Westhumble

Westhumble is a clustered village centred 2km north of Dorking in Surrey, England, in the parish of Mickleham but without a civil parish.The area is served by Box Hill & Westhumble railway station.At the start of a wide belt of country fields, meadows and National Trust landmarks, such as Box Hill and Polesden Lacey by its borders, Westhumble is a focus for ramblers, it was never a historic parish in its own right and remains a chapelry (and in old-fashioned language, a hamlet) of Mickleham, which is across the river, north-east. The Mole Gap Trail runs through the village, the North Downs Way runs perpendicular, crossing the Mole Gap Trail, less than 0.25mi to the south and the railway station is the southerly end point for the Thames Down Link from the river at Kingston upon Thames. Immediately starting from its western border on the River Mole are the main paths up the slopes of Box Hill.HistoryThe earliest archaeological evidence for human activity in the village is a large axe, typical of a "rough-out" axe produced during the Neolithic period, which was discovered in 1952 during building work in Burney Road. The discovery of a Flint Mine at East Horsley and flakes of flint found at Fetcham and Headley Heath of the same period, suggest that this part of the North Downs had been settled by the late Stone Age (10 000–3000 BC).