Moorish Magic
It all begins with an idea.
The Moors - just 6 miles from the M25
Mention ‘post war Surrey’ and phrases such as Arts and Crafts, stockbroker belt, Tudorbethan, London sprawl, privet hedges, green belt, housing estates or commuter land may come to mind. Yet Surrey has a long history of industry and mineral extraction which often lies forgotten. River valleys such as the Tillingbourne and the Wandle were once lined with mills. In the 1600s the Tillingbourne valley was probably the most industrialised in England and its mills continued working into the 20C. Think gunpowder manufacturing, paper-making, tanning, iron-forging, wire-drawing as well as the more rural corn milling. https://www.surreyhills.org/surrey-hills-60/the-mills-of-the-tillingbourne/ The Wandle, a chalk stream rising on the London facing flanks of the North Downs, supported copper working, tobacco milling and textile mills, amongst many others. https://wandlevalleypark.co.uk/projects/wandle-mills/
Site of the Mixing House at Chilworth Gunpowder Works, Tillingbourne Valley Photo: Tillingbourne Tales Project © The Surrey Hills Board.
Mineral extraction is also no stranger to Surrey. The parallel belts of chalk, clays and greensand have supported a great number of local industries. Mineral winning cannot, to use a planning term, be a ‘footloose’ affair and before Surrey developed good road transport links, mineral based industries remained local to their source material, hence the Surrey lime kilns, or the brickworks which made wonderful, local clay bricks and tiles, which literally supported the vernacular architecture of many Surrey villages and towns.
Which brings me to sand extraction, and my own neighourhood terroir - The Moors – which provided so many of us with our local lockdown breathing space. ‘Moor’ is not a typical component of Surrey place names. Dry, acid Heaths are very Surrey, but Moors, often associated with damp, and upland acid places, are rare in the locality. I suspect damp is the key here, and a strategically placed information board gives us the following: ‘Moor is old Saxon for marsh, and surviving Saxon documents describe the area as ‘marshy with black peaty pools’’.
The Moors isn’t (aren’t?) a typical component of urban fringe open space, either. This long, irregular sliver of land is sandwiched between a landfill site, based on former Fuller’s Earth extraction (thanks to the clay) and a railway line known as, yes, the Quarry Line, (thanks to The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway), and the Moors themselves is/are largely based on restored sand workings. Am I losing you now? Please stay and experience this glorious if quirky piece of open space.
Designated as a nature reserve earlier this century, as an adjunct to, yes, substantial residential development on the sand quarry workings, The Moors was designed as an area of seasonal wetlands and links to further flooded sand pits, before the whole shebang butts its head against the chalk ridge of the North Downs. The local Brook flows gently through, an apparently bucolic and lowland affair, but which is intimately (if benignly) linked to land fill drainage, and which can suddenly flex its muscles when winter downpours swell its load and water surges dramatically over the banks to turn adjacent wetlands into substantial lakes.
The valley footpath has changed from a muddy, puddle jumping, childhood enhancing experience to National Cycle Route 21 (Greenwich to Eastbourne) which has greatly extended usage and accessibility to quality green space. Part of me, however, still misses the slow, tranquil, low key ‘walk to the stream’, although fitness levels have universally increased, as pedestrians may now need to leap smartly to one side to allow the faster runners and cyclists through: the inevitable compromises of urban living.
So, yes, we get the quirky; but where’s the glory? Despite, or maybe because of, the total lack of maintenance during lockdown, this year’s summer wildflowers were a stress buster in themselves. Colour, vibrancy, mass, movement and tranquillity were there in spades. A smaller wetland was dry, revealing a massive horizontal poplar trunk and the largest burdock plant I’ve ever seen: the very best of natural play.
The bigger wetlands were, well, pretty wet, and busy with swans, egrets, ducks such as teal and mallard, cormorants and great crested grebe. Sure, the paths run close to the land fill site and the railway embankment, but glance over to the other view: rushes moving in the breeze, mass swathes of natural colour, poplars swaying gently, veteran oaks of enormous stature marking a former field boundary, butterflies and bees in thrall to nectar, and those stunning views of the North Downs.
To be honest, the landfill’s methane guzzling generators are noisy and sometimes smelly, but most of us forgive them as they seem to represent a positive outcome from our dreadful habit of throwing our rubbish into holes in the ground. But then there is the ‘hedge on legs’ which is what you get when you don’t trim hedge plants on a regular basis or remove stakes and shelters. It provides an excellent green screen between cycle path and nature reserve, but it needs a fence to keep the cattle (sorry, conservation grazers) in and the dogs out. It’s not what I call a hedgerow.
But despite the urban quirks, the ‘promise’ of a landscape, in terms of space and time, is perfectly encapsulated in The Moors. This space is connected: cyclists – if you keep going, Paris is a just a designated cycle path away; pedestrians - home is a short stroll along the valley; for the more energetic, those North Downs are easily accessible by footpath and bridleway; bird watchers and butterfly spotters, this is for you; shoppers, Sainsbury’s is only a 20 minute walk and, according to Google Maps, ‘mostly flat’. In time terms too, the offer is good. ‘Seasonal wetlands’ means seasonal change. Different birds (snipe in winter), different berries, different colours, and always water – more water, less water and sometimes, when the footpath floods, just a little bit too much water. https://www.surreywildlifetrust.org/nature-reserves/nutfield-marshes-inc-moors-spynes-mere-holmethorpe-lagoons
