and the village of Grayswood is to the north of Haslemere town. Geology The oldest outcrops in the civil parish are of Weald Clay, which comes to the surface to the east of Grayswood, where the young tributaries of the River Arun have eroded the overlying strata. A Weald Clay sandstone is also exposed in the same area. The Atherfield Clay lies above the Weald Clay and is exposed as an outcrop north of Grayswood and also in the railway cutting, west of the station. The majority of Haslemere and Shottermill lie on the Hythe Beds of the Lower Greensand and the spring line, where the tributaries of the Wey and Arun rise, is on the junction between this permeable layer and the impermeable Atherfield Clay below. The gravel found in the river valleys is thought to have been deposited during the penultimate ice age and is composed of rock fragments of local origin. Much of the soil in the civil parish is free-draining, very acidic, sandy, loamy and of low fertility. To the east of Haslemere town and Graywsood, the soil is loamy and clayey, and is of low permeability. History Early history The earliest evidence for human activity in the Haslemere area is from the Neolithic. Flints dating from 4000 to 2400 BCE were discovered during archaeological surveys conducted prior to the construction of the Hindhead Tunnel. There may have been a settlement in the area in the mid-late Bronze Age and a Romano-British cemetery was discovered on the site of Beech Road, to the north of the town centre, at the start of the 20th century. Governance Neither Shottermill nor Haslemere are directly mentioned in Domesday Book, but the land on which the two settlements are now located was divided between the Farnham and Godalming Hundreds respectively. The south western corner of Surrey is thought to have been sparsely populated in the 11th century, but it is possible that some of the mills listed under the entry for Farnham, were located on the Wey in the Shottermill area. The first indication of a settlement at Haslemere is from 1180, when there is a record of a "Chapel of Piperham". The chapel belonged to the Parish of Chiddingfold, part of the manor of Godalming and is thought to have been either on or close to the site of the current St Bartholomew's Church. There may also have been