(Area: 1,542 square miles)
Essex is full of contrast. The southwest of the county has been swallowed up in the London conurbation, and the heavy industry which serves it, particularly on the lower Thames reaches. Along the Thames estuary new towns and modern housing developemtns have spread and are still spreading irresistably to produce almost a continuous line of occupation from London to Southend, linked with motorways and arterial roads. However beyond this urban zone Essex retains scenic countryside and charming villages. Epping Forest, though close to the London spread, has remained largely unspoiled.
The Essex coast, ragged, indented by river estuaries (the Colne, the Blackwater, the Crouch) and full of tidal marshes, with low islands off the coast, is ever changing, losing land to the North Sea or gaining it. Indeed Essex is bounded by water on all four sides. To the north its boundary with Suffolk is the Stour, to the south it follows the Thames down from Leamouth out into its estuary and the sea. The county's western boundary with Middlesex, is the River Lea.
Largely flat though it is, Essex rises in the northeast with low chalk hills and winding valleys, particularly around the Chishills near the Cambridgeshire boundary, beyond which the scarp plunges again at the county boundary.
(Area: 727 square miles)
Hertfordshire, particularly southern Hertfordshire, is much affected by its closeness to the Greater London conurbation, sprouting ubiquitous red brick housing developments and hostile trunk roads. Despite that though much of the county has remained rural and unspoilt.
The west of Hertfordshire rises into the edge of the Chilterns, with its typical small villages and beechwoods. From the Colne Valley's birch and blackthorn woodlands to the mixed farmlands of the bulk of the county are networks of footpaths for all to enjoy.
The county's most charming town is the city is St Albans. It stands on a hill overseen by St Albans Abbey, a very large and distinctive church, and a cathedral since 1877. St Albans has important Roman remains, of the city of Verulamium.
Hertford, the county town, combines the old market town with a busy modern outer town.
(Area: 1,555 square miles)
A county more full of history than any other, Kent lies at the southeasternmost point of Britain, and closest to Europe. The famous White Cliffs look out over the Straits of Dover, just 22 miles from the French coast. Kent is therefore the land which has greeted visitors for millennia, whether in war or in peace.
Kent's name is also the oldest. It derives from the Cantii, an ancient British tribe known to the Romans long before Caesar. Kent was a British kingdom before the Romans came and after them it soon became a Jutish kingdom.
Kent is known as the "Garden of England" for the richness and variety of its arable farming. Hop growing has been the traditional major agriculture of Kent, as the oast houses found throughout the county testify. There is coal mining in the east of the county.
The northwest of Kent, from Lewisham and Greenwich out to Bromley, is part of the Greater London conurbation, containing a great variety of townscapes. Within this area is Greenwich, home of the Greenwich observatory, the crosshairs of whose telescope define the prime meridian of the world. Until recently Greenwich was the home of the Royal Naval College (still a magnificent building) and its naval heritage is strong.
Rural Kent holds a great variety of landscape, from the North Downs, to the delightful Weald, down to the fertile solitudes of Romney, Denge, and Walland Marshes stretching inland from the south coast, and the Isle of Thanet in the northeast. Kent has numerous noteworthy castles, and more modern defensive works along the coast facing Europe.
The Cathedral City of Canterbury, where St Augustine established himself in 597, is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate of All England.
(Area: 758 square miles)
Suurey is a relatively small county but heavily populated.
The whole northeast of Surrey has been swallowed up beneath the Great London conurbation. In this area are numerous contiguous towns varying socially from the wealthy and exclusive to the more ordinary city neighbourhoods. In this area are Southwark, oppposite the City of London, home of a Cathedral and of much of the broadcast media; Lambeth, home of the Archbishop of Canterbury; Brixton; Wandsworth; and the wealthy towns of Richmond upon Thames and Kingston upon Thames. Richmond Palace, now demolished, was a favourite home of the Tudor monarchs, while Kingston has an older royal claim as the coronation place of several Anglo-Saxon kings.
