River Mole on the future cleanliness of the Mole was had by the House of Lords involving a member of the South-East Strategic Committee, of the Thames Conservancy (succeeded by the Environment Agency) and four others. In this it was said "...I can see no future for [The Mole]. The Mole Valley has been polluted. The Mole where I used to tickle trout in my youth is a drain, and it will remain a drain." Rebuttals included that the Mole is a "charming Surrey steam" and "If Lord Lytton went to fish in the River Mole—and there are still angling clubs there—he
River Mole is thought to have merged with the River Wey near Byfleet and then flowed in a north-easterly direction via Richmond to meet the proto-Thames near Ware in Hertfordshire, (today the Mole and Wey are less than apart at their closest point near Painshill Park). During the Middle Pleistocene period, a large ice sheet built up across much of the East of England, reaching as far south as St Albans and Chelmsford, blocking the path of the proto-Thames. Glacial meltwater from the Anglian ice sheet, caused the Thames to divert southwards and flood the valley of the Mole–Wey river, thus adopting