Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/335

 COPTHORNE HUNDRED

��BANSTEAD

��Downs without finding him or the assembly. The rising had in fact exploded prematurely. 5

There is evidence of races at Banstead as early as 1 625,* but the subject more properly belongs to Epsom. When the great question of the exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession was before the House of Lords, in 1678, the Duke of Ormonde wrote to Colonel Cooke that he tried to delay the first reading by pointing out the thinness of the House owing to a Dog Match at Hampton Court, and a Horse Match on Banstead Downs. He him- self did not attend the Horse Match, where 1 2 horses ran for 3 plates, ' owners up,' 7 apparently, but he sent a description of it. Two horses fell, one nearly killing his jockey, and 'the Duke of Monmouth escaped narrowly,' so apparently he also was riding.

Hares and partridges were also preserved on the downs. Henry Saunders was made keeper of a portion of the downs at 30 a year under the Protec- torate, as a reward for trying to seize a highwayman, 8 and in 1668 a gamekeeper was appointed by the Duchy of Lancaster, at the same salary, to preserve hares and partridges. 9 In 1 669 the king was hawking there, it not being then the custom to shoot partridges. 10

The downs were also used as a muster-place for the Surrey Militia in 1670, when an inspection of the troops was made by the King and Prince Rupert. The formation of a camp of the regular army under the Duke of York or the Duke of Monmouth was discussed in 1678, but it is uncertain whether the plan was carried out."

The parish is now agricultural, with a considerable number of new small houses in it. The road from Sutton to Reigate, the old Brighton road, passes through the parish, traversing Burgh Heath. The Sutton and Epsom Downs branch of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway has a station at Banstead, on the downs ; and the Tattenham Corner branch of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway cuts through the middle of the parish. Tattenham Corner station, opened in 1901, is on the borders of Banstead.

From its position on the hills Banstead can never have been well watered. There are no streams in the higher and larger part of the parish. The primitive water supply must have depended entirely upon rain and dew-ponds, and the later supply was de- pendent on wells. The village well is said to be 350 ft. deep. The Domesday Mill was no doubt at Bed- dington, where there was a mill called Vielmille held of the manor of Banstead in 1 3 1 8. lf Similarly the Woodmansterne Mill was at Carshalton. But the absence of a good water supply did not hinder settle- ment, possibly even very ancient, on the high ground near Banstead. At Great Burgh many neolithic flint implements have been found ; and on Banstead Heath, knives, two saws, a borer, an axe-head, seven arrow- heads, and other implements and flakes, implying a considerable settlement. 13 Banstead Downs have been

��much disturbed by digging for gravel in the brick-earth, by the making of the Epsom Downs railway, and by the laying out of golf links. But to the west of the road to Sutton, north of the railway bridge, were three barrows, one of which has recently been nearly destroyed. Others are said to have existed, and the remains of one seem to exist close to the railway bridge. An old map, reproduced by Manning and Bray, shows a great many barrows and a long bank about Preston Downs (which are now inclosed), the bank continu- ing on to the now inclosed Ewell Downs. ' Tumble Beacon,' a large mound crowned with Scotch firs near Nork Park, is an unmistakable barrow, and one of the largest in the county. It used to be the site of a fire beacon, and at the manor court a man was appointed to keep the beacon ready for use. Traces of hut-circles are reported to have been observed on Banstead Downs, but have never been explored and verified. One trace of a more remote antiquity still is undoubted, a fossil oyster shell which the writer himself picked up where the ground had been disturbed. John Evelyn reported that he heard from the Shep- herds that near Sir Christopher Buckle's house, that is near West Burgh, 'divers medals have been found both copper and silver, with foundations of houses, wells, &c. Here indeed anciently stood a city of the Romans." 4

In 1903 mediaeval remains were discovered south of Banstead Church, consisting of tiles, broken glass, and carved chalk. They are in the St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, Collection, owing to a supposed con- nexion with a house of the Hospitallers, who had lands near the church, 15 but possibly they belonged to the manor-house.

At Burgh in this parish there was a church to which rectors were instituted in the 1 4th and 1 5th centuries, 16 but there is no evidence of its having been a separate parish from Banstead after 1414. An entry in Wykeham's Register "in 13 79 speaks of the poverty of the benefice and the ruinous character of the buildings. Aubrey says that the church at Burgh existed in his time, 13 " 10 and that there had been a chapel of St. Leonard at Preston, mentioned in deeds, which had quite disappeared. Salmon, in 1736, said that the Burgh chapel existed, turned into a barn. The return to Bishop Willis's visitation, 1725, described it as in ruins, no service having been held there within living memory. The ruins of St. Leonard's chapel do, however, still exist, in spite of Aubrey's asser- tion, in Chapel Copse near Preston, with which manor it was conveyed in 1 440. Bergh or Burgh Church was between Little Burgh House and Church Lane, where the foundations remained supporting a barn till about 1880.

Tadworth is a hamlet on the Reigate road, included now in the ecclesiastical district of Kingswood. Tadworth Court was built by Mr. Leonard Wessells in 1700 (see manor).

The land to the north of the village on the edge of the downs was common field as late as 1841."

��r.C.H.Surr. i, 418.

6 The parish registers contain the burial in thii year of a man, who in running the race fell from his horse and broke his neck.

7 Hiit. MSS. Com. Rep. vi, App. 740*.

Cat. S.P. Dom. 1657-8, p. 88.

Ibid. 1667-8, p. 353.

��w Hiit. MSS. Com. Kef. xii, App. vii, 46.

Ibid, xi, App. vi, 39 ; xii, App. v, 44.

" Cal. of Clou, 1313-18, p. 534.

w Neolithic Man in North-East Surr. 132, 167.

14 Evelyn's Diary, 27 Sept. 1658.

16 See Survey of 1421, fenet Col. F.A. H. Lambert. In 1535 the Prior of St. John's

253

��had 21. rent in Banstead. Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), ii, 404.

16 Winton Epis. Reg. Pontoise, 234 ; G. Beaufort Inst. fol. 105-6.

ffykebam', Reg. (Hants Rec. Soc.), ii, 1750.

"*-*) Aubrey, Nat. Hiit. and Anrij. f Surr. ii, 97.

81 Tithe map of 1841.

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