Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/197

 WOTTON HUNDRED

��DORKING

��St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church was rebuilt in 1895 chiefly at the expense of the Duke of Norfolk. The original temporary building had been erected by the Duchess of Norfolk in 1872. There is a Congre- gational chapel in West Street, representing an ancient congregation formed in 1662 under the Rev. James Fisher, the ejected minister of Fetcham, at whose house a small body of Nonconformists met in 1669, but the minister who was licensed in 1672 under the Indulgence was Mr. Feake, a Fifth Monarchy man, who had been imprisoned under the Protectorate. There was a congregation of Presbyterians under the Rev. John Wood, late rector of North Chapel in Sussex, meeting at his house. 11 This Presbyterian body does not seem to have survived," but after the death of Mr. Wood at an advanced age in 1693, became merged in the Congregational body. A chapel was built in 1719. In 1834 this was pulled down and rebuilt, and much improved and altered in 1874."

Congregational schools were built in 1858.

There is a Baptist chapel, built in 1869 ; and a Wesleyan chapel, built in 1850. Wesley made the first of ten visits here in 1764, and in 1772 opened a chapel in Church Street, now converted into cot- tages.

The Society of Friends were strong in the Dork- ing neighbourhood about the time of their founda- tion. Possibly the first meetings of the Friends in Surrey were held at the house of Thomas Bax, in Capel, near Dorking. There had been a Friends' meeting at Bax's house for upwards of twenty years in i677. Ita Fox, however, records in his journal a meeting at Reigate in 1655, which may precede this. The Old Friends' Meeting House in West Street, Dorking, bore the date 1709. The present meeting house near Rose Hill was built in 1846.

There is a meeting of Plymouth Brethren in a chapel in Hampstead Road, opened in 1863.

The cemetery was opened in 1856.

The Public Hall in West Street was built by a company for meetings and entertain- ments in 1872.

Denbies is the residence of the Hon. Henry Cubitt, the lord-lieutenant. It stands upon the brow of the chalk down, close to Ranmore Common and church. The church, however, is in Great Bookham parish (q.v.). Denbies com- mands fine views over the weald

and the back of the Leith Hill range, and of Box Hill, which faces it from across the Mole Valley. Ash- combe, from which the peerage of Ashcombe is named, was a piece of land lying close to it, and Ashcombe Hill was the old name of the brow. Denby was probably a farmer who lived there. The farm- house was bought in 1754 by Mr. Jonathan Tyers, the founder of Vauxhall Gardens, who laid out the grounds in what was intended to be a style appealing to serious reflections, with a temple, two skulls, in-

���CUBITT. Checkered or and gules a pile argent with a lion't head razed sable thereon.

���BARCLAY. Azure a cheveron argent <with three crosses formy argent in the chief.

��scriptions and verses of the tombstone kind, much admired then and very absurd, a sort of Lenten Vauxhall. Mr. Tyers died in 1 767, and the estate was sold to the Hon. Peter King. His son Lord King sold it in 1781 to Mr. James White, who sold it in 1787 to Mr. Denison, whose son William Joseph Denison was M.P. for West Surrey. After Mr. Deni- son's death in 1849 it was bought by Mr. Thomas Cubitt, who built the present house. He was father to Lord Ashcombe, the father of the present owner.

Bury Hill (in Westcote borough) is the seat of Mr. Robert Barclay, representative of the ancient Scottish house of Barclay of Urie. The name is as old as the 1 4th century," but no trace or record of a fortification can now be found. 145 The ground was part of the waste of the manor of Milton. Mr. James Walter was buying land in Milton Manor in 1 75 3," and he built the house then and planted the grounds. Mr. Walter died in 1780, when Viscount Grimston, his daugh- ter's husband, succeeded him here. In 1812 he sold it to Mr. Robert Barclay, great-grandfather of the present owner. The Nower, a favourite walk for Dorking people, is a hill adjoining this property.

The Rookery, the property of Mr. Brooke, is the seat of Mr. Lionel Bulteel. An estate here was bought in 1759 by Mr. David Malthus, who built the house and laid out the grounds with the ponds and waterfalls, which make it a picturesque place. The Rev. Thomas Malthus, the economist, his son, was born here in 1766. In 1768 it was bought by Mr. Richard Fuller, banker, of Lon- don, of the family of the Fullers of Tandridge, Surrey (q.v.), and was sold by the executors of his great-grandson, Mr. George Fuller, in 1893. The old name of the valley where the Rookery stands was Chartgate, or Chartfield.

Milton Heath (in Milton borough), the seat of Mr. J. Carr Saunders, was built by the late Mr. James Powell, of the Whitefriars Glass Works.

Deepdene (in Holmwood borough), lately the seat of Lilian, Duchess of Marlborough, was originally built by the Hon. Charles Howard, after coming into pos- session of a part of the manor in 1652. In 1655 Evelyn visited him, and admired the gardens which he had already begun to lay out in the deep valley which gives the place its name. It is probable that there was already a small house on the spot. Some thirty years later Aubrey saw and admired the landscape gardening, then evidently far more advanced. Mr. Howard died in 1713 (he was buried at Dorking, according to the inscription at Deepdene, in 1714); his son Henry Charles Howard died in 1720. His second son Charles succeeded as Duke of Norfolk in 1777 and rebuilt the house. His son Charles, eleventh duke, sold it in 1791 to Sir William Burrell, bart., whose son Sir Charles sold it in 1 806 to Mr. Thomas Hope. Mr. Hope largely altered the house, and

��" V.C.H. Surr. ii, 40. 13 They are not recorded in Bishop Willis' Visitation, 1724-5.

��u Information from the late Rev. J. S. Bright, Congregational minister, Dorking.

Mr. March of Dorking.
 * " Papers formerly in possession of

��14 Dorking Court Rolls, passim.

141 A Roman station has been gratuitously supposed to be here ; Gent. Mag. Apr, I S 44..

15 Court Rolls, Milton Manor.

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