The way I should choose for walking up Leith Hill from Dorking is by a valley opening about two miles west of the town, at which end is the Dorking station of the South-Eastern line. From the Box Hill station of this railway and the Dorking of the Brighton line, which puzzlingly adjoin one another beyond the other end, an omnibus plies to Westcott, by a pretty road past Bury Hill and Milton Heath, above that most picturesque old mansion, Milton Court.[A] From the Church on Westcott's sloping Green one holds on pretty straight by a lane joining the high-road near the gate of the Rookery, a mansion known as the home of Malthus, that reverend bogey of sentimentalists like Cobbett. His father before him was also a literary notability, and author of the "improvements" which made this demesne celebrated. One need not be shy of turning into the lordly avenue and by the rhododendron walks that lead up the ornamental waters of the Pipp Brook, for boards show a permitted way past the house, while, alas! on my last visit a placard at the gate bore the warning _Mene_, _Mene_, _Tekel_, _Upharsin_, a notice, to wit, that these choice grounds are destined to go the way of all eligible building sites within reach of infection by Cobbett's "wen." Above the house, one gets out of the park over a high bank, beyond which comes a change both of estate and watershed, for the Pipp Brook flows to the Mole, whereas the slopes westward drain into the Tillingbourne, tributary of the Wey.
[A] Not to confuse the reader with too many routes, I throw a very pleasant one into a footnote. Just before he reaches Westcott, from the road into it leads off, left, "Milton Street," a charming hybrid between park avenue and cottaged lane. Passing through an iron turnstile at the top of this, then presently, turning right over a plank bridge, he finds a long reach of meadow path which, in the same general direction, with a trend left, leads him over two stiles and up a slope to a fork of lanes. Across the road here, a stile marks the continuation of the path winding on to a lonely farm. Through the yard of this, he turns left on a track soon entering the woods, where its left branch in half an hour or so leads shadily to Coldharbour, while divergences a little to the right might (or might not) bring him in view of the tower.