VI.
Surrey Commons.
(Golden Hours, 1872.)
Very few, even of those who dwell in Surrey, have any adequate idea of the number and extent of its commons. In Brayley's "History of Surrey," published in 1841, it is stated that the heaths, greens, commons, and such-like tracts of land within the county, number no less than 280. But not to speak of the greens, which are sometimes small, one could easily count on the inch-to-a-mile ordnance map more than a hundred commons or heaths having distinct names.
Indeed, the western part of the county is a series of commons. It is still almost true that a man may ride from Ascot Heath, in Berkshire, across Surrey, to Bexley Heath in Sussex, a distance of thirty miles, and hardly leave common land the whole way. Mr Marshall, the author of the "Rural Economy of the Southern Counties," estimates this extensive waste as covering in his time an area of 150 square miles, or 100,000 acres, the chief portion of which was in Surrey. And even now, although some considerable patches here and there have been enclosed; and along the slips by the sides of the streams which intersect it has always been found some well-cultivated land, it still remains generally true that the western side of the county is mainly common or commonable land.
This sort of land may, in fact, be said to be the characteristic feature of Surrey, for there are very few parts in which extensive commons may not be found. Captain Maxse, in his valuable map, published in the Fortnightly Review for August 1870, sets down the waste land in Surrey as amounting to 147,709 acres. As
