Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/251

 REIGATE HUNDRED

��CHARLWOOD

��estate of Mr. Young at Stanhill, which the finders regarded as an ancient font, but which was perhaps a stone mortar.

Manning and Bray * mention the tradition that the Timberham Bridge was formerly known as Killman- bridge because of a slaughter of the Danes there. It does not appear, however, that there is any docu- mentary evidence for the improbable name ' Killman- bridge,' and it is unlikely that Charlwood was inhabited at the time of Danish invasions. It is not mentioned in Domesday, and was probably a forest district of the manor of Merstham, which to the present day reaches into the parish.

The Sanders or Sander family of Charlwood were, if not Catholic recusants themselves, closely allied by marriage and sympa- thies with recusants. Nicholas Sander the famous controversialist was of a younger branch of the family, and his sister, who married John Pitts of Ox- fordshire, was mother of John Pitsaeus, Dean of Liverdun in Lorraine and Bishop of Verdun. The squire's family evidently preserved the pre-Reformation inscription on the church (see church).

Another curious trace of ancient man- ners is that Charlwood, with lands in Leigh and Newdigate, was conveyed in the first year of Edward VI ' with the bondsmen and their families.' *

Charlwood Place, formerly the seat of the Sanders family, is a moated house. At Charlwood House there was appa- rently a moat, part of which only remains.

In the outlying part of Charlwood between Leigh and Horley parishes, east of Barnland Farm and west of the Mole, between the Mole and the Brighton road, there are the remains of a moated inclosure.

Charlwood was in the Wealden iron district, though none of the principal forges and furnaces named seem to be in it.* But it was one of the iron- working parishes exempted from the Act of I Elizabeth against cutting timber of a certain size.

Of late years a completely new fea- ture has been brought into the parish by the making of the Gatwick Race Course, which was opened in 1891, after the closing of the old Croydon Race Course at Woodside.

Some common land was inclosed, according to Brayley, 7 in I 844, but the chief inclosure award was dated 5 February 1846, under the General Inclosure Act of 1 843." Other waste was inclosed 12 January 1 854,' when Shellwood Manor in Leigh was inclosed, Including waste in Betchworth, Charlwood, Horley, Leigh, and Newdigate. There was a common mea- dow, but common arable fields are not mentioned.

There are both Baptist and Congregational chapels at Charlwood.

Farmfield is a Home for female inebriates acquired by the London County Council.

��The Cottage Hospital opened in 1873 is at present closed.

Charlwood Boys' School was built in 1840. Charlwood Girls' and Infants' School was built in 1852 and enlarged in 1893.

Lowfield Heath School was built in 1868.

Charlwood House is the seat of Mt. G. H. Beckhuson ; Russ Hill of Mr. H. N. Corsellis, part of whose house is of the middle of the I yth century ; Stanhill Court belongs to Mr. A. F. Hepburn ; Gatwick Manor House is the seat of Mr. E. G. MacAndrew ; Norwood Hill House of Major Mac- Micking ; Ricketswood of Sir A. M. Rendel, K.C.I.E.; Norwood Hill of Mr. C. F. Wakefield ; Charlwood

���CHARLWOOD CHURCH FROM THE NORTH-EAST

Park of Mr. Herbert Musker. The Misses Sanders of Hookwood House belong to the old Sanders family of Charlwood. Charlwood Place itself is now a farm- house.

Lowfield Heath was a large common about 2 miles south-east of Charlwood village, on the Sussex border, inclosed in 1846. As several houses lay about it at some distance from the church a chapel of ease, St. Michael and All Angels, was built in 1868. It is of brick with stone dressings, a tower and spire, in the French 1 3th-century style.

��4 Hiit. ofSurr. ii, 187.

' Deed formerly in possession of Duke

��of Norfolk, copied by the Rev. T. O'Fflahertie of Capel.

V.C.H. Surr. ii, 219, etc.

��' Hiit. of Surr. iv, 267.

Blue Bk. Inel. Awardi.

Ibid.

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