Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/123

 BLACKHEATH HUNDRED

��BRAMLEY

��The country is well wooded. There are extensive roadside wastes, but no large commons. The land is agricultural. There is a water-mill, Bramley Mill, or Snowdenham Mill, worked by a tributary of the Wey, which flows from Hascombe into Bramley village, where it joins another stream which falls into the Wey below the railway bridge of the Brighton line. The mouth of this stream was utilized for the old Wey and Arun Canal, which here left the former river, and passed along the eastern verge of Bramley parish. This canal was virtually disused when the railway was opened in 1865, and was barely passable for a small boat above Bramley village in 1872, and is now quite blocked and dry in places. There is a station at Bramley on the Brighton line from Guild- ford to Horsham, opened in 1865.

A road from Guildford to Horsham passes through Bramley. A branch leads from the village to Has- combe and Dunsfold and Alfold.

Historically it is remarkable that Bramley, which

��Hooper, Woodrough of the Hon. E. P. Thesiger, Bramley Grange of Colonel Fox Webster, Nore of Colonel Godwin Austen, and Unstead Park of Mr. L. C. W. Phillips. Lord John Russell had a lease of the last named during Sir Robert Peel's ministry, when the Whigs were out of office.

The Parish Schools were built by Mrs. Sutherland in 1850, and enlarged in 1874, 1894, and 1901.

St. Catherine's School for Girls (Church of England middle class school) was built by subscription in 1885, and incorporated by charter with Cranleigh Boys' School in 1898. There is a handsome red- brick chapel in 1 3th-century style containing good painted glass, showing English and other female saints on opposite sides of the chapel.

In 1884 Brookwell and Graff ham were transferred from Dunsfold civil parish to Bramley, being before isolated parts of Dunsfold, and High Billinghurst was transferred from Bramley to Dunsfold. 1

The parish abounds in ancient houses. Bramley

���BRAMLEY : OLD HOUSES

��gave its name to the very extensive possessions of the Bishop of Bayeux in the neighbourhood, so that the manor of Bramley intruded into several neighbouring parishes of later date, was not itself a parish. What- ever the enumeration of population in Domesday may mean, Bramley is the third in order in the county, coming after only Southwark and Guildford. As is the case all over the dry soils of Surrey, a great many neolithic flint implements and flakes have been found. Some are in the Surrey Archaeological Society's museum at Guildford, some in the Charterhouse Museum.

The cemetery was made in 1851 by the late Mrs. Sutherland, and enlarged by the late Mr. Percy Ricardo in 1890. The Constitutional Hall, which includes a Conservative Working Men's Club, was opened in 1888. Thorncombe is the residence of Captain Fisher Rowe, Bramley Park of Colonel Ricardo, Snowdenham Hall of Mr. John Kinnersley

��East was the name both of a house and a manor ; the house is a three-gabled brick and stone building, nicely proportioned. Opposite to it is a far more interesting half -timber house, the details of which re- call Great Tangley manor-house, in the adjoining parish of Wonersh. Tangley Manor was rebuilt by Mr. Carrill in Elizabeth's reign. He was also lord of Bramley East. The date of the latter may be about 1560. The most valuable feature is a two-storied gabled staircase wing resembling those at Rake House and Shottermill, in which the timber framework is designed in squares, four quadrants of a circle being placed back to back within each square, the total effect being a pattern of intersecting squares and circles. The grouping of roofs and crow-stepped chimneys in this building is very picturesque.

At Nursecombe, an outlying hamlet, is an inter- esting old timber-framed house of the 1 6th century

��1 By Loc. Govt. Bd. Order, 16532, dated 24 Mar. Si

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