Evelyn tells us of a man he knew who
planted an ash tree, and before his death cut
it down and sold it for forty shillings; and he
goes on to mention, as a proof of the profits of
growing trees, that he knew three acres of
barren land sown with acorns, that in sixty
years became a thriving wood worth three
hundred pounds. The records of Ashtead
help us to some facts about the age of trees,
which are difficult to obtain elsewhere. Here
at least we get at certainty. There are some
fine Spanish chestnuts growing near the lake on
this demesne that have reached the girth of
twenty two feet. These fine trees were planted
by Thomas Davie, an old gardener, six years
before the battle of Culloden. When a boy
Davie brought from London three shillings'
worth of Spanish chestnuts as a treat for his
fellow servants, but the fruit being then
little eaten in England, the servants took a
prejudice, and would not touch them. Davie,
not wishing to waste the chestnuts, sowed
them in a bed in the garden at Ashtead, and
afterwards planted them out where they now
stand. The sheltered, moist, warm park
exactly suited them. These facts convince us
more than ever that the age of celebrated
trees is often overrated. Trees supposed to
be of immense antiquity are often only the
descendants of historic trees, but they have
grown up in the same place and retained
the name of their progenitors. But for the
facts we have noted, the Spanish chestnuts of
Ashtead would pass muster for veterans of
three centuries, and the topographer might
have sworn they were planted the year
Catherine of Arragon came to England.

A certain curious legend is told of two large
antlers preserved in Ashtead Hall. They once
belonged to a king of the herd, a stag of great
age to whom all the other deer paid homage,
obeying all his behests, and allowing him even
to gore to death offenders against his authority.
When he reached extreme old age the monarch
remained almost entirely by the banks of the
lake where the grass grew thickest and greenest,
and where he could drink without having to
walk far. It is even said that his special
followers used to bring him leaves and chewed
grass, and waited upon him with undeviating
loyalty till the last.

A little further south, at Leatherhead, where
the "nousling" Mole slips between the trees,
and just by the bridge, stands an old inn, now
the Running Horse, an ale house, that has
for hundreds of years opened its doors to
thirsty and dusty travellers. This is where
Eleanor Rummynge, the famous ale wife lived,
upon whom Skelton once wrote one of his
rough and ready satires in jolting verse, not
unlike what Rabelais might have written. The
enemy of Wolsey describes the old landlady,

                 Footed like a plane,
                 Legged like a crane;
                 In her furred Socket,
                 And grey russet rocket.
                 Her huke of Lincoln green—
                 It had been hers I ween
                 More than forty year.
                 She breweth nappy ale,
                 And maketh pot sale
                 To travellers and tinkers,
                 To sweaters, to swynkers,
                 To all good ale drinkers,
                 That will nothing spare,
                 But drink till they stare,
                 And bring themselves bare.

And then, in his reckless steeplechase way, the
rough poet sketches Eleanor's gossips with
almost Chaucerian breadth and more than
Rabelais coarseness, as they come in with eggs,
and wool, and London pins, and rabbit skins,
and strings of beads, to barter for the dame's
ale.

There is still extant a curious old woodcut of
ugly, jovial Eleanor holding an ale pot in either
hand, with below the following inscription:

          When Skelton wore the laurel crown,
          My ale put all the ale wives down.

And here at Leatherhead, where Judge Jeffreys
once hid his ugly head when his time of trouble
came, the crow feels a duty to give a word to
the peculiarities of that strange and weird
river, the Mole, whom topographical Drayton
describes, in rather an extravagant allegory, as
beloved by the Thames:

   But as they thus in pomp came sporting on the shole,
   'Gainst Hampton Court he meets the soft and gentle
       Mole,
   Whose eye so pierced his breast.

The parents of Master Thames refuse their
consent, but the lad is obstinate:

   But Thames would hardly on; oft turning back to
   show,
   From his much loved Mole, how he was loath to go.

The parents, still obdurate, raise hills to shut
in their wilful daughter; but all in vain; Mole
is so artful:

   Mole digs herself a path by working day and night,
   (According to her name) to show her nature right;
   And underneath the earth for three miles' space doth
   creep.
   Till, gotten out of sight, far from her mother's keep,
   Her fore-intended course the wanton nymph doth run,
   As longing to embrace old Tame and Isis' son.

The river is said to derive its name from
the Celtic word melyn, a mill (in Doomsday
Book it is noted as turning twenty mills);
but it is just as likely that it was first called
the Mole from its singular tendency to burrow.
It springs from a cluster of little rivulets on
the borders of Sussex that meet at Gatwick, in
Surrey, and, coursing under the arches of
Kinnersley Bridge, push on for the leafy vale of
Mickleham. There is an erroneous notion
prevalent that the river Mole suddenly dives into
the earth, disappears, and re-emerges at a spot
further on. Two of the swallows, as they are
called, can be seen near the Fridley meadows,
and others near the little picturesque roadside
inn at Burford Bridge, where Keats wrote the
latter part of his Endymion. These swallows,
into which the Mole soaks rather than dives,
are really occasioned by the river as it swirls
round bends of the hills, washing away the
mud, sand, and softer strata from under the
more resisting and less impressionable chalk.