[2] The site is a steep hill, which is ancient woodland, although there are few very old trees because until the railways made cheap coal available, the timber was used for fuel.

On the lower slopes there is a diverse community of plants dominated by oak and hazel on rich soils overlying chalk.

The top is mainly bare of trees, with rounded pebbles made when the area was the base of shallow seas in the Eocene epoch around 50 million years ago.

In the late sixteenth century its then owner, Sir Olliphe Leigh of Addington, sold it to John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the late nineteenth century Croham Hurst became a popular spot for visitors, few of whom knew that it was not public property.