Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/204

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��for his sister the wife of Gilbert. 96 Later John de Gatesden (see Hamsted Manor) held it. 97 He died in 1269 or before, when a survey of the manor was taken, late in his hands. 98 His daughter Margaret married Sir William Pagenel, but it would seem that the Latimer family had some previous claim upon Westcote, for in 1 306 Alice widow of William le Latimer sued William Pagenel and Margaret his wife for dower in Westcote Manor, which had been granted by Latimer to Pagenel and his wife. Pagenel acknowledged her claim and granted her lands in Leicestershire to the required amount. 99 In 1317 William Pagenel died seised of the manor, leaving John his brother and heir, then fifty years of age. 100

In 1355 Eva widow of Edward St. John, and for- merly wife of William Pagenel, who was probably the son of John Pagenel, died seised of one-third of West- cote Manor which she held in dower. Her heir was Laurence de Hastings, lord of Paddington Pembroke (q.v.), with which Westcote descended from that time. 101

There was a mill at Westcote at the time of the Domesday Survey ; it is also mentioned in the in- quisition taken at the death of Laurence de Hastings in 1 348, when it was stated to be a water-mill. 10 '

At the time of Alice le Latimer's suit (q.v.) the manor was valued at forty pounds odd.

George I granted to John Evelyn the privilege of holding two annual fairs in his manor of Westcote, on 15 April and 28 October. 108

Westcote retains many picturesque old houses of the 1 6th, 1 7th, and l8th centuries, including some with gables of Bargate stone rubble and ornamental brick ; and a farm-house with fine brick chimneys dating from about 1670.

SONDES PLACE, in Milton borough, the vicar- age house since 1839, belonged to a family of Sondes, who migrated to Surrey in the I5th cen- tury, and who were ancestors of the present Lord Sondes. In 1590 John Carill, of Warnham, conveyed Sondes Place for 1,000 to John Cowper of Capel, Serjeant - at - Law. 104 Cowper possibly sold it to Christopher Gardiner, who died about 1 597, and is described as of Dorking, 106 and whose son Christopher, baptized I 595, 106 resided at Sondes Place. The latter married Elizabeth daughter of Sir Edward Onslow of Knowle in Cranleigh. 10 ' William Gardiner of Croydon, by deed of 1678, granted the manor or lordship of Sondes Place to Francis Brocket. 108

The parish church is approached by CHURCHES a little stone-flagged alley from the High Street, and stands in the midst of a large and prettily kept churchyard, no longer used for burials, in which are numerous gravestones and railed tombs, some of 1 7th and 18th-century dates.

It is dedicated to ST. M4RTIN, and is, as it stands, absolutely modern, having been rebuilt in 1835-7 (the chancel excepted), and the nave, till then an un- sightly structure of brick and compo, with slender iron columns and many galleries, again rebuilt in 1873 from the designs of Mr. H. Woodyer, who in 1 866

��had rebuilt the ancient chancel. In 18357 the central tower had been rebuilt, or remodelled, and crowned with a lofty spire, which it had not before possessed, and these features, which were not repro- duced in the original position in the later re-edification, were replaced by a lofty western tower and spire, erected to the memory of Dr. Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, and then of Winchester, who was killed by a fall from his horse near Dorking in 1873. The present church, which is constructed of black flints and Bath stone, is a handsome and spacious edifice in a somewhat mixed style of I3th and i<).th- century Gothic architecture, consisting of a lofty clearstoried nave, with western tower and spire, porches, transepts, chancel and vestries. Nearly all the windows are filled with stained glass of varying merit, and there are many elaborate fittings, including altar and reredos, pulpit, lectern and choir stalls, font and chancel screen of oak, in commemoration of Wm. Henry Joyce, M.A., vicar, 1850-70, beneath which is a brass to his memory.

The floor and lower parts of the walls of the old church remain in vaults under the present church. It was a large and picturesque structure, occupying much the same area as the present, cruciform, with a central tower, north and south aisles to the nave, under lean-to roofs, and a south porch, built of local rubble and flints plastered externally, with dressings of firestone, and having the old Horsham slate on all the roofs, except the chancel and north transept. The nave was about 65 ft. by 30 ft., its aisles being between 12 and 14 ft. long, the north transept about 27 ft. by 23 ft. wide, the south transept 26 ft. by 23 ft., the central tower about 27 ft. square, and the chancel 40 ft. by 22 ft. Probably little or nothing remained of the building recorded in Domesday, except as old material worked up on the walls ; but the chancel seems to have retained to the last at the angles of the east end four flat pilaster buttresses of mid- 12th- century character. To a date towards the close of the same century the lower part of the central tower and the remarkable north transept appear to have belonged. The latter is well shown in a carefully accurate steel engraving forming the frontispiece to Hussey's Churches of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. 103 The design of this transept end consisted of a lofty gable with a small lancet in the upper part, below which was a pilaster buttress with steeply sloped weathering, this buttress being pierced at about half its height with a longer lancet, 110 and similar lancets flanking it right and left, while at the angles were other pilaster buttresses. In the eastern wall of the same transept there were three lancets of like proportions and a pilaster buttress. There appears to have been some early work in the south transept also, but masked by alterations made in the repairs of 1674 and 1762, when a large circular-headed window was inserted in the gable end, a huge, unsightly buttress erected against the south-east angle of the tower, and the upper part of the central tower was altered. Evidence is scanty as to other work of the earlier periods, especially as to

��96 Testa dt Nrvill (Rec. Com.), 2ZJ. 7 Ibid. 229.

98 Chan. Inq. p.m. 53 Hen. Ill, no. 19.

99 De Banco R. 161, m. 145.

100 Chan. Inq. p.m. 10 Edw. II, no. 61.

101 In William Pagenel's inquisition, the Hastings family are mentioned as being

��overlords, so that the manor probably reverted to them on the failure of heirs in the Pagenel family.

1M Chan. Inq. p.m. 22 Edw. Ill (ist nos.), no. 47.

108 Pat. 12 Geo. I, pt. ii.

"" Close, 32 Eliz. pt. vi. los Will.

Dorking Reg. W Ibid.

148

��Com. Pleas D. Enr. 30 Chas. II), m. 5. The present Sondes Place is an- other house.

109 Corroborated by old pen drawings in the writer's possession.

110 Cf. the tower buttresses at Clymping, Sussex, similarly pierced with early lancets, in work of c. 1170.

�� �