Box Hill is a summit of the North Downs in Surrey, approximately south-west of London. It is named after the ancient box woodland found on the steepest west-facing chalk slopes overlooking the River Mole. The western part of the hill is owned and managed by the National Trust, whilst the village of Box Hill lies on higher ground to the east. The highest point is Betchworth Clump at above OD, although the Salomons Memorial (at 172 metres) overlooking the town of Dorking is the most popular viewpoint.
Box Hill is part of the Surrey Hills National Landscape and forms part of the Mole Gap to Reigate Escarpment Site of Special Scientific Interest. The north- and south-facing slopes support an area of chalk downland, noted for its orchids and other rare plant species. The hill provides a habitat for 38 species of butterfly, and has given its name to a species of squash bug, now found throughout south-east England.
An estimated 850,000 people visit Box Hill each year. The National Trust visitors' centre provides both a cafeteria and gift shop, and panoramic views of the western Weald may be enjoyed from the North Downs Way, a long-distance footpath that runs along the south-facing scarp slope. Box Hill featured prominently on the route of the 2012 Summer Olympics cycling road race events.
Geography
Box Hill, approximately south-west of central London, stands at the south-eastern corner of the Mole Gap, the valley carved by the River Mole through the North Downs. Its summit, above Ordnance Datum, is the 12th highest in Surrey.Database of British and Irish Hills Retrieved 6 March 2015 The western boundary of the hill is defined by the River Mole, which has cut a steep cliff, exposing the chalk bedrock. The Vale of Holmesdale lies immediately to the south, below the scarp slope. The northern and eastern boundaries are defined by dry river valleys, which were created during the last Ice Age. The total area of the hill is approximately , of which half is owned by the National Trust.
The village
The village of Box Hill is to the east of the summit and to the west of the Country Park owned by the National Trust. The earliest flint cottages date from the 1800s, although much of the village was constructed in the first half of the 20th century. By 2005 there were more than 800 dwellings, of which over five hundred were mobile homes. An estimated 41% of the community is aged 60 or over. St Andrew's Church, part of the ecclesiastical parish of Headley, was consecrated in 1969 and the village hall opened in 1974. The village is not part of a civil parish.
History
Early history
Two Bronze Age round barrows, located close to the Salomons Memorial, provide the earliest archaeological evidence of human activity on Box Hill. The larger barrow is in diameter and high and, in medieval times, was used as a boundary marker or mere for the parish of Mickleham. Traces of prehistoric field boundaries are visible on Burford Spur and the low flint banks on the steeper and more wooded White Hill may be contemporaneous.
An ancient trackway along the North Downs escarpment can be dated to around 600–450 BC, but has probably been in existence since the Stone Age and may have crossed the River Mole at a ford close to the location of the present day stepping stones. In Victorian times this route was dubbed the Pilgrims' Way and was supposedly followed by visitors to the shrines of Thomas Becket and Swithun at Canterbury and Winchester respectively.
Stane Street was constructed by the Romans in around 60–70 AD to link London (Londinium) to Chichester (Noviomagus Reginorum) on the south coast of England. The course of the road runs in a southwesterly direction across Mickleham Downs, before turning south to cross the River Mole at a ford close to the site of the Burford Bridge Hotel. A hoard of nine Roman coins, including bronze folles dating from the reigns of Diocletian, Maximian and Constantius I, was discovered on Box Hill close to Broadwood's Folly in 1979.
Medieval and early modern periods The pillow mounds to the north-east of the Salomons Memorial are thought to date from the medieval period and were probably constructed as artificial warrens for rabbits. High Ashurst warren is recorded as remaining in use until the late 18th century. A second warren was probably situated close to Warren Farm in the Headley Valley and it has been speculated that the present farmhouse was originally the warrener's cottage.
The origin of the box trees growing on the hill is disputed. Several sources from the late 18th century suggest that they were planted by Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel during the reign of Charles I. However Howard never owned the Box Hill estate and older medieval documents make reference to local individuals with surnames including Atteboxe, de la Boxe and Buxeto, suggesting that the trees were already common in the area by the 13th century. The diarist John Evelyn records a visit to the hill in August 1655 to view "those natural bowers, cabinets and shady walks in the box copses".
The close grain of the box wood made it highly prized for its timber for carving and there are numerous accounts of the sale of trees from the hill throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. At the end of the eighteenth century, imports from Portugal reduced the market value of box wood and commercial exploitation of timber from Box Hill appears to have ended with a final sale in 1797.
Agriculture Despite the commercial importance of timber in the early modern period, the woodland on Box Hill was much less extensive at the start of the 19th century than at the start of the 21st. The 1801 Betchworth Estate Map shows that there was a network of irregularly shaped fields on the top of the hill, where the more fertile clay-with-flints overlays the chalk. These ‘clearings’ (each up to ) were cultivated for arable crops, but by the 1830s changes in farming practices meant that they were too small to be worked economically and many were over-planted with beech (with some oak). These deciduous plantations may be distinguished from older yew- and box-dominated woodland on the hill by the uniform age of the trees.
