Silent Pool
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Silent Pool is a spring-fed lake at the foot of the
North Downs The North Downs are a ridge of chalk hills in south east England that stretch from Farnham in Surrey to the White Cliffs of Dover in Kent. Much of the North Downs comprises two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs): the Surrey Hills a ...
, about east of Guildford in Surrey. It is managed, together with the nearby Newlands Corner, by the Surrey Wildlife Trust, within the privately owned Albury Estate. The outflow from Silent Pool runs into a second, adjacent, lake, Sherbourne Pond, created in the mid-seventeenth century. In turn the outflow from the Sherbourne Pond feeds the Sherbourne Brook, a tributary of the Tilling Bourne.


Geology

The Silent Pool Spring is the only major
spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season) Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of ...
source in the scarp slope of the North Downs between the Wey and
Mole Mole (or Molé) may refer to: Animals * Mole (animal) or "true mole", mammals in the family Talpidae, found in Eurasia and North America * Golden moles, southern African mammals in the family Chrysochloridae, similar to but unrelated to Talpida ...
valleys. It discharges between 1 and 10 megalitres (220,000 to 2.2 million gallons) per day into Silent Pool; and the lake water exhibits a blue opalescence characteristic of
chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...
spring-fed ponds. In prolonged dry periods, Silent Pool has been known to dry up, although the lower Sherbourne Pond has not. The Silent Pool lies on lower chalk, observable at the northern end of the pond. Sherbourne Pond lies mainly on
gault The Gault Formation is a geological formation of stiff blue clay deposited in a calm, fairly deep-water marine environment during the Lower Cretaceous Period (Upper and Middle Albian). It is well exposed in the coastal cliffs at Copt Point in ...
clay, while its northern end and the stream connecting the two ponds lies on
upper greensand Greensand or green sand is a sand or sandstone which has a greenish color. This term is specifically applied to shallow marine sediment that contains noticeable quantities of rounded greenish grains. These grains are called ''glauconies'' and c ...
. Blocks of the upper greensand can be found in the stream bed: a pale grey siltstone which weathers to brown and is harder than the chalk. A survey in 2006 suggested that the southern half of the pool was dug out at the same time as Sherbourne Pond (1662), while the northern half is of natural origin. It appears that this natural half of the pond was made deeper and lined with
clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...
when the southern half (lined with clay and heather) was added.


Access

The pool has been a popular site for visitors since Victorian times. It has a car park, directly on the A25, and a footpath leading to a viewing platform and a walkway which encircles the pool. It can also be reached by walkers on the
North Downs Way The North Downs Way National Trail is a long-distance path in southern England, opened in 1978. It runs from Farnham to Dover, past Guildford, Dorking, Merstham, Otford and Rochester, along the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Be ...
via a direct path descending the slope. In recent years Silent Pool came under attack by the invasive weed
Crassula helmsii ''Crassula helmsii'', known as swamp stonecrop or New Zealand pigmyweed, is an aquatic or semiterrestrial species of succulent plant in the family Crassulaceae The Crassulaceae (from Latin ''crassus'', thick), also known as the stonecrop fam ...
. The weed was thought to have been introduced to the pool by someone tipping the contents of an unwanted aquarium into it. If it had been allowed to grow unchecked, it would have changed the Silent Pool and Sherbourne Pond drastically, “leaving nothing but a green spongy mass, devoid of life”. Work has been undertaken to eradicate the weed and restore the waters at a cost of £49,960.


Distillery

Since 2014, water from the Silent Pool has been used in the production of gin on a site adjacent to the pool. A vintage wood-fired steam boiler was restored to power the hand-built copper
still A still is an apparatus used to distill liquid mixtures by heating to selectively boil and then cooling to condense the vapor. A still uses the same concepts as a basic distillation apparatus, but on a much larger scale. Stills have been use ...
, made for Silent Pool Distillers by the Arnold Holstein Company in the Lake Constance area of Germany.


In popular culture

Silent Pool is considered by some to be a sacred site. It is linked to a
folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...
tale that says King John on his horse abducted a woodcutter's daughter who was forced into the deep water and drowned. According to the legend, the maiden can be seen at midnight. This legend appears to have come from a book written by
Martin Farquhar Tupper Martin Farquhar Tupper (17 July 1810 in London – 29 November 1889 in Albury, Surrey) was an English writer, and poet, and the author of '' Proverbial Philosophy''. Early life Martin Farquar was the eldest son of Dr. Martin Tupper (1780–18 ...
in 1858 called Stephan Langton or The Days Of King John (A Romance of the Silent Pool). The story is based on real historic characters including
Stephen Langton Stephen Langton (c. 1150 – 9 July 1228) was an English Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and Archbishop of Canterbury between 1207 and his death in 1228. The dispute between King John of England and Pope Innocent III over his ...
, a former archbishop of Canterbury, and King John. In December 1926, when crime writer Agatha Christie disappeared, it was feared that she had drowned in the Silent Pool after her abandoned car was discovered at nearby Newlands Corner. The lake was admired by the poet
Alfred Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
.


References

{{authority control LSilent Lakes of Surrey Nature reserves in Surrey