Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/586

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��COBHAM

��Covenham (xi cent.) ; Covenham and Coveham (xiii, xiv, and xv cents.) ; Coham (xvi cent.). '

Cobham is a village about 4 miles south-east of Weybridge and the same distance south-west of Esher. The parish is bounded on the north by Walton, Esher, Thames Ditton, and a corner of Kingston ; on the south-east by Stoke D'Abernon ; on the south by Little Bookham, Effingham and East Horsley ; on the south-west by Ockham ; on the west by a corner of Wisley and by Walton thus touching ten other parishes. It is about 5 miles from south-west to north-east, and rather under 3 miles from south- east to north-west, and contains 5,278 acres of land and 54 of water. T'he River Mole runs in a very circuitous course through the parish, and the soils are very various. The centre may be described as generally alluvium and gravel of the river valley ; to the north and on the west there is Bagshot sand, and the greater part of the east and south is on the London clay. There is open common and waste land with trees on it at Fairmile and Ockshot to the north-east and on Cobham Common, to the west, the Bagshot sand soil. Cobham Tilt is an open green near the Mole. Church Cobham was the original village, but Street Ccbham is an equally large collec- tion of houses north-west of the church, which has grown up near the Portsmouth road. Houses have grown up also about Cobham Tilt, east of Church

��Cobham, reaching to Church Cobham on one side, and now spreading towards the station on the other. The neighbourhood of Ockshot and Fairmile station is also becoming a village. There are brickfields in the parish.

The Portsmouth road runs through Street Cobham. The London and South Western Railway, Cobham and Guildford line, opened in 1885, runs through the east side of the parish, in which is Ockshot and Fairmile station. Cobham and Stoke D'Abernon station is in the latter parish.

In the autumn of 1906, during excavations for a new road at Leigh Hill, north of Cobham Tilt, circular rubbish-pits were found containing fragments of hand-made and wheel-made pottery, the latter Roman. There were also loom weights and pot- boilers, such as belong to a British settlement. The remains have been briefly noticed by Mr. Reginald Smith of the British Museum.'

There were two ancient bridges in Cobham. One was on the Portsmouth road across the Mole. It is stated * that a record formerly existing showed that the wooden bridge was made by Maud, queen of Henry I, for use in flood time only, as was the case at Godalming, the traffic at other times passing over by a ford. In 1782 * a new brick bridge was built to be accessible at all times as a county bridge, the lords of the manors of Walton and Cobham, who had been

���1 In Surr. Arch. CM. a.

��CHURCH STYLE HOUSE, COBHAM

442
 * Manning and Bray, op. cit. ii, 732

��"Stat. 22 Geo. Ill, cip. 17.

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