Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/312

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��The house contains a fine 16th-century mantel- piece with the royal arms on it, which tradition says came from Blechingley Place." The royal arms are France and England quarterly, which shows the date to be previous to James I, and on the lower part, to which the overmantel was added, are the Howard arms.

The survey of Reigate Manor in 1622 mentions the old park, south of the town, well stored with tim- ber and deer, with ' a faire pond ' stocked with fish. It covered 201 acres, including a portion of the waste laid to it. It was leased by the Earl of Nottingham, who lived at the Priory, of the Earl of Dorset. It is obviously the park about the Priory, which properly belonged to Reigate Manor, not to the Priory. Sir Roger, James was then tenant of the castle, and of the ' connie warren.'

The present buildings of the Reigate Free School were erected in 1871, when a new scheme was sanc- tioned for the management of the school." The earlier history of the school (given in another volume) can be supplemented from the vestry books and a MS. which has come under the writer's notice. The litigation in Chancery which followed the refusal of the heirs of Sir Edward Thurland, the original trustee of the school funds in 1675, to recognize the trust, resulted in a decision of 1 8 April 1687 establishing the vicar, churchwardens, and six of the principal inhabitants as trustees. The school was started shortly afterwards, previous to 1 744, the date given in the earlier volume of this history. Andrew Cranston, vicar from 1697 to 1708, who established the library in the church, was master of the school, which was kept in a house devised for the purpose by Robert Bishop in 1698, when four boys had to be taught freely. Mr. John Parker in 1718 added two more free scholars sup- ported by an endowment, and there were then thirty paying boys. It was ordered that year by the vestry that the master should teach the Catechism twice a week and see that the boys went to church on Sundays, holidays, and weekly prayer days. The election of the master was in the hands of ' the whole parish,' but as there were three masters between the death of the Rev. John Bird, vicar and master in 1728, and the appointment of the Rer. John Martin in 1732, the relations between the master and the vestry were probably not easy. The masters were expected to do repairs of the schoolhouse, and did not do them. In 1778 the vestry voted that the repairs were to fall upon the master, and that the last executed had been in 1733, when 60 was laid out ' from an unknown source." Mr. Thomas Sisson signed as master on those terms. The desire of the masters was clearly to neglect the free scholars, and to take paying pupils. It would seem that at this date (1778) the Rev. Mr. Pooles was nominally master, drawing the small endowment and probably taking private pupils, and had put in Mr. Sisson as usher to teach the free boys. The vestry put in Mr. Sisson as master, but ultimately" had to undertake the repairs.

Reigate (British) School, High Street, was built in 1852, enlarged in 1888.

��Reigate (national) School, London Road, was built in 1859.

St. Mark's (national) School, Holmesdale Road, was built in 1869.

Holmesdale (British) School, was built in 1870, and rebuilt in 1900.

St. Luke's (national) School, Allingham Road, was built in 1873, enlarged 1883.

Heathfield (Church) School, Reigate Heath, was built in 1873.

Lesbourne Lands (national) School for Infants was built in 1880.

The Wesleyan chapel in High Street was built in 1884, in place of an older chapel in Nutley Lane.

The Primitive Methodist chapel was built in 1 870 ; there is also a Congregational church in Allingham Road.

Two societies of Nonconformists in Reigate have a more ancient history. George Fox came to Reigate in 1655, and his friends were numerous in the neigh- bourhood. Reigate, Dorking, Capel, Ockley, Ncwdi- gate, Charlwood, all had early adherents of the Society of Friends in them. There is a record of a meeting in Reigate in 1669. Mr. Thomas Moore, a justice of the peace, mentioned in Fox's Journal, let some land at a nominal rent for a permanent meeting-house as soon as the Toleration Act of 1689 made it lawful. A burial-ground was attached to it. The original building lasted till 1798, when it was rebuilt or considerably altered. In 1856 the building was pulled down and replaced by the present meeting- house, on the same site, on the road to Redhill."

A congregation of Independents claims to have existed in Reigate since 1662. From the records of the present church it appears that the Rev. James Waters was the first minister. The list of meetings which Sheldon procured in 1669, and the licences under the Indulgence of 1672, show no meetings in Reigate." But Mr. Waters is not said to have entered upon regular ministrations till 1687, after James's Declaration of Indulgence. Meanwhile, however, he had been tutor in the family of Denzil Lord Holies, who was a Presbyterian, and chaplain to Mr. Evelyn of Nutfield. In 1715 there were Presbyterian and Friends' meetings in Reigate, but no Independents. 24 In 1725 the returns to Willis" Visitation * show the same. It is pretty obvious that this is another of the Presbyterian meetings which for want of a real Presbyterian organization passed into Congregationalism. The chapel was repaired in 1819 by Mr. Thomas Wilson, and reopened after having been closed about twenty years. It was rebuilt altogether by Mr. Wilson in 1831, and has since been enlarged.* 6

Redhill was, as the name conveys, a hill of the sand formation, and Redhill Common was a large open space in Reigate parish, of some fame historically as the scene of a skirmish, or of the meeting at least, of hostile picquets of Royalists and Parliamentarians in 1648, and of a projected Royalist meeting in 1659." The coming of the railways turned the neighbourhood of a country common into one of the most important towns in Surrey. In 1841 the

��19 Evelyn says (Diary, 21 Aug. 1655) that the work came from Blechingley, and as Blechingley Place and the Priory belonged to the same owner (Lady Peter- borough), this is probably true.

��*>V.C.H. Surr. ii, 217-18. al Ibid. 217.

m MSS. formerly in hands of Mr. Marsh of Dorking.

y.c.H. SUTT. ;;, 38-40. 232

��* Surr. Arch. Coll. *iv (2).

45 MS. Farnham Castle.

16 Waddington, Surr. Cong. Hist. 281.

? Y.C.H. Surr. i, 418, 423.

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