Outside the contiguous towns of this part are towns which are themselves often largely commuter towns. Surrey's communter suburbs have become the essence of our understanding of "Suburbia".
In the very south of Surrey is Gatwick Airport, a gateway to London, and the consequent swathe of motorway corridor cutting through the farmland to meet the M25. The M25 itself, the London Orbital, is itself an unavoidable feature of the Surrey landscape, with the motorway and all the junctions, slip roads and related equipment slicing through and reshaping the outer suburbs.
Further from London the villages become smaller and very pleasant.
The North Downs, a range of fine chalk hills and downland, stretch across Surrey from Guildford into Kent. The Downs are a mixture of chalk, meadow and dense woodland. Box Hill provides a fine viewpoint over its sudden southern scarp slope. Further hills lie to the south, beautifully wooded in places. The highest point is Leith Hill, at 964 feet but with a manmade tower added to take it up to above 1,000 feet.
The brooks that run in the denes between the hills of Surrey have numerous beautiful villages along them.
The major rivers of Surrey are the Thames, which forms its who northern boundary, the Mole and the Wey. The Mole cuts through the Downs under Box Hill in a beautiful wooded valley. The Wey, further west, has several towns on its banks, including Guildford, the county town.
Guildford is a large market town with an attractive high street. Guildford is built in a notch in the hills where the Wey breaks through, and the roads of the county try to force the same gap. On either side the town climbs the slopes, precipitously on occasion. Some miles west, linked to Guildford by the Hog's Back ridge, is Farnham, a town with well-kept Tudor and Georgian buildings and a twelfth century castle one belonging to the Bishops of Winchester.
(Area: 1,458 square miles)
Sussex on the south coast is the county of the South Downs and the sea. Its coastline is more than 80 miles long, with sandy beaches almost unbroken along its whole length from Chichester Harbour to Camber Sands. The South Downs stretch almost the length of Sussex, from the Hampshire border to Beachy Head. Sussex was once a Kingdom, until overwhelmed and absorbed in the ninth century.
The coastal strip of Sussex squeezed between the South Downs and the English Channel are what makes "Sussex by the Sea" so famous. Here are a long string of beach resorts including Bognor, Worthing, Hove and of course Brighton, the most famous of them all. Past Beachy Head lie Eastbourne, Bexhill-on-Sea and Hastings.
Brighton is a most remarkable town. Its beachfront is the quintessential seaside resort, with two pleasure piers (albeit that one went on fire a few years ago leaving the Palace Pier without competition for now), and the rest of the town has a greater range of eccentric shops than anywhere else. In its heart is the higgledy-piggledy maze of The Lanes, and behind it the rampant indo-chinoiserie of King George IV's seaside palace, the Brighton Pavilion.
Hastings is a well-to-do seaside town and resort. Looming over it on are the remains of the castle William the Bastard built on landing on his way to become the Conqueror at Senlac Hill, now the village of Battle, 6 miles to the northwest.
Above the seaside towns the Downs rise sharply, and here Sussex shows some of its greatest glories. The chalk can make a great rolling wave, falling into the sea in spectacular white cliffs as at the Seven Sisters and Beachey Head. The open grassland is fine sheep country, or elsewhere the clay feeds rich broadleaved forest. Inland the Weald is a hilly district of woods and coombes, the remains of the great forest which covered much of the South East.
The inland towns of Sussex include the outer edge of the London commuter belt and Crawley, an industrial town serving Gatwick Airport just over the border in Surrey.
The county town is Chichester, which lies at the western end of Sussex. Chichester is a modest cathedral city, sitting on a Roman foundation (the Roman wall is still visble in places) and centred on a mediæval market cross. Chichester Harbour (a top yachting haven) is a large natural harbour, by far the biggest in Sussex and a contrast to the smooth stretch of the rest of the county's coast.