Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/410

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��merchant of London, hac vice. According to Man- ning and Bray, Parsons devised the rectory to his daughters, Sarah wife of James Dunn, and Anne, who married John Hynde Cotton, afterwards knighted." 9 Sir John Hynde Cotton presented in 1771,'* and sold the advowson to Sir Charles Talbot in 1786,"' and Lady Talbot, the widow of Sir Charles, presented in 1800 and 1802. In 1813 Mr. Henry Burmester presented his son, having bought the next presentation from Sir George Talbot. 12 ' It passed with the manor till 1899, when Mr. H. H. Gordon Clark of Mickleham Hall bought the ad- vowson from Mr. Praed.

Smith's Charity is distributed as

. TO i T of

m other Surrey parishes. In 1586

��Richard Woodstock left 5/. annually charged on land in Mickleham common fields for the repair of the church. It appears that the fields were by the river. After the parish was brought into the Dorking Union by the Poor Law of 1834 the old poor- house at Bytom Hill became useless, and proposals were made for converting it into an almshouse. The matter was delayed till the old building fell down, and it was not till 1851 that the almshouses were actually opened, built chiefly by the generosity of Sir George Talbot, and endowed by Miss Talbot. They were burnt down in 1864, and were rebuilt by Mr. H. P. Grissell of Norbury, whose family further endowed them. They accommodate eight persons.

��NEWDIGATE

��Newdegate (xiii cent.), Newedegate and Neudegate (xv cent.), Nudgate (xvi cent.).

Newdigate is a village nearly 6 miles south-east of Dorking, i\ miles from Holmwood Station, on the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. The parish is on the borders of Sussex, and is bounded on the north by Leigh, on the east by Charlwood, on the south by Rusper in Sussex, on the west by Capel. An outlying part of Charlwood is in the southern part of it, surrounded by Newdigate and Rusper. It measures about 4 miles from north to south and 2 miles from east to west, and contains 4,732 acres. The soil is the Wealden Clay. The parish is still thickly wooded, and is purely agricul- tural, except for brick and tile works. A branch of the Mole in the parish is called the Rithe. The only commons are some strips of roadside waste. No main road leads through the parish, but there was an old way from Ockley, through Capel, and past Eutons into Newdigate, and by Parkgate towards Reigate. The name Rodgate Field appears upon its course ; and though Parkgate may be named from the park at Ewood, this road marked in old maps as the only one across this line of country, although now in places no more than a bridle-road, suggests an exception to the alleged non-use of the word 'gate' for a road in southern England. Gatwick in Charlwood is on another old way to Reigate and Gatton.

Newdigate is for the most part in the hundred of Copthorne, forming an outlying portion of it. But the hamlet of Parkgate and the part of the parish near it are in Reigate Hundred. The place does not appear at all in Domesday, and the connexion with Copthorne is a probable result of the holding by the Montfort family of Newdigate together with Ashtead Manor, while Parkgate was held with Reigate and Dorking by the Earls of Warenne and Surrey.

In the 1 6th century Ewood, or Iwood, was the seat of an important iron forge and furnace. 1 New- digate was among the parishes excepted by name from the Act I Elizabeth against cutting of timber, and the works at Ewood were excepted by name from a later

��Act on the same matter owing to the good manage- ment of the woods.

Ewood Pond, an extensive sheet of water, arti- ficially dammed for the use of these works, long survived the industry. It was drained circa 1850-60, but was marked on ordnance maps long after that date.

In the older farms and cottages there is much massive timber-work. The tower of the church (q.v.) is one of the finest examples of oak building in the county. Cudworth Manor House is a moated house apparently of the 1 6th century, though considerably altered at different times. Newdigate Place, the house of the family of that name, was a large house standing round a courtyard, but was almost entirely demolished near the end of the 1 8th century. In 1807 the Duke of Norfolk began to build a house at Ewood, but it was never completed, and the part built was pulled down after the duke's death in 1815. Traces of it, however, still remain.

Of modern houses Newdigate Place, close to the site of the old house, is the property of Mrs. Janson ; the Red House of Mr. Leopold Goldberg ; Cud- worth Manor of Mr. H. Lee-Steere. Lyne House (see Capel) is on the border of that parish and Newdigate.

At Parkgate, a hamlet north-east of the village, there is a Congregational mission room.

The old poor-house was between the village and Parkgate. The whole labouring population were in receipt of out-door relief in the earlier I gth century, and the rates reached 19;. in the pound.'

There is no mention in the Domes- MJNORS day Survey of the manor of NEJfDI- GATE ; it probably then formed part of Dorking. In the 1 2th century the overlordship belonged to the Earls Warenne and Surrey,** whose descendants continued to hold it until the end of the 1 6th century. 3 In 1347 the male line of the Warennes died out, and Richard, Earl of Arundel, the son of Alice de Warenne, succeeded to the title and estates.' In 1415, on the death of his grandson Thomas, the Warenne and Surrey estates were divided between his three sisters, 6 Newdi-

��119 Manning and Bray, Surr. ii, 659.

" Inst. Bks. (P.R.O.).

131 Manning and Bray, Surr. i!, 659. (The date by a misprint is here given as 1766.) In 1788 a fine occurs between Daniel Vandewall and Sarah his wife and La-

��zarus Venable of the rectory of Mickle- ham.

122 Inst. Bki. (P.R.O.), and private information.

1 V.C.H. Surr. ii, 269-70 ; Surr. Arch. Coll. xvii, 28.

3 IO

��a Churchwardens' account!.

" Cott. MS. Nero, C. iii, fol. 188.

Chan. Inq. p.m. 43 Edw. Ill, no. 19 ; (Ser. 2) clxxix, 76 ; ccxxxiii, 74.

4 Berry, Gen. Pierage, 88 ; G.E.C. Peer- age, Arundel. s Ibid,

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