Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-06-30 - 6:04 a.m.

The Guildford Festival started yesterday and Guildford Museum had a stall on the High Street - along with all kinds of craftspeople musicians charities etc. I bought a book about the garden-city style estate quite near where I live - Onslow Village. It explains the OV is built on land which was originally Guildford Park - a Medieval deer park within the Royal Forest of Windsor. The southern boundary ran along the top of the hill behind my house.

By coincidence Jake and I crossed that boundary on our walk in the morning and I looked at the boundary bank and thought how old it must be - with quite substantial trees growing out of it. The OV pamphlet describes this hedgerow as being even older than the Park itself.

The pamphlet has a map of 1607 which shows the Royal Park of Guildford - including the area which became the street where we live. Henley Grove is shown and named as such. This is the small coppiced wood up on the hill which is alligned on the High Street and a lot more besides. I had thought that the wood took its name from the Victorian Fort - Henley Fort - which is nearby. This is part of a chain that was put in at the end of the 19th century when the propsect of an invasion of Great Britain began to worry people.

The pamphlet mentions the odd fact that the first ever written reference to a rabbit warren in England - dated 17 February 1226 - is about one in Guildford Park. Rabbits were introduced to this country around that time as a luxury food from Southern Europe. The rabbits had to learn how to survive in a colder climate and so burrows were orginally man-made rather than rabbit-made structures. Apparently the best place to do this was on the north facing slope of a chalk hill.

Jake and I need to go and have a look at the western boundary of the park - the pamphlet suggests that its unusual shape suggests that it is dictated by much older land use although it doesnt't go into details. The footpath goes up to the moat of the medieval manor that was in the park. This was dilapadated even at the end of the 16th century. I think the moat is probably fed from a spring off the chalk. Its not at all far but I have never walked in that direction.

Yvonne's plan for her birthday which is two weeks from now is to walk from the house to Shere which is about four miles from here on the south side of the chalk - just past Silent Pool. The route would go along the Pilgrims Way over the Chantries and St Martha's Hill. Then through Albury Park past the headquarters of the Catholic Apostolic Church (an interesting Victorian religious experiment) to Shere which is a kind of picture book village. We drove there yesterday evening to check out which pub we would eat in after the walk.

After the meal we walked around the village in search of a swimmin pool. Vita and her friend Emma went swimming there one evening with their friend Orrie - I suppose thats how you spell his name. Orrie belongs to a club which gives you a key to this open air pool. We eventually found it just by the River Tillingbourne opposite the church. Yvonne is now very keen to join.

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