Winterfold Forest is a wooded area of the broadest plateau of the western
Greensand Ridge
The Greensand Ridge, also known as the Wealden Greensand is an extensive, prominent, often wooded, mixed greensand/sandstone escarpment in south-east England. Forming part of the Weald, a former dense forest in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, it r ...
in
Surrey
Surrey () is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant ur ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
. It blends seamlessly into the Hurt Wood or Hurtwood.
Geography
Hurt Wood is that part of the forest in greater
Shere
Shere is a village in the Guildford district of Surrey, England east south-east of Guildford and west of Dorking, centrally bypassed by the A25. It is a small still partly agricultural village chiefly set in the wooded ' Vale of Holmesdale' ...
parish and associated with
Peaslake and the other even smaller southern settlements of that parish traditionally defined as "
hamlets
A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. Its size relative to a parish can depend on the administration and region. A hamlet may be considered to be a smaller settlement or subdivision or satellite entity to a lar ...
". Otherwise the forest has many footpaths and bridleways and the springs that are the sources of streams including of
Cranleigh Waters
The Cranleigh Waters or Bramley Wey is a tributary of the River Wey in Surrey.
Course
The Cranleigh Waters or Bramley Wey rises at a source close to the sources of two tributaries, the Thornhurst Brook and Coneyhurst Gill in the rural north of ...
, but being mainly of Greensand soil, which is chiefly a form of
sandstone
Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks.
Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicat ...
which is permeable and underlain by in most places a layer of gravel and flint stones followed by clay. The soil where most sandy supports pineferous trees, gorse, bracken, ferns and fungi only.
[Cranfield University National Soil Resources Institute]
/ref>
It includes the fifth and sixth highest points in Surrey, in the highest and most wooded part of the parish of Ewhurst, Pitch Hill and The Warren, at 257 and 251 metres above sea level respectively.
Retrieved 2015-03-06
Its nearest settlements other than the most remote smallholdings and woodland cottages of Shere are
Farley Green and
Ewhurst.
References
External links
Panoramic picture of a part of the forestWinterfold / Hurtwood Information Sign
Forests and woodlands of Surrey
Protected areas of Surrey
Cranleigh
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