Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/100

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��Witley Park was in the hollow, east of Hindhead and south of the road called Park Lane. The whole property is still called Witley Park.*

The ancient cottages near the church are very picturesque. The White Hart Inn may be of 1 6th- century date, though it has been restored externally. In Milford and in Brook there are also old cottages. Near Stroud are the remains of a moat, where possibly the lodge of Witley or Ashurst Park once stood. Leman Lane, an old road on the eastern boundary of Lea Park, possibly is a very old right of way, retaining its characteristic name, and nature, of the muddy way.

The Witley Institute was built by Mr. John Foster in 1883. It contains a good reference library of 240 volumes, and a lending library of over 700 volumes.

On Witley Comn^n is a moated barrow of consid- erable size, apparently undisturbed. 4 Other barrows are said to have existed, and to have been opened, but no record is known of their contents.

Neolithic implements and flakes are fairly com- mon. An Anglo-Saxon gold ring of curious make has been found at Witley.'

The ecclesiastical parish of Milford was separated from Witley in 1844. The village is about a mile and a half south of Godalming. The parish is traversed by the London and Portsmouth road and by the Portsmouth line of the London and South Western Railway, which has a station there.

Milford House, the seat of Mr. R. W. Webb, J.P., is a substantial brick house of the style of Queen Anne's reign. It was built by Thomas Smith, who succeeded to the property in 1705. His daughter

��Mary married Philip Carteret Webb, from whom Mr. R. W. Webb is descended.

In and around the hamlet of Milford are a number of old houses and cottages. One, a farm-house, with a fine old yew tree in front, has a large roof of steep pitch over the centre, which covered the hall, and a gabled wing of slight projection at either end, in which both the upper story and the gable-end over- hung. Its timber-framed construction is now hidden by plaster, and the barge boards of the gables are plain. The arms of Paine quartered with an unknown coat are in a window. The window-frames appear to be 17th-century insertions in some cases, but one at least of the chimneys is original. The general date of this house may be about 1500.

At Mousehill, to the west of Milford, is a fine old brick manor-house of 17th-century date, with a large chimney at either end having crow-stepped set-offs, and there is some curious panelled work in brick, the window heads with shouldered-arches under a string- course being very unusual.

At Milford is a small Congregational Chapel opened in 1902.

W1TLEY M4NOR was a possession of MANORS Earl Godwin, and after the Conquest was among the lands of Gilbert son of Richer (Richerius) de Aquila, 6 whose grandfather Engenulf de Aquila had accompanied William the Conqueror and fell at the battle of Hastings.' Gilbert's son Richer demanded his father's lands in England ; these were at first refused him, but were temporarily restored upon his invoking French aid. For his complicity in

���Vide infra.


 * Surr. Arch. Coll. xviii, p. xix.

��WITLEY : COTTAGES SOUTH-EAST OF THB CHURCH

" Ordericui Vital!*, Hist.Eccl. (Duchesne),

��s y.C.H. Surr. i, 271. 6 y.C.H. Surr. \, 323*.

62

��501.

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