Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/505

 WOKING HUNDRED

��WOKING

��marriages from 1669 to 1752, baptisms from 1670 to 1798, and burials from 1699 to 1798. The second book contains marriages from 1754 to 1812. The baptisms and burials from 1798 to 1812 are missing. There is also a book of churchwardens' accounts from 1669, and in another book are the affidavits for persons buried in woollen from 1680 to 1697.

There was a church at Wisley at

JDrOWSON the time of Domesday." The advow-

son followed the descent of the manor

(though the Black Prince presented in 1345 and in

1370) until the beginning of the igth century, when

��the manor was transferred to Lord King. The Onslow family then retained the advowson and still hold it. The living is now held with Pyrford.

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

The parish books record the request, 2 May 1837, to the Poor Law Commissioners for leave to sell a double tenement which had belonged to the parish from time immemorial, and a single tenement erected on land inclosed from the waste about thirty years before, for the advantage of the parish. The present advantage resulting is unknown.

��WOKING

��Wocingas (viii cent.) ; Wochinges (xi cent.) ; Wokynge, Wockynge, Wochynghe, &c. (xiii and xiv cent.).

Woking is a large parish giving its name to the hun- dred, 6 miles north from Guildford. It contains 8,802 acres, and is in extreme dimensions 6 miles from east to west and 4 miles from north to south. It is bounded on the north by Bisley and Horsell, on the east by Pyrford and Send and Ripley, on the south by Worplesdon, on the west by Pirbright. There is still a little open land about Woking Heath, but it is being covered rapidly with houses. Farther west there is more open land towards Pirbright Common and Brookwood. The soil is mainly Bagshot Sand, with alluvium in the Wey Valley. The river and the artificial navigation run through the parish. The Basingstoke Canal also runs through it. It is traversed by the main line of the South Western Railway, made in 1838, and carried by a branch to Guildford from a station at Woking Junction in 1845. Worplesdon Station on this line to Guildford, and Brookwood Station on the main line, are also in Woking Parish. The road also from Guildford to Chertsey passes through it.

Woking is ruled by an Urban District Council under the Local Government Act of 1894. In 1901 part of Horsell was added to the Woking district. 1 There are eighteen members chosen from five wards.

The parish is agricultural, where not occupied by new houses on the former waste. A certain number of small businesses have grown up in the new town. In Old Woking Village is an extensive printing estab- lishment of Messrs. Unwin, the Gresham Press. Old Woking Mill is a paper mill. Woking Broad Mead is the old common pasture of 150 acres along the river, also called Send Mead. It is on the border of the parishes, and Woking and Send have rights in it. The old practice was, after the hay was cut, to close it till 1 8 September, then to throw it open to pasture for the occupiers till March, when it was closed again for the grass to grow. The waste in Sutton in Woking was inclosed in 1803.' The In- closure Awards of 29 September 1815, Pyrford and Woodham, and that of Sutton in Woking, 1803, affected waste in the parish of Woking.

The parish was divided into nine tithings : Town Street, the old village ; Heathside, the rising ground north of it towards the railway; GoldsworthorGoldings, to the west of Woking Junction ; Kingfield, north-west of Woking ; Sackleford, at the west end of Woking Street ; Mayfield, south-west ; Hale End, near Gold-

��ings ; Crastock, in the part of the parish near Brook- wood ; and Sutton, on the Wey.

The character of the parish has been entirely transformed in about sixty years by the railway. Woking village lies on the river (on the old river,, not on the navigation), and is out of the way, on no frequented road. It was a market town, but obscure ' even when Aubrey wrote, and is probably quite unknown to many people who pass through or stay in the modern Woking near the railway. In addition to the market house of 1665, which still stands in Woking village street, there are other pic- turesque old houses, notably a considerable brick gabled house of the 1 7th century, near the west end. On the hill above Hoe Bridge Place stood a brick beacon tower, said to have been built by Sir Edward Zouch to burn a light for directing messengers for James I, when staying with him, across the trackless wastes from Oatlands. It was more probably a beacon tower for the public service. It was ruinous and inaccessible for many years in the igth century, and was finally taken down in 1858.

Whitmoor House is the property of Mr. Philip Witham, owner of a considerable estate in Woking. Sutton Park Cottage is the seat of Sir Joseph Leese, K.C., M.P. ; Little Frankley, Hook Heath, of the Rt. Hon. Alfred Lyttelton, K.C., M.P. ; Uplands, Maybury, of Sir A.T. Arundel, K.C.S.I.; Hook Hill, Hook Heath, belongs to His Grace the Duke of Sutherland ; and Fishers Hill is a modern house built by the Right Hon. G.W. Balfour for his own occupation.

St. Edward's Roman Catholic Church in Sutton Park was built by Captain Salvin in 1876. There is an iron Roman Catholic chapel, St. Dunstan's, in Woking Town. There is a Baptist chapel built in 1879. Mount Hermon Congregational Church was built in 1903. There are also two chapels of the Wesleyans at Woking and Knapp Hill, three of the Primitive Methodists at Brookwood, Maybury, and Woking, and a meeting-place of the Plymouth Brethren. The Mosque at Maybury was built in 1889. The extensive buildings here were opened as the Dramatic College for the training of actors in 1865 ; but failing to answer its purpose the place was transformed by the exertions of Dr. G. W. Leitner, in 1886, into the Oriental Institute, for the accommoda- tion of Indian subjects of the Crown visiting Eng- land, with two separate departments for high-caste Hindus and for Mohammedans respectively. The Public Hall, Woking, was built by a company in Commercial Road in 1896.

��88 V.C.H. Surr. i, 3284.

��1 By Local Govt. Bd. Order 41688. 381

��1 Tithe Commutation Returns, Bd. of Agric.

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