Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/187

 WOTTON HUNDRED

��road running under or across this landslip from Cold- harbour to Leith Hill since 1896 a public road, before that date private (though a public footpath existed and a public bridle-track crossed it) is called Cockshott's Road, from a farm at the end of it ; and may fairly claim to be among the most picturesque roads in the south of England. The road slipped again badly about 1866. Capel parish is traversed by the main road from Dorking to Horsham, made in 1755, and the northern part by the old road from London to Arundel through Coldharbour, diverted since 1896 in its course from Coldharbour Common towards Ockley as a part of the transactions for open- ing Cockshott's Road. The London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway line to Portsmouth passes through the parish, in which lies Holmwood Station, opened in 1867. The parish is agricultural except for small brick and tile works. There are open commons at Beare Green, Misbrook's Green, Clark's Green, and Cold- harbour Common or Mosses' Hill, so called from the farm mentioned above. Many small pieces of waste were brought into cultivation early in the igth century.

There is one conspicuous work of antiquity in the parish now. On the hill called Anstiebury, formerly Hanstiebury, above Coldharbour, 800 ft. above the sea taken from Dorking and added to Capel by the Local Government Act of 1894 is a fin; prehistoric fortification. A nearly circular top of a hill has been surrounded by banks and ditches, triple upon the most exposed sides, but probably never more than single and now completely obliterated for a short space on the south, where the slope is nearly perpen- dicular, and where some old digging for sandstone seems to have gone on. The space inside the inner bank is about 1 1 acres, the shape an ellipse, roughly speaking. The hill is thickly planted. Mr. Walters, of Bury Hill, Dorking, owned it and began the planting which makes the shape of the works harder to see, in summer time especially. There is a damp spot inside where a water supply might have been found, and a good water supply in a shallow well in a cottage garden close outside it. The entrance to the north-east, where a grass road comes through the banks, is not the original entrance, but was made when part of the interior was cultivated, after Mr. Walters' time, for access by carts. The entrance was more probably on the north side, nearly opposite the gate which leads into the wood from Anstie Lane. A path here crosses the banks diagonally, flanked in its course by the innermost bank, here higher than elsewhere. Flint arrow-heads are said to have been found in or near the works, and also coins near it, but exact records are lacking.

The work is the largest of its kind in Surrey, next to the inclosure on St. George's Hill.

Anstie Farm, north-east of the hill on the high ground, 1 still held of the manor of Milton, is no doubt Hanitega, held of that manor in 1086, but it is in Dorking parish, not Capel. The land reached down to the Roman road eastward, and to the old road from Dorking westward. Either might be the ' highway ' which probably named the place.

The Stone Street enters Capel close by Bucking- hill Farm and leaves it close to Anstie Grange Farm. It has been traced for the entire length in the parish,

��CAPEL

and excavated by the writer. Two or three feet of the centre of the causeway were found intact in the ground, made of flints set in cement, as hard as a wall. It is unused now throughout, except for a very few yards near Beare, where it coincides with a private road. In the field opposite Beare its course is very visible. It goes up the hill in the copse called Round Woods in a slight cutting ; it leaves the new house called Minnick Fold on the right and Minnick Wood Farm on the left. It was excavated in Perry Field, the field beyond, which was not cultivated until after 1824.

Capel was the old Waldeburgh or Waleburgh borough of Dorking ; the borough or tithing in the Weald. It was a chapelry of Dorking till late 1 3th or early 141(1 century.'

The (National) school was built in 1826 and enlarged in 1872.

There is a Wesleyan chapel, and a Friends' meet- ing house.

The Society of Friends was early established, and is still well represented in Capel. The Bax family, who lived at Pleystowe and Kitlands at opposite ends of the parish, were among Fox's earliest converts, and are often mentioned in his Journal. The Steeres and Constables were other families of Friends. At Pley- stowe a meeting was held which was as old as any in the county ; a burying-ground was made on Richard Bax's ground there in 1672. The meeting house in Capel was built in 1725.*

There are a number of important old houses in and around the parish. One of these is still called Temple Elfande, or Elfold. The name belonged to a manor of the Templars transferred to the Hospitallers which had no preceptory attached. 4 The name Tour- nament Field, and other such names occurring in the 18th-century leases, are most likely an invention of the Cowpers in the 1 7th century. For tournaments, always forbidden by law, would not have been habitually held at a small preceptory, had there been one here, of which there is no evidence. The present house is in substance of mid- 16th-century date, and was built by Sir Richard Cowper. It is built of narrow red bricks and half-timber work, chiefly covered with tile-hanging, and with stone slabs on the roofs, and was evidently much larger at one time, as, besides an entire wing, now long since pulled down, foundations of out-buildings and of garden and courtyard walls are met with in digging. A curious feature outside is a cross-shaped loophole over the front entrance. Some excellent and rare encaustic tiles, 5$ in. square, have been dug up lately on the site, the patterns of which help to give the date of the house as not long after 1541. The character of the older chalk fireplaces inside con- firms this date. There are also the usual farm-house fireplace, with a great beam over the opening, of great width and depth, several large carved oak brackets supporting the beam-ends of the upper stories, the pilasters of a stone doorway, and many original doors of good design, besides panelling of several dates. The loftiness of some of the rooms on the first floor is noteworthy, as are the coved or cradled plaster ceilings of the upper passages. It had for long sunk to the position of a mere farm-house

��1 Manning and Bray, Surr. i, 570, curi- ously misdescribed Anstie Farm as ' at the

��foot of the hill southward,' confusing it with Kitlands.

9 See the account of the advowson.

135

��' Books lately in custody of Mr. Marsh of Dorking.


 * See Lewes MS. 200, foL 64.

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