Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/510

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��made further alterations. The park was destroyed at the time of the Civil Wars, when the Zouch family was royalist. 5 '

The manor of SUTTON was held at the time of Domesday by Robert Malet ; Wenesi had held it of King Edward." Robert's lands were confiscated for his adherence to the side of Duke Robert in 1102. Button, which was held as of the honour of Eye, was granted to Stephen, afterwards king. It passed to his only surviving son William, who married the heiress of de Warenne. On his death, 1 1 59, it reverted to the Crown, 69 and although it was still of the honour of Eye was granted separately by Henry II to a cer- tain Master Urric. 60 His son died without heirs, and King John granted Sutton to Gilbert Basset, son of the holder of Woking. 61 It descended to his brother Fulk, Bishop of London, and to his younger brother Philip, 63 and to Aliva, Philip's daughter, who married first Hugh le Despenser, and secondly Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, who claimed it after her death in 1 28 1, 63 but whose claim was disallowed in favour of Hugh, Aliva's son by her first husband. It was for- feited with Woking, and with it was granted by Edward III to the Earl of Kent. They continued to be held together for nearly 200 years. In 1521 however Henry VIII granted Sutton to Sir Richard Weston, 64 at whose house he was afterwards forced to take refuge when an outbreak of the sweating sickness drove him from Guildford." The manor remained in the Weston family until the end of the 1 8th century, when Melior Mary Weston, the last of her line, bequeathed it to John Webbe on condition that he assumed the name and arms of Weston. 66 The male line of Webbe- Weston became ex- tinct in 1857. The manor passed to F. H. Salvin of Crox- dale, Durham, a grandson of the first John Webbe- Weston. He died in 1 904, and was suc- ceeded by his niece's son, Mr. Philip Witham.

Owing no doubt to the manors of Woking and Sutton having being held together before the reign of Henry VIII, the old manor-house of Sutton had been allowed to fall into decay. In 1329, after the death of Edmund, Earl of Kent, the house was ruinous and worth nothing. It stood near St. Edward's Chapel, a quarter of a mile from Sutton Place. The field is called Manor Field, and traces of foundations, old encaustic tiles, and an old well exist.

Sutton Place was built by Sir Richard Weston, most probably about 1523-5, at one of the most interesting periods of English architectural history, and is from every point of view a notable house. Alike in detail and in plan it shows the meeting of the old and new schools ; the ornament is Italian, but the construction is Gothic. There is a hall which had screens, kitchen, and offices after the mediaeval type, but its plan is affected by the desire for exact sym-

���WISTON of Sutton. Ermine a thief azure with fvt tenants there- in.

��metry and balance which its external elevation to the courtyard shows, and in place of stone all windows, parapets, etc., are of terra cotta.

The plan was quadrangular, four ranges of buildings, with the gatehouse and entrance on the north, in- closing a court 8 1 ft. square. The hall and kitchen were in the south wing, the great chamber and principal rooms in the east wing, and on the north and west were sets of living rooms called lodgings. A fire damaged the north and east wings in 1560, and they were never thoroughly repaired, and the north wing with its gatehouse, after standing in a ruinous state for many years, was pulled down in 1782, throwing the courtyard open to the north, as it remains to-day.

Though the general arrangement of the original house is certain, many points in it are far from being so, and some of these are of particular importance in the history of house-planning. An inventory of 1542, taken at the death of the builder, Sir Richard Weston, is unfortunately not so explicit as could be wished, making no mention of a great hall or dining chamber of any sort, and, as in the contemporary inventory of the Vyne in Hampshire, the word 'chamber' seems to be used for ground- and first-floor rooms alike. The great hall as it appears to-day is a fine room two stories in height (31 ft.), 51 ft. long by 25 ft. wide, lighted on the north by three-light windows and a four-light bay window in each story, and on the south by two three-light windows and a four-light bay also in each story. The exact repetition of these windows may perhaps be set down to the exigencies of symmetry, for, especially in the bays, the internal effect is far from satisfactory, but the fact that all the details of panelling, etc., are of the early part of the 1 7th-century raises a question as to whether there was not a first floor over the hall in its original state. The fact that the hall chimney-stack on the south side has not one but three chimneys points in the same direction. The hall fireplace accounts for one of these, and though it is true that there is a cellar under the hall, it is most unlikely that it should have had two fireplaces, and the former existence of a first- floor fireplace seems therefore very probable.

The upper floor of the east wing is now arranged as a ' long gallery,' 1526. by 21 ft., but although Wolsey had built galleries at Hampton Court before this time, it seems clear that such a room formed no part of the 16th-century house here. Its present form dates only from 1878, and part of it was used as a chapel during the I gth-century.

In spite of the evidences of Italian influence, the general aspect of the house is Gothic, showing every- where the simple directness and absence of ostenta- tion which mark the mediaeval English country house. The gatehouse was a stately building, as existing drawing! show, being nearly twice as high as the rest of the house, but its treatment was absolutely straight- forward, and no attempt was made to impress anyone approaching the house with a sense of magnificence, all the elaborate ornament being characteristically reserved for the inner walls of the courtyard. Even here there is a certain artlessness in the way it is used

��W Aubrey, op. cit.

'8 y.C.H. Surr. I, 3250.

" Tata de Ne-vill (Rec. Com.), 296.

Ibid. 215.

Ibid. 227 ; Close, 6 Hen. Ill, m. 3.

��** See Woking, above. Ibid.

L. and P. Hen. Vlll, iii (i), g. 1324

(7).

5 Ibid, vi, 948.


 * Manning and Bray, Hut. of Surr. i,

384

��131. Mr. Webbe was descended in the female line from the Westons of Prested Hall, Essex, who were related to the Westons of Sutton (Frederic Harrison, Annals of an Old Manor House, 143).

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