Broom Shaw

More little boxes...

Plenty of oaks in this woodland.

Splendidly intricate and convoluted branches of one of many oaks in Holt Wood.

All that remains of the former Warlingham Park Hospital, a psychiatric hospital which closed in 1999. A free-standing Venetian-style campanile of polychromatic brick designed by G.H. Oatley and W.S. Skinner. Grade II listed. The rest of the site is now an upmarket, gated housing estate of no architectural interest.

Farleigh Rovers are playing in their colours of red (claret) and black.

A curious overbridge on the footpath, and not because of the lie of the land. It carries one of the former drives to the old Croydon Mental Hospital, now an exclusive housing estate. This drive is no longer used, and looks as if it was a sort of tradesman's entrance. The main hospital was to the right and its much smaller isolation hospital was to the left. This segregation of routes is reminiscent of the sort of thing that was engineered in South Africa in the apartheid days.

A very new development off Kingswood Lane, shoe-horned into the space formerly occupied by two or three houses with rather large gardens.

A lone walker crosses a ploughed field following footpath 587, or actually the straight line version customarily used - the legal line bends somewhat across the field for no obvious reason.

Great Farleigh Green is just north of Warlingham and west of the rather scattered hamlet of Farleigh. This field is near the south end of the green, on the opposite side of Old Farleigh Road.

Great Farleigh Green is just north of Warlingham and west of the rather scattered hamlet of Farleigh. This field is near the south end of the green, on the opposite side of Old Farleigh Road, which is beyond the belt of trees on the right.

Ian Nairn in 'The Buildings of England: Surrey' says of Farleigh - "Tiny hamlet on the North Downs, quite unspoilt - almost the most rural in Surrey. This extraordinary place is four miles from the centre of Croydon, eleven from the Isle of Dogs, and almost within sight of some of the worst sprawl in the country at New Addington." St Mary's Church is "as surprising a survival for Surrey as the village: Simple village-Norman, fairly gently restored, with new chancel arch and simple new bell-turret. All stuccoed, and not a window later than 1250. Nave and chancel c.1100." Basil Cracknell in 'A Portrait of Surrey' writes about Farleigh - "My favourite oasis is Farleigh, with its tiny Norman church of St Mary's, damaged badly by fire in 1964 but still standing, as it has stood for 850 years, the smallest and one of the oldest churches in Surrey." Farleigh resisted its incorporation into Greater London in the 1960s so fiercely that it won its case and stayed in Surrey. "The essence of Farleigh's claim was that it was not an oasis at all, since it did not lie within the desert but belonged to the green country beyond it. Farleigh they said was rural in character, had been rural for all its recorded history, and wanted to stay that way - and they won their case." St Mary's Church is just beyond the trees in the centre with the church car park on this side of the trees - see Link

Ian Nairn in 'The Buildings of England: Surrey' says of Farleigh - "Tiny hamlet on the North Downs, quite unspoilt - almost the most rural in Surrey. This extraordinary place is four miles from the centre of Croydon, eleven from the Isle of Dogs, and almost within sight of some of the worst sprawl in the country at New Addington." St Mary's Church is "as surprising a survival for Surrey as the village: Simple village-Norman, fairly gently restored, with new chancel arch and simple new bell-turret. All stuccoed, and not a window later than 1250. Nave and chancel c.1100." Basil Cracknell in 'A Portrait of Surrey' writes about Farleigh - "My favourite oasis is Farleigh, with its tiny Norman church of St Mary's, damaged badly by fire in 1964 but still standing, as it has stood for 850 years, the smallest and one of the oldest churches in Surrey." Farleigh resisted its incorporation into Greater London in the 1960s so fiercely that it won its case and stayed in Surrey. "The essence of Farleigh's claim was that it was not an oasis at all, since it did not lie within the desert but belonged to the green country beyond it. Farleigh they said was rural in character, had been rural for all its recorded history, and wanted to stay that way - and they won their case." St Mary's Church can just be seen above the trees in the centre with the church car park on this side of the trees beyond the horses - see Link The Vanguard Way is just the other side of the fence on the left - see Link

Old Farleigh Road heading into Warlingham, in north east Surrey. The signs indicate that the speed limit changes to 30mph here

The Harrow pub in Warlingham, in north east Surrey.

A coal tax post alongside Old Farleigh Road in Warlingham, in north east Surrey.

The end of Daniels Lane.