Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/359

 COPTHORNE HUNDRED

��EPSC;.

��In 1428 the church was exempted from taxation on the ground that there were not at that time ten inhabitants in the parish having dwellings.

At the Dissolution the rectory and advowson were valued at a total of 10, from which the vicar re- ceived j8 in a money payment of z/. and a cottage for his dwelling." At this time, or very shortly after, the rectory appears to have been held at farm by one William Cowper of Westminster and Cecilia his wife, who in 1539 resigned the remainder

��of their term in the same in consideration of other estates. 6 *

In 1586 the rectory and the church, which had been pulled down, and the advowson, with tithes of grain, hay, &c., which in 1571 had been leased to Roger Marshall for twenty-one years, were granted by Queen Elizabeth to Sir Christopher Hatton, 64 who the next day conveyed the same to John, Lord Lumley," and from this date the descent of the rectory followed that of the manor.

��EPSOM

��Evesham (xi cent.) ; Ebbesham (xiii cent.) ; Eb- sham, Ebesham, and Ebbesham (xiv cent.) ; Ebbisham, Eppesham, and Ebsame (xvi cent.) ; Ebsham (xvii cent, and xviii cent.) ; Epsom (late xvii cent.).

Epsom is a town 1 6 miles north-east of Gnildford, 7 miles south-by-east of Kingston, 1 5 miles from London. The parish measures 4 miles from north to south, and 2 miles from east to west, and contains 4,413 acres. It lies upon the chalk downs, the Woolwich and Thanet Beds, and the London Clay. The church is on the chalk, but the greater part of the old village is on a patch of gravel and sand of the Thanet Beds. The building of later days has had a tendency to spread up the chalk. A branch of the Hoggsmill River flows from Epsom. Besides agricul- ture, brick-making and brewing are carried on ; but the chief importance of Epsom since it ceased to be a small country village has been, first, that of a watering- place ; and, secondly, that of a horse-racing town. Epsom Common is still to a great extent open ground, lying on the clay, and adjoining Ashtead Common to the west of the town. Epsom Downs are a noble expanse of chalk country, comprising 944 acres of open land.

The road from London to Dorking passes through Epsom. This road was evidently passable for carriages when Epsom was a fashionable watering-place, in the latter part of the I7th century; but it was not passable, except with difficulty, beyond Epsom till 1755, when an Act* was passed for carrying on the turnpike road from the watch-house in Epsom. In the same year ' the road from Epsom to Ewell, and thence into the Kingston road, was re-made.

The London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway came to Epsom by the Croydon and Epsom line in 1847. The Epsom Downs branch was opened in 1865. The London and South- Western Railway came to Epsom in 1859. The stations of the two companies are some distance apart, but the lines con- verge just before reaching the London and South- Western Railway Station, and continue together till Letherhead, the Brighton extension to Horsham having obtained running powers over the South- western Railway line.

Epsom is now a flourishing country town. It was constituted an urban district under the Public Health Act of 1848 on 19 March 1850. By the Local Government Act of 1894 it was put under a Local District Council of nine members, increased to twelve

��in 1903. It is essentially a town, supplied with gas by the Epsom and Ewell Gas Company, formed 1839; with electric light by a company in Church Street ; with water from the chalk by works belonging to the Council. There is a cemetery in Ashley Road, first opened in 1871. The County Court was built in 1848 ; the Town Hall, in red brick and terra cotta, in 1883. The Technical Institute and Art School was opened in 1897. The sewage of the town is disposed of by an irrigation system on part of the Epsom Court farm lands, the purified effluent is discharged into the Hoggsmill River. The District Council's Isolation Hospital is in the Hook Road. The Union Workhouse is near the Dorking Road. Horton Manor, lying west of the town, has been acquired by the London County Council for an asylum, and the Manor Asylum has been built for 2,100 patients. The Colony for Epileptics, in the same neighbourhood, lying partly in Ewell Parish, was opened in 1902, and can accommodate 366 patients in separate houses. A large suburb of cottages is growing up in the neighbourhood of the asylums. There is another outlying hamlet about Epsom Common.

The wide High Street is still a picturesque feature of the town. Up till 1848 a watch-house, with a sort of wooden steeple, stood in the middle of it, where the present clock tower stands. There was also a large pond, drained in 1854. In this street, as well as in South Street and Church Street, are many interesting old houses and inns. A fair is still held in the town on 2 5 July and the two following days.

Historically, Epsom was unimportant till the 1 7th century. Neolithic flakes and implements have been found, but few only, near Woodcote. Toland, in his letter descriptive of Epsom in 1711, speaks of Roman remains at Epsom Court Farm. The old trackway (see under Mickleham) which came over the Downs headed for the western side of Epsom Race-course, but is not to be clearly traced beyond it. It is called the Portway in a rental of 1495-6." When the church was being enlarged in 1 907 a dene hole was discovered in the churchyard. The depth was some 1 6 ft. to the bottom of the shaft, and chambers ran each way from the bottom of the shaft for 1 2 ft. or 13 ft. The shaft and most of the chambers had been filled in with loose soil, and a mediaeval grave had been dug to a great depth and reached the top of one of the cham- bers, whence the bones found there had been let

��M Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), ii, 41, 48 ; H. C. H talcs, Rtc. of Merlon Priory, App. clii.

��M L.an<fP.H e n.rm,w(i),g. 651(36). 64 Pat. 28 Eliz. pt ii, no. 2. Close, 28 Elii. pt. xi.

271

��1 28 Geo. II, cap. 4;.

Ibid. cap. 57.

Cherttey Chart. foL 392*.

�� �