London clay and brick earth, broken here and there by patches of gravel and sand, which, when large enough, are like to be marked out by the hungry game of golf. ”

“ But still, beyond these bounds, we come upon settlements of citizens making their homes an hour’s journey from the smoke and din of their work-place. Favourite sites for such colonies are the edges of commons so frequent on the south side of London, in Surrey to be counted by hundreds, open woodlands, stretches of copse and heath, well-worn playgrounds, down to the patches of green that seldom fail to grace the smallest hamlet. ”

“ The distribution of cricketing ability in England might be the subject of some interesting speculation. In the first forty years of the annual competition for the championship six counties alone gained the coveted distinction, and three of these, Surrey, Notts and Yorkshire, won it thirty-four times between them. Why, it may be asked, is it that one county excels in the game while another has no place whatever in the history of cricket? ”

“ There is one drawback, and that is, that if a real native professional of high merit and skill be found in these counties, instead of devoting the remainder of his life to his native county, he is tempted away by the magic gold of Surrey, Lancashire, or some other first-class county. He has got to earn his living, and it is not in human nature that he should refuse an opportunity of earning five pounds a match twice in the week, to say nothing of a prospective benefit at the end of his cricket career. ”

“ The bright side of this picture is that the cricket is of first-rate quality. There is a chance for every really good cricketer to find some county to provide him with an opportunity of distinguishing himself, and every year more and more close and fine matches are being played. The struggle for supremacy has never been greater than it is now, or more keenly fought out. ”

“ Some brooklets of the Weald run southward to the English Channel, else, nearly the whole of Surrey drains into the valley of the Thames, a river to make the landscape fortune of any county. If ever its scenes have a fault, from the artist’s point of view, this may appear to be the absence of water; yet some of its noblest prospects are where the Mole and the Wey break through the sand or chalk ridges to reach the river plain. ”

“ Here we reach the second zone, that of the North Downs, a chalk ridge running roughly straight across the county from Farnham to Tatsfield, near the eastern border reaching a highest point of about 880 feet. This central line, broadened to several miles at Croydon, narrowed to a high edge beyond Guildford, makes Surrey’s best-marked feature, its natural baldness much bewigged by the woods and parks of London’s luckier citizens; and thus adorned, there are those who hold the chalk heights, with their dry soil and clear air, dearer than the aspects more common in the next zone. ”

“ In our day, the merits of a high and dry site have spread building farther on to the chalk heights. Coming by Carshalton, one strikes Sutton in its centre, where beside the railway station the road, till not long ago, was spanned by the sign of the “Cock,” that held out longer than the turnpike gate below it. The high-road runs right through this long place, for two miles or so, first descending then ascending on the chalk slopes, where so many Londoners seek healthy homes that this must be the largest of our scores of South towns, one of the commonest place-names in England. ”

“ The steep south faces of the Downs look into the Holmesdale Valley of greensand and gault, across which, within a rifle-shot, rise a line of sandy hills whose more rugged and shaggy outlines often form the loveliest scenes in Surrey, to some tastes, certainly the wildest, though many corners have been tamed by grounds and gardens among stretches of bristling common and straggling pine wood. These heights stand usually lower than the Downs; but at more than one point, as Leith Hill, they are the most mountainous prominences of the south-eastern counties. ”

“ Our age has a new heart for such open heights as border the Portsmouth road between Thursley and Liphook. At its highest point, about 900 feet, the road passes along the brow of a wide and deep depression known as the Devil’s Punch Bowl, round which stretches of bracken, gorse and heath, broken dells, ponds and pine-crested ridges, fall into the valleys by slopes and hollows rich in green lanes, in tangled coppices, in old cottages, and in other picturesque “bits,” the whole airy swell making a smaller and drier edition of Dartmoor. ”

