as gone
for wanton throwing into the past what the past has left, and the
little Town Hall will continue to slow down the traffic and draw
visitors to the High Street, it is to be hoped, for many years to come.
The town corporation have done better for themselves than to pull down
the old Town Hall. They have set up some modern buildings for town
business, which for good work in good material are as excellent a modern
addition as could have been made to any old town.

Godalming's history, like Guildford's and Wonersh's, has been largely
the history of the wool industry. It was Godalming's careless trust in
the stability of its contractor, Samuel Vassall, which dealt the first
and shrewdest blow at its business, as we saw at Guildford. But
Godalming kept its head higher than the other two for a time. In Bowen's
map of Surrey, drawn in 1749, the printer has put a little side-note
explaining Godalming's capabilities to the curious, and you read that
for the manufacture of clothing, "it is the most considerable town in
the county. The sorts are mixed Kerseys, and Blue ones, for the Canary
Islands, which for their Colours, can't be matched in any other Part of
England." But that is not all; Bowen adds an afterthought--"Here is
plenty of good fish, especially Pykes. Here are two or three Paper
Mills, and three Corn Mills." So Godalming had food and clothing too.
She still markets woollen goods, but the pykes, I fear, gave out long
ago. Men fish in the Wey at Godalming as they fish at Guildford and
Weybridge, but they seldom catch a pyke, I know, for I have watched
them.

Fish have had other associations with Godalming besides swimming in the
Wey. Miss Gertrude Jekyll, who has written so much of Surrey gardens,
and has her own wonderful garden at Munstead not much more than a mile
away, has described in her fascinating book, _Old West Surrey_, the
carrying of fish for the London market from the seaport towns through
Godalming. It was taken in special fish-vans. "They were painted yellow
and had four horses. But some of it, as well as supplies for other
inland places, was carried in little carts drawn by dogs. The dogs were
big, strong Newfoundlands. Teams of two or four were harnessed together.
The team of four would carry three to four hundredweight of fish,
besides the driver. The man would 'cock his legs up along the sharves,'
as an old friend describes it, and away they would go at a great rate.
They not only went as fas