Elstead is a settlement near the old lighthouse where John seeks solitude after leaving society. Seen from the lighthouse across the heath, its fourteen-story tower marks the modern world’s presence in a landscape whose woods, ponds, and open stretches offer John a rare escape from crowds.

Setting and Surroundings

Elstead stands beyond the lighthouse on the southern side of the Surrey landscape, rising above woods and open heath in the hazy distance. Its tower is fourteen stories high, a conspicuous sign of settlement against the surrounding country. Puttenham, a modest village of nine stories, lies in the valley between the Hog’s Back and the sandy hill supporting the lighthouse; it has silos, a poultry farm, and a small vitamin-D factory.

The countryside around the lighthouse is not wholly untouched by modern infrastructure. Helicopters continually hum and roar over Selborne, Bordon, and Farnham, after an air route was shifted westward to reduce the danger of collisions between two closely parallel flight lines. Elstead’s tower belongs to this populated, engineered geography, even as the heath immediately around the lighthouse can remain strikingly empty.

John’s View of Elstead

From the lighthouse, John sees Elstead across the intervening woods. Its tower is part of a wider prospect that also includes the chalk ridge of the Hog’s Back and the seven skyscrapers of Guildford. At first he grimaces at the sight of Guildford’s towers, but with time he becomes reconciled to them: at night they twinkle in geometric patterns or are floodlit, their beams pointing upward toward the sky.

Elstead helps define the tension in John’s chosen refuge. The landscape attracts him through its heather, gorse, firs, ponds, and birch trees, while the relative absence of visitors protects the solitude he wants. Though the lighthouse is only a short flight from the Charing-T Tower, people generally leave London for organized sports and have little reason to visit a place whose attractions are flowers and scenery. Elstead’s distant tower therefore registers the inhabited world without erasing the quiet of the heath around John’s retreat.