Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/365

 COPTHORNE HUNDRED

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��and much modernized. The present nave and aisles were built in 1824, when the old church was pulled down ; a print of about this date shows it to have had a nave with a north aisle, and a north-west tower. The chancel was evidently of the 1 3th century, and had a lancet window midway in its north wall, but all the other windows shown in the chancel and aisle are wide ugly single lights fitted with iron casements. The aisle had been raised to contain a gallery and a second tier of windows added. The nave of 1824 has arcades of four bays with plastered piers and arches ; the aisles are lighted by two-light pointed windows, and are filled with wooden galleries, shortly to be removed. The walling of the nave and aisles is of flint and stone, and that of the new portion is of rubble with stone and brick dressings, the chancel and nave having alternate bays of cross and barrel vaulting ; the new work is soon to be extended to the present nave and aisles. The jambs of the openings into the tower from the nave and north aisle are moulded and the arches are blocked. The tower is of flint and stone, and has cemented angle buttresses and a north-west octagonal stair turret ; an old oak door opens into the turret, the steps of which are inscribed with various names and 18th-century dates, and a stone records the recutting of the steps in 1737. The bell-chamber is lighted by plain pointed windows of two lights, and surmounted by a plain parapet, from which rises a very slender wooden spire covered with oak shingles.

Under the tower is a ijth-century font; it is octagonal with quatrefoiled sides to the bowl and a hollowed under-edge on which are carved heads, a shield, a fish, &c. There is also a fine chest of carved mahogany ; on the lid are carved in the middle Adam and Eve in the garden, and in the two side panels David and Goliath ; on the front are other figures in late 16th-century dress.

On the floor on the north side is a small brass with an inscription to William Marston, or Merston, 1511, and there are wall monuments to Richard Evelyn of Wootton, 1669; Robert Coke of Nonsuch, grandson of Lord Chief Justice Coke, 1 68 1 ; Robert Coke, 1653 ; Richard Evelyn, 1691 ; and others.

There are eight bells : the treble is by Samuel Knight, 1737 ; the second by R. Phelps, 1714 ; the third by Thomas Janaway, 1781 ; the fourth has no date, and is inscribed : ' Although I am but small I will be heard above them all ' ; the fifth is dated 1737 ; the sixth by R. Phelps, 1714 ; the seventh by Thomas Swain, 1760; and the tenor by Richard Phelps, 1733.

The plate is all modern, consisting of a chalice and paten of 1 904 given by the parishioners, and a chalice and paten given by Lord Rosebery in 1907, besides six Sheffield plate almsdishes and two cups and an almsdish about a hundred years old.

The first book of the registers contains baptisms and marriages from 1695 to 1 749 and burials to 1750; the second repeats the baptisms from 1695 to 1749 and the marriages from 1695 to 1719; the third has baptisms and burials from 1750 to 1773 and

��marriages 1750 to 1754 > l ^ e fourth, baptisms to 1812 ; fifth, burials 1773 to 1812 ; the sixth, marriages 1754 to 1783 ; and the seventh continues them to 1812.

The greater part of the churchyard, which sur- rounds the building, lies to the north of it. The west entrance is towards the road, and is approached by a flight of stone steps and a flagged landing. There are several large trees about it.

CHRIST CHURCH, originally built as a chapel of ease to the parish church in 1843, is now the church of a separate parish. It was rebuilt in 1876. It is a small building of flint and stone situated on the edge of Epsom Common, and consists of a small chancel with a north transept and south organ chamber, nave of four bays with north and south aisles and a clearstory, and a south-west tower and porch. At the west end is a passage-way con- taining the font. There are eight bells by Mears & Stainbank, 1890.

ST. JOHN'S, chapel of ease to St. Martin's, is a small building of red brick and stone, off East Street, erected in 1884.

ST. BARNABAS, Hook Road, is a chapel of ease to Christ Church.

Two churches on the abbey estate ADrOlTSON are mentioned in Domesday, 110 but all trace of one has disappeared ; there was a Stamford Chapel in Epsom, near or on the lord's waste, close to where Christ Church, Epsom, now stands, belonging to Chertsey Abbey, which may have been the second church. 111 Licence to appropriate was granted to the convent by a bull of Clement III, 1 " 1187-91, and a vicarage was ordained before I29I. 113 A further endowment was carried into effect in 1313"' when John Rutherwyk the then abbot was inducted. 115 In 1537, when Henry VIII acquired Epsom Manor from the con- vent of Chertsey, the rectory and the advowson of the church were included, 116 and he granted them with the manor to Sir Nicholas Carew, 117 from which time they have always been included in the grants and sales of the manor till 1770, when the manor went to Sir Joseph Mawbey, and the great tithes and advowson to John Parkhurst. They descended to the Rev. Fleetwood Parkhurst, vicar of Epsom, 1804-39. The advowson has since belonged to the Rev. Wil- fred Speer and Captain Speer, and now belongs to Mr. H. Speer.

In 1453 John Merston received a grant for found- ing a chantry in Epsom Church, to be called ' Mer- ston's Chantry,' and for purchasing lands to the value of 20 marks for the use of it. 118 There is no record of the chantry at the time of the suppression under Edward VI.

Smith's Charity is distributed as in CHARITIES other Surrey parishes.

In 1691 Mrs. Elizabeth Evelyn left a rent-charge of 10 a year for clothing six poor women.

Since 1692 the rent of a piece of land called Church Haw has been received by the churchwardens, now by the local authority, for the use of the poor.

��V.C.H. Surr. i, 308* " Ibid, note 2.

111 Pat. 10 Edw. I, m. 1 1 (1192). In- speximus and confirmation of letters patent of the Biihop of Winchester re- citing the bull.

��ut Pofe Nick. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 209. 114 Cal. Pat. 1307-13, p. 556. 116 Winton Epi*. Reg. Woodlock, fol. 79*-

277

��118 Feet of F. Div. Co. Trin. 29 Hen. VIII.

W L. and P. H,n. VIII, xii (2), njo

118 Manning and Bray, Surr. ii, 612.

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