[3] Today, with wooded areas and wide open fields, Banstead Downs are predominantly used for walks by local residents.

Other secondary burials, in which were found two intact skeletons with dislocated necks, suggest that gallows victims were also buried nearby.

Banstead Downs are recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086, when they were the property of Bishop Odo, the half-brother of William the Conqueror.

The sheep-cropped Downs turf and dry chalky subsoil adapted itself admirably to sporting pursuits; vast crowds assembled for foot and horse races, prize fights, wrestling, hawking and hunting.

[citation needed] When the Earl of Holland's ill-contrived royalist rising of 1648 took place at Kingston, the original plan had included a muster of adherents, as for a horse race, on Banstead Downs.

When the great question of the exclusion of James, Duke of York from the succession was before the House of Lords, in 1678, the Duke of Ormonde wrote to Colonel Cooke that he tried to delay the first reading by pointing out the thinness of the House owing to a Dog Match at Hampton Court, and a Horse Match on Banstead Downs.

Henry Saunders was made keeper of a portion of the Downs at £30 a year under The Protectorate, as a reward for trying to seize a highwayman, and in 1668 a gamekeeper was appointed by the Duchy of Lancaster, at the same salary, to preserve hares and partridges.

In July 1731, The Grub-Street Journal reported: On tuesday Miss Worsley, Niece to the Lady Scawen, being out on Banstead Downs in an open Chaise, having a footman on horseback following, was attacked by one Highwayman, who shew'd his pistol after the usual greeting: the footman was disabled by the fright, but the young Lady struck at him with her whip several times, and company coming up, he thought fit to march off without any booty.

[8]In another account of a more successful robbery from May 1735: Last week, in the dusk of the Evening, a Gentleman and his Lady going down to Betchworth in Surrey in a Coach, were stopt in Potter's Lane, between Banstead Downs and Walton Heath, by a single Highwayman, who threatened to shoot the Coachman if he stirred, and robbed the Gentleman of a Silver Watch and some Money, and then rode off with his Booty in a great hurry.