Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/542

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��views through gaps in the trees with which it is rather too thickly planted.

Chertsey still remains a pleasant country town. There are three chief streets, London Road and Windsor Street forming part of the road between those places, and Guildford Street at right angles to them. In the last is a Jacobean house, now the Queen's Head Inn, and the remains of the house where Cowley died in 1667, incorporated into a modern house. A room supported on posts, which projected over the road, was removed in 1786. The house is the residence of Mrs. Tulk. In 1791 the following description of it is given: ' A good old timber house, of a tolerable model. There is a large garden ; a brook arising at St. Anne's Hill runs by the side. They talk of a pretty summer house which he built, which was demolished not long since ; and of a seat under a sycampre tree by the brook which are mentioned in his poems. There are good fish- ponds of his making.' *

The parish was divided into tithings called Chertsey, Allesden, and Adisford (i.e. Addlestone), Lolewirth or Hardwitch in Hardwicke, Rokesbury in Lyne, Haim, Crockford or Crotchford, Woodham, and Botleys. The Hundred Court of Chertsey for Godley Hundred was held in Hardwicke. The parish is now an urban district under the Local Government Act of 1 894,' and is divided into three wards, Chertsey, Addlestone, and Outer Ward.

Chertsey is served by the Weybridge and Chertsey branch of the London and South Western Railway, opened in 184.8, with stations at Addlestone and Chertsey, and since continued to join the Wokingham branch at Virginia Water. The connexion with Woking was completed in 1885. The road from London to Windsor runs through the town, and a bridge connects the town, which lies nearly a mile from the actual banks of the river, with Shcpperton in Middlesex.

There was no bridge at Chertsey in 1 300,* when a ferry was the only means of conveyance. There was a bridge under Elizabeth, which was out of repair. This wooden bridge, kept up by the counties of Middlesex and Surrey, was badly out of repair in 1780, when the stone bridge was built. The bridges over the branches of the Water of Redwynde, as it was called, the stream which flows from Virginia Water, and over the water-course which left the Thames near Penton Hook and rejoined it near Chertsey, seem to have been originally built or repaired by the abbey. Abbot John Rutherwyk rebuilt the bridge at Steventon End, near the end of Guildford Street, in the time of Edward II,* but this bridge fell into disrepair and was rebuilt under Henry IV by the town with the king's licence, the king insisting that it should be called his bridge.'

A market was granted to the abbey in Chertsey by Henry I, 6 and was confirmed in 1249 'and in 1281.* It was held on Mondays. Whether this market

��lapsed at or before the Dissolution is unknown. But in 1599 Elizabeth granted by charter a market on Wednesdays, and a fair, over and above any existing fair, with a parcel of ground for the building of a market-house. The charter was to twenty-one per- sons, their heirs and assigns, but the profits of the tolls were to go to the poor of Chertsey. 9 A market-house of the usual type, supported on pillars, was accordingly built near the south-east angle of the churchyard. In 1809 it was demolished, and in 1810 a new market- house was built in Bridge Street.

Henry I also granted the abbot a three days' fair to be held at Chertsey every year at the festival of St. Peter in Chains. 10 A second grant for a three days' fair to be held annually on the vigil, feast, and morrow of the Exaltation of the Cross was made to the abbot in 1249." This fair, now held on 25 Septem- ber instead of the 1 4th, is called the Onion Fair. 18

Yet another grant of a three days' fair, to be held at Ascension-tide, was made to the abbot and convent in 1281." In 1440 they also received a grant for a fair to be held on St. Anne's Hill alias Mount Eldebury in Chertsey on St. Anne's Day, 1 * 26 July. This is still continued in Chertsey on 6 August since the change of style.

Queen Elizabeth's charter (vide supra) established a fair on the first Monday and Tuesday in Lent, which still continues to be held on the Monday. Another fair on 14 May represents one held on 3 May, old style. 1 '

In 1642 a petition was made by the gentry that a Mr. Boden might preach at Chertsey on market-days and on Sundays when the minister of the parish did not do so. 16 The business used to be considerable in agricultural produce and cattle. The modern indus- tries of the parish are agriculture, much market garden- ing, and brick-making.

The Benedictine Abbey created Chertsey, which was a marshy island, inclosed by the Thames and the streams leaving and joining it, till the monks em- banked the water. On higher ground in the outlying parts of the parish neolithic flints have been found, in the Charterhouse Museum is a fine polished celt, and on St. Anne's Hill a bronze celt has been found." About three-quarters of a mile from Chertsey, on the right-hand side of the road to Staines, is a small square inclosure with very low but distinctly marked banks, and an area of under two acres. At Ham, close to the eastern border of Chertsey, is a large moated inclosure, nearly square. The house now inside it is not very old. In Addlestone, near New Haw Lock, on the Wey, is an old farm called Moated Farm, with a moat. This is also square ; it is not so large as Ham. There was an entrench- ment on St. Anne's Hill. Manning I8 says ' there were visible traces of a camp.' There are certainly marks that the upper part of the hill has been artificially scarped and the earth thrown outwards, forming in places a counter-scarp. On the left-hand side of the

��1 Gent, Mag. 1791, p. 199.

Loc. Govt. Bd. Order no. 31518.

Wardrobt Acctt, 28 Kd-w. I (Soc. Antiq.), p. 83.

Lansd. MSS. 435, fol. 177*.

Pat. II Hen. IV, pt. ii, m. 19.

Harl. Chart. 58, H, 37.

Ibid. 58, I, 8. 'Ibid. 58, I, 8 1.
 * Charter in private hands. See Man-

��ning and Bray, Hist. ofSurr. iii, 208 ; Pat. 41 Eliz. pt. x, m. 39.

10 Cott, MS. VitelL A. xiii, fol. 55.

11 Ibid. fol. 64 ; Cal. Ctart.i2z6-$7, p.

344-

18 The tolls are now taken by the owner of the site of the abbey.

15 Cal. Chart. 1257-1300, p. 260.

14 Chart. R. 18 Hen. VI, no. 31.

15 Aubrey (op. cit. iii, I7z) says there

404

��was a fair on the Exaltation of the Cross, 3 May ; but this ia the Invention of the Cross. The date of the Exaltation is 14 Sept., now represented by the fair on 25 September. Aubrey mentioned this as ' a fortnight before Michaelmas.'

14 Hist. MSS. Com. Ref. App. y, p. 260.

J 7 Arch. Journ. xxviii, 242.

18 Manning and Bray, op. cit. iii, 22$.

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