ten miles south of the London
Thames the old Surrey countryside has disappeared, and the disappearance
has left the writer of a book of Surrey Highways a difficult choice. It
would have been easy to fill a large part of the book with the Surrey of
the past, the Surrey of Southwark, and the great church of St. Mary
Overie, and of Lambeth Palace and the Archbishops, of Vauxhall, and the
Paris Gardens, and the Bankside where Shakespeare brought out his plays.
But it is not easy to write anything new of any part of Surrey, and of
that part I could have written nothing new at all. So that it seemed
best to leave the Surrey that has disappeared to writers who have dealt
with its history far more adequately than I could, and to choose for the
Highways and Byways of this book only those which still run through open
country and through country villages and towns. That is the Surrey of
to-day.

The general plan of the book is simple. I have entered the county from
the west at Farnham, with the old Way along the chalk ridge, and I leave
it by Titsey on the east. Of course, not all the Surrey villages belong
to the ridge, though the chief towns lie along it. Other villages set
themselves along the banks of the two Surrey rivers, the Wey and the
Mole, and there are separate little groups like the villages of the Fold
country, or on the plateaux of the Downs round Epsom, or between
Chertsey and Windsor on the Thames. These group themselves in their own
chapters. But the main progress of the book is the trend of the great
Surrey highway. As to following the book through its chapters from west
to east, Surrey is threaded by such a net of railways that the
deliberate choosing of a route, with definite centres and points of
departure, is unnecessary. But those who believe that the best way to
see any country is to walk through it will find that, as a general rule,
the book and its chapters are divided, sometimes naturally, sometimes
perhaps a little perversely, into the compass of a day's walking. My own
plan has been simple enough: it has been to set out in the morning and
walk till it was dark, and then take the train back to where I came
from. Others will be able to plan far more comprehensive journeys by
motor-car, or by bicycling, or on horseback--though not many, perhaps,
ride horses by Surrey roads to-day. But only by walking would it be
possible to explore much of the country. You would never, except by
walking, come at the mean