Box Hill, Surrey
| Box Hill, Surrey |
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Box Hill is a well known beauty spot in the North Downs of Surrey, England, close to the southern outskirts of London, overlooking Dorking to the south-west. There is a small village of the same name about 1.5 km to the east. Confusingly, Box Hill School is located in the village of Mickleham about 1.5 km to the north, and is between the towns of Dorking and Leatherhead. Just outside of the M25.
The hill is named after the box trees which can be found on its steep southern and western flanks, especially around the "Whites", chalk cliffs cut by the River Mole.
A country park, owned by the National Trust, now provides for public access to Box Hill, and the Pilgrims' Way long distance footpath runs about 1 km to the south.
At the "top" of the hill there is a car park and viewpoint, from where the entire town of Dorking can be viewed. However, this location is not actually the true summit of the hill. To the east, the ridge ascends, and most of the village of Box Hill is higher, at an altitude of around 200m. The Ordnance Survey mark a spot height of 224m at the radio mast at TQ20405175.
At the bottom of the hill is another car park, with a cafe which is frequented by motorcyclists all year round.
A Major Peter Labellière is buried on the hill just west of the viewpoint at Burfoot slope. He was buried (on June 17, 1800) head downwards, and according to some sources he reasoned for this by saying "the world is topsy turvy, and I'll be the right way in the end"; other sources indicate that he merely wished to emulate the example of St. Peter, who was apocryphally (in the Acts of Peter) crucified upside down.
An important passage of Jane Austen's novel Emma is set at Box Hill.
In England: A Nation, (London: R. Brimley Johnson, 1904), edited by Lucian Oldershaw, and in a chapter entitled "The Patriotic Idea" written by G. K. Chesterton, the beauty of Box Hill violated by an invading army is used to express a healthy patriot's love for his nation is opposed to the jingoistic nationalism of tabloid newspapers: "But just as a man who has been in love will find it difficult to write a whole frantic epic about a flirtation, so all that kind of rhetoric about the Union Jack and the Anglo-Saxon blood, which has made amusing the journalism of this country for the last six years, will be merely impossible to the man who has for one moment called up before himself what would be the real sensation of hearing that a foreign army was encamped on Box Hill."
Box Hill has also been immortalised in song - 'Box Hill or Bust' by Dumpy's Rusty Nuts.