eks in the year, when the races come round. For the other fifty
weeks Epsom is a quiet town of villas, once a village, now nearly a
suburb like Esher or Weybridge. Lord Rosebery sometimes lives near the
town, at Durdans, and deplores the large numbers of lunatics who are
brought to live near the town always. But Epsom is only occasionally
ruffled by the lunatics, and has developed a dangerously good train
service.

Epsom has the widest and breeziest main street of any Surrey town, and
you do not guess the reason until you read the history of the town
pretty closely. The story of Epsom, until the two great races that
belong to its downs were founded over Lord Derby's wine, is the story of
its wells. Before Epsom Salts there was hardly an Epsom to give them a
name. There may have been a tiny village where the church stands, but
that would be all; the rector preached to a few cottagers. Then, one hot
summer day in 1618, the lucky thing happened. Henry Wicker, trying to
water his cattle on the common, found a small hole with a spring in it;
he enlarged it, and took the cattle to the water, but could not make
them drink. Then the doctors were told about it. They used it first, as
Pownall the local historian tells you, "as a vulnerary and abstersive,"
and healed wounds with it; then some labourers accidentally drank it,
and Epsom's fortune was made. The doctors agreed; Epsom salts were
bitter, diluent, absorbent, soluble, cathartic--everything that salts
should be. In two years the wells were enclosed with a wall; in twenty
years France and Germany had heard of Epsom, and distinguished
foreigners obediently paced the common. But the great days were still to
come. As yet few buildings had grown up close to the Wells, merely "a
shed to shelter the sickly visitors." Then came the year 1670, when
Charles II gave Barbara Villiers his palace of Nonsuch two miles away.
She, as careless of a king's gift and as avaricious as a king's mistress
should be, turned the palace into cash, and out of its demolished walls
the local builder piled up houses by Epsom Wells.

One of Epsom's inns was already built, the King's Head--perhaps the Old
King's Head near the church, or an inn on the same site. Pepys was there
in 1667, and gives us a glimpse of Nell Gwynne, though she was at Epsom
to amuse herself, and was not one of Pepys's party. Pepys went on July
14th (Lord's day); he got up at four in the morning, and talked to Mrs.
Turner downstairs