A HISTORY OF SURREY It does not require a close examination of dialect and feature among the present inhabitants of Surrey to appreciate the extent of London's expansion to the south ; but it is by this method that the dwellers in the remoter districts of the county may be provisionally classified, and their early predecessors connected with others who were their neigh- bours before the existing borders of the county were adopted. Before the forest was cleared and the lowlands drained, the inhabitants of this part of Britain must have been distributed mainly in accordance with the nature of the ground. It may safely be assumed that while the low-lying areas near the Thames would be liable to flood, the isolated eminences that are yet to be recognized in north Surrey afforded an unassailable site for habitation ; and there is archaeological evidence to show that the river banks were by no means deserted by the ancient Britons. After four centuries of Roman administration the Thames was no doubt more under control, and skilful engineers had carried highways through marsh and forest in several directions ; but the neighbourhood of the Wandle and the lower valleys of the Mole and Wey were then as now subject to floods, and it is rather on the Chalk formation to the south and on the Greensand formation beyond it that traces of Teutonic settlements within the county should be looked for. While geographical considerations would therefore suggest a search for relics of our pagan predecessors all along the southern border of the county, the heights of Sydenham and Forest Hill, of Norwood and Streatham might also be expected to furnish some traces of occupation by strangers who may well have entered the county from the north-east by way of the Thames. The expanse of London Clay around these groups of hills would however discourage further occupation to the east, while the soil in the north-western corner of the county would not support an agricultural or a pastoral people. This area was described in 1859 by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, then rector of Eversley, who called attention to the surroundings of the Roman road which crosses the bare and barren formation of Bagshot Sand, with clays on either side of it, which he believed to have been once covered with deep oak forest. 1 Such then being the physical data on which must be based any reconstruction of the history of Surrey during the early Anglo-Saxon period, mention may now be made of those slight and dubious statements on the subject to be met with in the early chronicles. Not that any attempt can here be made to trace in more than outline the fortunes of the district during the centuries of obscurity that followed the with- drawal of the Roman officials. All that is aimed at in the present chapter is to examine and compare the actual relics that have so far come to light, in order to estimate the material condition and political connexion of the pagan or semi-pagan settlers who made, but omitted to record, the early history of our district. It is natural to speak first of the battle fought at Wibbandune in 568, a few years after the accession of the young King Aethelbearht to 1 Society of Antiquaries, Proceedings, iv. 282, ser. I. 256
