Box Hill

 

Box Hill

The northern escarpment provides a number of sheltered steep sided valleys with round topped ridges.the chalk turf here is deep and damp and the sunshine on them is limited.  The humidity just above soil level is high and dews and hoar frosts remain here for longer and so the plant community is more luxuriant. Plants are found here which are usually confined to limestone hills in the north and west.

Tower, Round and made of flint, on a ridge which leads north from Box Hill, No door, and no way in.  It might be the grave of Peter Labilliere, coffin head first because of the resurrection everyone else would be upside down, he would be the right way up. resident of Dorking. It was his repeated claim that the world was topsy-turvy and that he should be buried so that he might be right at last.

Fort.  Broadwood's Folly.  Probably a Waterloo Monument by the piano maker.  Fort against the French.

Juniper Hall.  Field Studies Centre owned by the National Trust.  Fine cedars, where Stane Street comes down to the valley.  At the 18th-century house Fanny Burney met her future husband.  General D'Arblay, one of a group of refugees from the French Revolution that had sought refuge here; they  included Talleyrand and Madame de Stael.  The Field Studies Centre was developed by Geoffrey Hutchins the first warden and author of the first book on the subject.

Ice House in the grounds. Enormous. The 19th century ice house is built into a small slope in the grounds of Juniper Hall Field Centre, It has an entrance tunnel with a separate chamber leading off it.

Porte clochere. like Marylebone Station  A very elaborate large cast-iron porte-cochere dating from c. 1876 is at the main entrance to Juniper Hall.

Records of Swallets in the area

Roundhill Cottage,

Zig Zag Hill

Flint Cottage. where George Meredith lived. novelist and poet., beautifully situated. Meredith 1828-1909.    He wrote extensively about the Downs.

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