“ If one keep straight along it, after half an hour’s soft walking it grows narrower, rougher, and shadier, crooking its way through a wood as it comes upon the yew-dotted and tumulus-swollen slopes of the Downs above Leatherhead. All this part of Surrey is particularly rich in yews, such as we saw in the Druid’s Grove of Norbury across the Mole, which our road now approaches. Beneath it, beside the valley high-road, the grounds of Cherkley Court contain a mass of yews packed together over some ninety acres, some of the trees very large and beautiful in form. ”

“ Fortunate is he who from the brow of Norbury Park can with conscience clear of trespassing look down upon the Mole valley, now ringed in by the richest heights of Surrey—Ranmore, the outskirts of Leith Hill, the woods of Deepdene, Box Hill,{104} and Juniper Hill, among which the river has cleft its way through the ridge of the Downs. Box, juniper, and yew all flourish on the chalk soil ”

“ Several of these public pleasure-grounds run into London, where the south-western resident can make a round over Clapham, Wandsworth, Putney, Wimbledon, Mitcham, Tooting, Tooting Bec and Streatham Commons, with tramways or ’buses to bridge him from one open space to another. It is on the farther side of the county, of course, that we must look for the widest and wildest expanses of ground, not waste so long as it serves to keep jaded citizens in touch with the charms of untamed nature ”

“ What will interest the present generation more is an effort to preserve Purley Beeches, a fine woodland on the Downs, as pleasure-ground for this fast-growing suburb.
On the east, beyond the railway, beside a face of quarried chalk, opens the Caterham valley, its hollow and its south side much choked up with streets and mansions, strung together by two railway lines; but the north slope opens in the steeps of Riddlesdown, where a thousand acres are preserved as a London park, with tea-gardens and other attractions much in favour with school-treat parties ”

“ The best way of reaching this from London is to get out at the border station of Sunningdale; then at once one can mount to the common, on this side subdued by its inevitable destiny to be cut up with lines of houses and swept by a fire of golf balls. Due south one has still a fine open walk by sandy tracks and among ragged thickets, making what our fathers called a dreary waste; then come{210} the wooded ridges and peopled hollows of Windlesham, one of Surrey’s most pleasant nooks, that, fortunately for its peacefulness, is not too near a railway station. ”

“ Cricket is now a very serious affair; the struggle for supremacy among counties has reached a pitch of gravity that seems remarkable, considering that many counties are made up of players gathered in from all parts of England. Why an Oval crowd should be so desperately keen to see Surrey win a county match when Nottingham, Yorkshire, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Middlesex, have at different times been drawn upon to make up the Surrey eleven seems incomprehensible, but it is a fact. Human nature, as Squeers said, is "a rum un'," and I can't explain it. ”

“ The player himself need never see the room, and he never paid the rates; he might even all the time be playing for another county. Lancashire, I believe, always did give a more genuine qualification. There are in that county many large towns and many cricket clubs: these clubs want professional cricketers to bowl to their members and to play League matches on Saturday afternoons; accordingly a professional cricketer is engaged by all these clubs, who thus acquires a more or less bonâ-fide qualification on the ground of residence. ”

“ Well, then, as the Surrey Club had resuscitated cricket at the Oval, he was anxious that the body should restore the equally healthful game of foot-ball also to that district [hear, hear] ; with that view he had drawn out some rules, which he would now submit for the approval of and adoption by that meeting. By the first of those rules it would be seen, he proposed that the members of the Food-ball Club should be confined to those gentlemen who belonged to one or other of the cricket clubs which met at the Oval [hear, hear] . ”

“ The progress of the nation was wonderful. Population more than doubled during the eighteenth century, and the advance of wealth was even greater than that of population. Though the war had added a hundred millions to the national debt, the burden was hardly felt. The loss of America only increased the commerce with that country, and industry, as we have seen, had begun that great career which was to make England the workshop of the world. To deal wisely with such a growth required a knowledge of the laws of wealth which would have been impossible at an earlier time. ”