e West, and attacks on
London from the Surrey side--its invulnerable side--belong to almost
every century of London's history. But the great Surrey battle, which
belongs to Ockley under Leith Hill, is of the battles of long ago, dim
and hazy in the mist of centuries, fearful with legends of blood in
rivers, and warriors laid in swathes like mown corn. Even now, country
tradition asserts, the rain that sweeps down Leith Hill sends the
rainpools red in the plain below. The great battle of Ockley was fought
when the Danes came two hundred and fifteen years before Harold fell at
Hastings. They had sailed across to Kent, the historian says, with three
hundred and fifty large ships, and had driven in Ethelstan, who was king
of Kent, Sussex, Essex, and Surrey, under his father Ethelwulf. They
sacked Canterbury, and went up the Thames to London; there they beat in
Beorhtwulf, king of the Mercians, and before them lay but one great
town, Winchester, unsacked. Down they swept over the Thames, and out of
his own country, Ethelwulf, of Wessex, overlord of the beaten Ethelstan
and Beorhtwulf, came to meet them. Up the great Stone Street, the Roman
road that runs as straight as a die from Chichester, he marched, and lay
across the front of his enemy, clear of the deep forest that spread
south of Ockley. The Danes came on. Perhaps they rested a night in the
old British camp on Anstiebury Hill, perhaps they swept straight on:
battle was joined "hard by Ockley wood." Local tradition, always apt to
associate notable deeds with easily marked places, makes the scene of
the battle Ockley Green; but the armies could not have seen each other
on the low ground, which must have been half swamp, half undergrowth.
They fought, no doubt, on the higher ground near Leith Hill. The
slaughter was prodigious; "blood stood ankle deep," and the day ended
with the great body of the Danes dead on the hills, and the rest flying
where they could along the roads and through the woods. Probably not a
Dane got away alive. It was a wonderful victory.

To-day the peace that broods over Ockley is born of wooded parks and
sunlit spaces. Ockley Green must be one of the largest in Surrey, and I
think is the prettiest of all. Along its western side runs a row of
noble elms, bordering the road, and under the shade of the elms an old
inn. This road is actually part of the Stone Street up which Ethelwulf
marched against the Danes; and it would be hardly possible to devise