Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 7.djvu/97

 George Atwood, his brother, thereupon became entitled, and dying in 1722, the estate passed to his son John. He died in 1759 without issue, and by his will devised his estates, after the death of his wife, to his cousin Thomas Wigsell, an attorney of New Inn, London, who died in 1778, and was succeeded by his nephew Atwood Wigsell, son of the Rev. Atwood Wigsell, Rector of the parish. This Atwood died unmarried, whereupon his brother, the Rev. Thomas Wigsell, succeeded. On his death, in 1805, without issue, his sister Susanna Wigsell held the property for her life. She died in 1807, and was succeeded by Atwood Wigsell Taylor, who assumed the name and arms of Wigsell, in pursuance of the will of the Rev. Thomas Wigsell. He died at an early age in 1821, and six weeks after his death was born his son and successor Atwood Dalton Wigsell, the present owner.

It remains now to notice Sanderstead Court, the residence of Col. Wigsell, and the principal object of interest in the place. It is clear, I think, that the abbots of Hide had a house attached to the manor. In some notes furnished me by an old resident, it is stated that there was an old monastery in the parish founded in the reign of King John, that the old well of 350 feet or more in depth, which still exists, was within the precincts, and that traces of the foundations can be seen in a dry summer; that it stood in the corner of the park, not far from the new farmhouse, and south-west of Sanderstead Court; that at the Dissolution a manor-house was built out of the materials of it; that it. went by the name of Sanderstead Place, and was pulled down about the end of the last century. On this same subject Miss Russell, an old lady of ninety-two, formerly of Sanderstead, and now living at Croydon, states that it was called 'the Place' House, and was a large old family residence by the well; that the last resident was Captain Mercer, who had married Mrs. Wigsell's sister, and that it was pulled down when she was quite young.

This approaches very nearly to the truth. It does not appear that there was ever a monastery; but no doubt, there was an old grange belonging to the abbey