Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/179

 WOTTON HUNDRED

��ABINGER

��ABINGER

��Abinceborne (xi cent.) ; Abinworth, Abyngworth (xiii cent.) ; Abyngeworth (xv cent.).

Abinger is a parish bounded on the north by West Horsley and Effingham, on the east by Wotton and Ockley, on the south by the county of Sussex, on the west by Ewhurst and Shiere. It is 9 miles from north to south, and varies from i to \ mile from east to west. It contains 7,560 acres. The church is 8 miles south-west of Dorking. Abinger, Wotton, and Ockley were formerly much intermixed, but on 5 December 1879' a long outlying strip of Ockley between Abinger and Ewhurst, and two smaller portions of Ockley isolated in Abinger, were added to Abinger ; at the same date ' a part of Wotton on the Sussex border was added to Abinger. On 2 5 March 1883 * a very small curiously outlying piece of Ock- ham and two very small portions of Cranleigh and Ewhurst, near the eastern slope of Holmbury Hill, were added to Abinger. The northern portion of the parish is on the chalk downs, nearly 700 ft. above the sea. It runs southward over the narrow Upper Green Sand and Gault, and on the western side of Lei th Hill on the Lower Green Sand rises to over 800 ft. on High Ashes Hill. Abinger Church is 550 ft. above the sea, and is the highest old parish church in Surrey, except Tatsfield. The southern part of the parish sinks rapidly down to the Wealden Clay. The streams which rise in the parish flow to the Tillingbourne, which runs from Leith Hill to join the Wey at Shalford, and in the other direction to the head waters of the Arun. The parish is agricultural ; but at Abinger Hammer, on the Tillingbourne, was

��an iron forge. 4 The South Eastern Railway, Redhill and Reading branch, and the road from Dorking to Guildford traverse the northern part of the parish.

The ancient remains in Abinger, since the extension of the parish in 1879-83, are extensive and interest- ing. Neolithic flints, including a fine axe-head in private possession, have been found about Holmbury Hill. In a field near Abinger Hall a small Roman villa was found in 1877, with some coins of Con- stantine the Great and his family. The remains were left open, and Dr. Darwin used the Roman mosaic floors in situ for observations upon the work of earthworms, aided in his investigation by his niece, Miss Wedgwood of Leith Hill Place. The remains mostly perished from exposure, or were removed, and the remainder is now covered up again. It appeared to be a small country house, of no great pretensions.

On Holmbury Hill now in Abinger, but m Ockley when the old Surrey histories were written is a considerable earthwork, covering almost exactly 10 acres, 857 ft. above the sea. The four sides are nearly opposite the cardinal points. The western, northern, and eastern ditches make nearly three sides of a square, but the southern side follows the irregular contour of the steep slope of the hill. There are double banks and ditches on the north and west, where the ground outside is nearly as high as the in- side, and double, or treble, scarped banks on the south, obscured by diggings for sand. On the east, where the ground falls more rapidly, is a bank and ditch, with a low outside bank to it, but no ditch visible beyond. There is a poor water supply inside.

���1 Loc. Goyt. Bd. Order no. 9951. 3

��ABINGER : CROSSWAYS FARM HOUSE

' By Order no. 9951. * By Order no. 14281.

I2Q

��4 V.C.H. Surr. ii, 170-1.

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