River Mole earth, about a mile from "Darking" in "Surrey", and after some two miles sees the light againe, which to be certaine hath been affirmed by Inhabitants thereabout reporting triall made of it. John Milton (c. 1562–1647) described the river as In a similar vein, Alexander Pope (1688–1744) wrote in his poem "Windsor Forest" (first published 1713) Robert Bloomfield (1766–1823) writes the following lines about the Mole Valley in his 1806 poem "Wild Flowers". Extract from "The River Mole or Emlyn Stream" by Mary Drinkwater Bethune, which was published in 1839. The major tributaries of the River Mole are the Ifield
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