Silent Pool
| Silent Pool | |
|---|---|
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| Location | Surrey |
| Coordinates | 51°13′35.5″N 0°28′57.3″W / 51.226528°N 0.482583°WCoordinates: 51°13′35.5″N 0°28′57.3″W / 51.226528°N 0.482583°W |
| Primary inflows | spring |
| Basin countries | United Kingdom |
Silent Pool is a spring-fed lake at the foot of the North Downs, about 6.5 kilometres (4.0 mi) 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.
Silent Pool is considered by some to be a sacred site. It is linked to a folklore 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 Tupper 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, a former Archbishop of Canterbury and King John.
In December 1926, when crime writer Agatha Christie infamously disappeared, it was feared that she had drowned in the Silent Pool after her car was discovered at nearby Newlands Corner.
The lake was admired by the poet Alfred Tennyson.
The Silent Pool Spring is the only major spring source in the 10.5 miles (16.9 km)-long scarp slope of the North Downs between the Wey and Mole 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 spring-fed ponds. In prolonged dry periods, Silent Pool has been known to dry up, although the lower Sherbourne Pond has not.
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