[3] Along its course are half panoramas north and south separated by less than 100 m (330 ft) viewable from paths alongside the road which runs along the Hog's Back (the A31).

What is now designated the A31 along the Hog's Back originally formed part of a road leading directly from Winchester into Guildford High Street and from there into London.

However, the modern A31 adopts a slightly less direct and less steep approach to the High Street, and reorganisation of central Guildford into a roundabout road system centred on the Friary Centre (named after the medieval Dominican Friary there) has also broken up this direct stretch of road at the point that it reaches Guildford, where it ends at the junction with the A3.

When the idea of the Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury was popularised in the nineteenth century, a route over the southern slopes of the Hog's back, parallel with the ridgeway and running through Seale and Puttenham, was incorporated in its course.

Roughly midway along the ridge of the Hog’s Back between Farnham and Guildford (OS grid reference SU911483[4]), the human remains of at least six skeletons were discovered in 1935 when ground was being dug for a new water pipe.

[5] It is suggested by Rob Briggs that an elevated site at the junction of different hundreds and parishes was probably a site of general assembly and he identifies it with the place name Seven Ditches, found in the charter of King Caedwalla of Wessex confirming Farnham to the Bishop of Winchester (following the original grant by King Edward the Elder in 909 AD) (Latin vii dica); and also in a feoffment defining the Shoelands estate in about 1210 (Latin “Seuedic”); and also in the plea rolls of the 1263 Surrey Eyre, noting the hanging of one Robert de la Felde of Send at (Latin) “Seinedik”, translated Sendike or Seven Ditches.

[5] On the north side of the Hog's Back near the turn off to the village of Seale formerly stood a mansion known as Poyle Hill Lodge.

On the south side of the Hog's Back, a little to the east of Poyle Hill, another large mansion was built in 1873 called Great Down, attributed to Robert Kerr.

Also on the south side is Greyfriars House, a Grade II* listed Arts and Crafts style mansion built in 1896 by the renowned architect Charles Voysey.

The hillside adjacent to the A31 layby was a popular site for dogging (viewing or participating in sexual relations in a public place), but recently (2012–13) Guildford police and local residents are curbing these practices.

[12] The Hog's Back is formed of chalk of Cretaceous age, laid down in shallow seas from the deposition of the calcium carbonate skeletons of micro-organisms.