Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/198

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��began the great collection of paintings and statuary carried on by his son, the late Mr. Beresford Hope, who also added to the house and built the Italian south-western front.

Charte Park, formerly called the Vineyard, was the property of the Sondes or Sonds family, after they had parted with Sondes Place. 16 The late Mr. Beresford Hope bought Charte Park, and threw it into the grounds of Deepdene, pulling down the house.

Westcott, also spelt Westcote, and erroneously Westgate, is one of the Dorking boroughs (vide supra), and with Milton was made into an ecclesiastical parish in 1852 (vide infra). A considerable village existed before then, and many houses have since been built.

In Squire's Wood, south of Westcote, is Mag's Well, one of the sources of Pip Brook, which runs through Dorking to the Mole. 'It was formerly of some repute as a medicinal spring, and is strongly impreg- nated with iron. A building, now gone to ruin, existed over it, and within the writer's memory chil- dren still bathed in it.

Holmwood Borough was the ancient division of Dorking, to the south of the town. The ancient spelling in the Court Rolls is invariably Homewood, the numerous hollies have led to the change in the name. But as far back as 1329 the reeves' accounts include carriage of firewood from ' Dorkynge Ywode vel Homewode' to Kingston, where the distinction between the ' High Wood,' the skirts of the big forest of the Weald, and the ' Home Wood,' sufficiently explains the name. In 1562 Kingston still depended upon this neighbourhood for firewood." Manning and Bray state, however, that Dorking was supplied lately with coal from Kingston ; showing a curious reversal of former relations.

The Holmwood Common is a large high-lying common thickly covered with furze bushes and hollies, about 600 acres in extent. Defoe states that it was as lately as the time of James II the haunt of wild deer. Agricultural writers of a hundred years ago marked it down as good cornland wasted.

The school of the parish of St. Mary Magdalen, Holmwood, was built in 1844, and enlarged in 1870 and 1 8 84. That now in the parish of St. John the Evangelist was built in 1849 and enlarged in 1875 and 1883.

A great number of gentlemen's houses surround the Holmwood Common, and some standing upon it represent the original intrusions of squatters upon the waste of the manor confirmed by lapse of time. Holmwood Park was the seat of the late Mrs. Gough Nichols, widow of the celebrated antiquary. Francis Larpent, Judge Advocate-General to Wellington's army in Spain and the South of France, formerly lived here. Oakdale is the seat of Lady Laura Hampton ; Oak- dene of Mr. Augustus Perkins ; Redlands of Colonel Helsham Jones ; Anstie Grange of Mr. Cuthbert E. Heath ; Moorhurst, an ancient farm on the border of the old parishes of Dorking and Capel, of the Hon. W. Gibson, who has opened a small Roman Catholic chapel there. It is the property of Mr. Cuthbert E. Heath, of Anstie Grange.

��The present condition of the Holmwood i in curious contrast with what was its state not more than 100 years ago, when the road to Horsham running over the desolate common was a frequent scene of highway robbery, and was openly used by smugglers. William Dudley, of Coldharbour, who died in 1902, aged nearly 101, told the writer that a man with whom he worked had been a witness when the turnpike keeper boldly refused to open his gate at night to a body of smugglers with kegs of brandy on their horses. In the Domesday Survey DORKING MANORS was in the hands of the king. Milton and Westcote were even then separate manors. It had been held by Edith, widow of the Confessor, and like the other holdings of the late queen in Surrey, was granted to William de Warenne I, when he was created Earl of Surrey. 18 His original Surrey endow- ment consisted of the manors which had been Edith's, Dorking, Reigate, Shiere, Fetcham. But one Edric had held Dorking, or part of it, at some previous time, and had given two hides out of it to his daughters. In 1086 Richard of Ton bridge held one of these hides no doubt Hamsted Manor, which belonged sub- sequently to the Clares. The other hide was probably Bradley Manor, the lands of which lie in Holmwood tithing and Mickleham.

Richard I appears to have confirmed the grant of Edith's lands to the Earls of Surrey, 19 and in 1237 William de Warenne is recorded as holding Dork- ing." 1 John de Warenne claimed it in 1278 as held by his ancestors from before legal memory. 11 In 1347 John de Warenne died seised of the manor. 11

���WARENNE, Earl of Surrey. Checkered or and azure.

��FITZ ALAN, Earl of Arundel. Gules a lion

��He was succeeded by his nephew Richard, Earl of Arundel, who died in 1376," leaving another Richard as his son and heir. About this time the Arundel lands began to pass through a period of vicis- situde. Richard, Earl of Arundel, was attainted in 1397 and beheaded, after a long series of open altercations with the king," and Dorking was granted to Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham," after- wards Duke of Norfolk, his son-in-law. He was banished in 1398 and died in exile in 1400. On the accession of Henry IV, Thomas, son of the unfortunate Richard, was restored. He died on 1 3 October 1415, leaving three sisters as co-heirs:* 6 first Elizabeth, the second wife of Thomas Mowbray, first Duke of Norfolk, whose share in the property descended in moieties to her son John, second Duke of Norfolk, and to Joan, her daughter by a second husband, Sir Robert Gonshill.

��16 In 1515-16 John Sondes of Charte alienated Sondes Place to John Carjrll ; and in 1 594 Michael Sondes wa heir to the copyhold of Sir Thomas Sondes of Charte ; Dorking Ct. R.

V V.C.H. Surr. ii, 264.

��18 Ibid, i, 298.

19 Cart. Antiq. , 29.

M Feet of F. Div. Co. *> Hen. Ill, no. 236.

nPlac. de Quo War. (Rec. Com.), "75-

��82 Chan. Inq.p.m. 21 Edw. Ill (ist nos.) no. 23.

M G.E.C. Complete Peerage.

44 Diet. Nat. Biog. iix, 98.

85 Pat. 21 Ric. II, pt. i, m. 5.


 * Chan. Inq. p.m. 4 Hen. V, no. 54.

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