Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/188

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��before passing into the hands of the present tenant, Captain Harrison, R.N.

Aldhurst Farm, rather nearer to the village, is another ancient house, although of less consideration. It has evidently been extended and partially rebuilt more than once, but the nucleus is still that of an early 16th-century timber house, with very low ceil- ings and stone-slab roof. Inside, an old staircase and some good doors are to be seen. In the wooded bottom to the south-west several fine footprints of the iguanodon were found in grubbing up trees some years ago, and are now preserved here.

Taylor's is a picturesque house still retaining as a nucleus the timber open-roofed hall of mid- 14th- century date, and also an oak screen of roughly gouged-out timbers and moulded beams of the same exceptionally early date. There are good panelled rooms of later date, and the 1 5th, i6th, and 17th- century additions all present interesting features. Externally most of the timber construction is masked by modern tile hanging.

Greenes is another ancient house, once much larger, and still showing a timber hall about 1 8 ft. wide internally, divided up at a later date into floors, but still boasting some fine massive oak trusses and story-posts, with moulded arched braces and king-posts over. A smaller hall, about 1 5 ft. wide, detached from the other, and now used as a stable, appears to be but a fragment of a range of timber buildings. It also has a series of huge roof-trusses of king-post construction and arched braces of four-centred shape. These two halls appear to be of late 14th-century and early 15th-century date respectively.

Osbrooks, formerly Holbrooks and Upbrooks, after passing through the farm-house stage, has of late years been carefully restored, and now presents a most interesting example of the country gentle- man's house of the end of the l6th or an early part of the iyth century. It is mostly of timber framing, filled in with herring-bone brickwork. Its tiled roofs and good groups of chimneys, the many gables with their barge-boards, the mullioned win- dows, and the porch with open balustrades to the sides, combine to produce, with the wooded glen and winding stream in the rear, a most picturesque whole.

Bonet's or Bonnet's Farm is another ancient house of quite exceptional beauty and interest, although shorn of its ancient proportions. The present front has been modernized, but in the rear are two fine gables, projecting with brackets over the ground and first floors. These show timber framing, with an oriel window, stone-slab roofs, leaded glazing, and two exceptionally good brick chimneys.

Other old farm-houses and cottages in the parish, such as Pleystowe and Ridge, are well worthy of examination for the features of antiquity to be found in them ; and in Capel village a picturesque piece of half-timber work, with a good chimney and roof, may be noted among others. There are now two old inns the Crown Inn, origi- nally a farm-house, adjoining the churchyard on the south, and the ' King's Head.' The former has half-timber gables, with pendants at the apex of the barge-boards, on one of which is carved ' W S. 1687.'

Broomells is now a new house. The name, as Brome, occurs in a charter of the 1 3th century. 4 "

��It is not to be confounded with Broome Hall, the seat of Sir A. Hargreaves Brown, bart. The latter large house, in a commanding situation under Leith Hill, was mainly built by Mr. Andrew Spottiswoode, the king's printer, circa 1830. It was afterwards the seat of Mr. Labouchere, and then of Mr. Pennington, M.P. for Stockport. Sir A. Hargreaves Brown made extensive additions to it. It used to be called Lower House, but it is mentioned by Aubrey as Broomhall.

Kitlands, the property of Mr. A. R. Heath, is on the site of a farm which is mentioned in the Court Rolls in 1437. The house was reconstructed by degrees by Mr. Serjeant Heath, who bought it in 1824, and by Mr. D. D. Heath, his son, uncle to the present owner. But part of the interior is the old timber building of circa 1500. The place was held by the Bax family from 1622 to 1824, a very unusually long tenure of the same farm by a yeoman family, notwithstanding many vague statements of other immemorial holdings.

Arnolds, formerly called Arnold's Beare, was rebuilt by Mr. Bayley in 1885. Mrs. Bayley, his widow, has recently sold it. The Arnolds were also land- holders in Betchworth. Beare, now called Beare- hurst, the seat of Mr. Longman, and Beare Green, near Holmwood Station, show that the name Beare, which occurs in the Court Rolls of the I4th century, was widely spread. A Walter de la Bere had land in Ewekene (Capel) in 1263.*

Lyne House, the seat of Mr. Evelyn Broadwood, is a property bought by Mr. James Tschudi Broad- wood circa 1792.

On the border, within a few yards of Sussex, is Shiremark Mill, built in 1774 out of the materials of the old Manor Mill at Mill House on Clark's Farm. 6

Coldharbour is an ecclesiastical district formed in

1850. The church and the principal cluster of cot- tages stand in Capel parish. The body of the village is still called The Harbour, but Crocker's Farm and the cottages opposite used to be called Little Anstie, as opposed to Anstie Farm (vide supra).

The church is higher above the sea than any other in Surrey over 800 ft. and the sea is visible from the churchyard, through Shoreham Gap. The old road from London to Arundel ran through Cold- harbour. The original line below the church was in the ravine at the lower side of the common, quite impassable for wheels. In the old title deeds it is referred to as the King's High Way. The village is as picturesque as any in England. On a stone in a cottage wall, in Rowmount, are the initials 'J. C. (John Constable) 1562." The stone has been placed in a later wall. Constable's Farm was the house on the road a few yards higher up the hill, which may very well date from before that time.

The endowed school was founded by Mr. Robert Barclay of Bury Hill before 1819, with 50 a year from Government stock. It was further supported by subscriptions, and enlarged in 1846, 1851, 1860, and 1888. It was a free school from the beginning, but the endowment used to provide not only pay for the teacher, but a gown and bonnet for the girls, and smock-frock and boots for the boys annually. The infant school was built by Mr. John Labouchere in

1851. It was endowed by his family after his death

��Bray ley, Hilt. Surr. v, 73.

��6 Assize R. 47 Hen. Ill, Surr. 'J-

��R. Deeds in possession of late Rev. T. R.

O'Fflahertie of Capel.

��136

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