Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/581

 GODLEY HUNDRED

��THORPE

��THORPE

��Torp (xi cent.).

Thorpe is a small parish on the banks of the Thames. The village is 2 miles north-west of Chertsey, and nearly z miles south-east of Egham. The soil is river gravel, sand, and alluvium. The Chertsey extension branch of the London and South Western Railway from Chertsey to Egham cuts the extremity of the parish on the south-west. It measures about 2 miles from north-east to south- west, about 2 J miles from north-west to south-east, and contains 1,545 acres of land and 15 of water.

The village is picturesque, and consists of a group of houses at the cross-roads, with others scattered along a winding road to the east. Several of these are of 1 yth-century date, of red brick with central chimneys. Close to the church on the north, one of these houses has two upper-floor rooms completely panelled with 17th-century oak panelling and a carved overmantel.

Of modern houses Thorpe Place, in a well-timbered park, is the seat of Mr. H. C. Leigh-Bennett. It is on the site of the old manor-house. Thorpe Lea is the residence of Lady Milford ; Thorpe House of Mr. W. C. Scott ; The Grange of Mr. E. H. Holden.

The church stands close against a background of trees. From it a path known as the ' Monk's walk ' runs as far as Chertsey, traditionally to the abbey there.

There were lands called Redwynde in Thorpe which were granted for life to John the Parker in 1377 for keeping the king's deer. 1 The Water of Redwynde is the old name of the stream which skirts the parish and joins the Bourne Brook in Chertsey.

��William Denham, citizen and goldsmith of Lon- don, father to Sir John Denham the judge, and grandfather to the poet, was buried at Thorpe in 1583,* and probably resided there. In the early 1 9th century Captain Hardy, Nelson's friend, resided in Thorpe.

Nearly half the parish lay formerly in common fields. The Inclosure Act * inclosed 700 acres of common fields, marked as ' Thorpe Field ' on the I -in. Ordnance map, to the north of the village.

The National Schools, built in 1848, were en- larged in 1901. An infants' school was built in 1873.

Land at THORPE, ' 5 mansas in loco MANORS qui dicitur Thorp,' was given to the abbey of Chertsey by Frithwald before 675,* in which charter the boundaries of Thorpe are given. The manor of Thorpe is included with those of Chertsey, Egham, and Chobham in all subsequent con- firmations of this grant made to the abbey. In 1086 it was held by the abbey as 7 hides, having been assessed in King Edward's time for 10, its value at both periods being l z. s It remained with the abbey until the Dissolution 6 ; in 1537 the abbot surrendered it with his other lands to the king. 7 A thirty-years' lease of the manor had been granted by the abbot to Richard Wykes in 1 509, and in 1530 Maud Broke also received a grant for the same number of years, to date from the expiration of Richard Wykes's tenancy. She afterwards married Thomas Ford, and they entered into possession in 1539, when they sold their lease to

���1 Pat. I Ric. II, pt. vi, m. 10, 1 Brass plate in the church 8 Stat. 47 Geo. Ill, cap. 63.

��THORPE VILLAGE

4 Birch, Cart. Sax. i, 55. V.C.H. Surr. i, 309.

437

��6 See Chertsey, Egham, and Chobham for refs.

1 Feet of F. Div.Co. Trin. 29 Hen.VIII.

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