Remnants of a few of these arable fields still exist, notably at the head of Juniper Bottom and around the old Box Hill Fort and Swiss Cottage. The Donkey Green (immediately north of the Salomons Memorial) was used as a cricket ground in the 1850s. It acquired its current name in Edwardian times, when donkey rides were offered to younger day trippers, although this practice had ceased by World War II.
The soil covering the north- and south-facing chalk slopes of the hill is too thin and insufficiently fertile to allow cultivation. These areas are indicated as sheep-walk on the 1801 map and were used as pasture, especially during the winter months when lower ground was too wet for productive grazing. Grazing of these slopes has continued into the 21st century and a herd of Belted Galloway cattle is used by both Surrey Wildlife Trust and the National Trust to control growth of grasses, thereby allowing wild flowers (including orchids) to flourish.
Throughout its history, Headley Heath has been used for grazing and local villagers have collected heather, gorse and turf for bedding and making fires. Although most Rights of Common connected with the heath were abolished by Act of Parliament in 1965, the inhabitants of one nearby cottage still have the right to graze geese.
Ownership and public access The hill was purchased by Thomas Hope, shortly before his death in 1831. (Hope was the owner of The Deepdene, the mansion to the east of Dorking.) The Mickleham Parish Records credit Hope's widow, Louisa de la Poer Beresford (whom he had married six years previously), with allowing "free access to the beauties of this hill", however day-trippers had been arriving in significant numbers for more than a century before that.
Developments in local transport infrastructure over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, enabled increasing numbers to visit the area. Following the completion of the turnpike road between Leatherhead and Dorking in 1750, stagecoaches stopped regularly at the Burford Bridge Hotel. As late as 1879, a daily coach ran non-stop to Box Hill from Piccadilly with a journey time of 2.5 hours.
The South Eastern Railway opened the first railway station in Dorking in 1849, followed by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR), which opened the station in the village of Westhumble in 1867. The LBSCR ran dedicated excursion trains to Box Hill on Bank Holiday weekends and over 1300 day-trippers were recorded arriving at Westhumble station on 6 August 1883.
The proposals for a land value tax outlined by Chancellor David Lloyd George in his People's Budget of 1909 prompted the trustees of the Deepdene estate to start to sell the unimproved land on the western side of Box Hill. As a result of negotiations led by Sir Robert Hunter, Leopold Salomons of Norbury Park purchased of Box Hill in 1913 for £16,000. The following year, Salomons donated the land, which included the Old Fort, Swiss Cottage and the western flank of the hill above the River Mole, to the National Trust.
Two further purchases of and transferred Lodge Hill and Ashurst Rough to National Trust ownership in 1921 and 1923. Following World War II, National Trust acquired Headley Heath, a geologically distinct area of heathland which lies to the north-east of Box Hill village, the majority of which was given as a single donation in 1946. The Trust continued to purchase land, and by the mid-1980s the estate comprised some . The most recent additions to the Box Hill Estate include farmland at Westhumble and at the foot of the hill, purchased in the late 1990s.
Military history
In the latter half of the 19th century, growing public concern over the ability of the British armed forces to repel an invasion (stoked, in part, by the serialisation of George Tomkyns Chesney's 1871 novella The Battle of Dorking), prompted the government to announce the construction of thirteen fortified mobilisation centres, collectively known as the London Defence Positions. Two centres were built on Box Hill, approximately apart: one close to the present National Trust visitor centre (commonly called Box Hill Fort) and the other close to the summit of the hill, to the south of the present day Box Hill village (known as Betchworth Fort).
The sites were purchased from the trustees of the Hope estate by the Ministry of Defence in 1891, and construction began in 1899. The two centres were laid out in the form of infantry redoubts typical of the period, but also included magazines (partially below ground level) for the storage of shells and cartridges. (In common with the majority of the eleven other mobilisation centres, the forts were designed for the use of the infantry only and the stored ammunition was intended for the use of mobile field artillery which would be deployed nearby as required.) The main flat-roofed buildings were built in brick and reinforced concrete and were protected from artillery fire by crescent-shaped earth blast banks, surrounded by an outer ditch.
A reform of defence policy by the Secretary of War Viscount Haldane in 1905 resulted in all 13 centres being declared redundant, and both forts were sold back to the estate trustees in 1908. Both forts are protected by a Scheduled Monument listing. The National Trust owns the Box Hill Fort and a metal grill has been placed over the entrance to allow bats to access to their roosts. The Betchworth Fort is in private ownership and is not accessible to the public.