Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/605

 ELMBRIDGE HUNDRED

��STOKE D'ABERNON

��STOKE D'ABERNON

��Stocke (xi cent.), Estokes (xii cent.), Stokes D'Aber- non (xiii cent.), Stokes Daberoun (xiv cent.), Stoke Dabemon, Dabernoun, Daubernoun (xiv and xv and xvi cent.), Stoke d'Alborne 1843.

Stoke D'Abernon is a small village 3 miles north- west of Letherhead and a mile and a half east of Church Cobham. The Mole separates the parish from the Bookhams, and also for a short distance from Cobham. The parish measures nearly 3^ miles north-east and south-west by i^ miles, and contains 2,022 acres. The north-east part is high ground on the London Clay, with patches of gravel. There is here an extensive common, Stoke Common, much overgrown with wood, and on it a medicinal spring called Jessopp's Well, containing Epsom salts, and very powerful. The lower part of the parish is in the alluvium of the Mole valley, and the village, church, and manor-house are on gravel near the river. The road from Lether- head to Cobham passes through it, and the Cobham and Guildford line of the London and South Western Railway has a station in the parish, Cobham and Stoke D'Abernon, opened in 1885.

The neighbourhood of the church was presumably occupied by some Roman building, many Roman tiles being employed in the original walls. In Lether- head parish close by the boundary there is a square entrenchment, and Roman tiles and coins have been found in a field close to this and next to the Lether- head and Cobham road.

Stoke D'Abernon is mentioned in the Metrical His- tory of Guillaume le Marechal, as the scene of his honey- moon with the heiress of the Earl of Pembroke :

Quant les noces bien faites furent, Et richement, si comme els durent, La dame emmena, ce savon, Chies Sire Angeran d'Abernon, A Estokes, en liu paisable, E aesie e delitable.'

There was an Inclosure Act for the parish in 1821,* the award was made 30 July 1823.*

The bridge on the old road from Letherhead crossed the Mole near the manor-house. It was of wood, and, as elsewhere, used only in flood time, a ford supplying the ordinary means of crossing. The bridge was built by Sir Francis Vincent, 1757-75. In 1805 it was replaced by a brick bridge higher up the river, the road being diverted. A line of oaks marks the old road leading to the ford, and some of the supports of the wooden bridge are still visible in both banks of the river.

Ockshot is a hamlet a mile and a half north-east of Stoke D'Abernon Church, where a number of houses have been built since the railway was opened. There is a National school in the hamlet which is used for services on Sunday. It was built in 1820, the Duchess of Kent laying the foundation stone, and was enlarged in 1 897.

��Woodlands Park, with a modern house, is the seat of Mr. J. W. Benson, and D'Abernon Chase is the residence of Sir William Vincent, bart. The Priory, in the north of the parish, was so called from its having belonged to Newark Priory. It has been incorporated with the Claremont estate.

The French Huguenot family of Vaillant owned the advowson of Stoke D'Abernon in the 1 9th century. Fran9ois Vaillant fled from Saumur in 1685 and settled in London. His son Paul settled first at Battersea and then (1732) at West Horsley. He was born in France in 1672 and died at West Horsley in 1739. His son Paul, born in 1715, bought the advowson of Stoke D'Abernon and a house in the village in 1800, and died in 1802, having in 1801 presented his son Philip Vaillant to the living, which he held till 1 846. The arms of the family are azure a herring argent, a chief or.*

Before the Norman Conquest STOKE M4NOR [D'ABERNON] was held by Bricsi of King Edward.' William granted it to Richard de Tonbridge, lord of Clare,' and it remained part of the possessions of his family, a sub-tenant, how- ever, being enfeofFed (probably) in the I2th century. In 1314 Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, was killed at the battle of Bannockburn. He left no issue and his estates were divided among his three sisters, while the earldoms of Gloucester and Hertford became extinct. 8 The manor of Stoke D'Abernon fell to the share of Eleanor, the eldest sister, 9 who married Hugh le Despenser the younger.

����CLARE. Or three ehe-verons gules*

��DISPENSER. Urgent quartered 'with gules fret' ty or and a bend sable over all.

��Their eldest son Hugh died childless, and was succeeded by his brother's son Edward, afterwards Baron Despenser, 10 who was overlord of the manor in 1375." Edward's son and heir Thomas, created Earl of Gloucester in 1397 by Richard II, lost his earldom in 1399 through his faithful adherence to that king's cause." In 1418 the manor was said to be held of the honour of Gloucester ; " this came to the Crown through the marriage of Lady Anne Nevill with Richard III. 14

The head of the family which held the manor of Stoke for centuries under the Earls of Gloucester, and gave its name to the place, seems to have been

��1 Aberon, at it is now spelt, is near Lisieux in Normandy.

4 Lines 9545-50.

8 2 Geo. IV, cap. 19.

4 Blue Bk. Incl. Awards.

' Inscription in church, and information from Rev. W. B. Vaillant

r.C.H. Surr. i, 279.

' Ibid. 318*.

��8 Burke, Dorm, and Ext, Peerages, 120. Chan. Inq. p.m. I Edw. Ill, no. 53.

10 Burke, ut sufra, 166.

11 Chan. Inq. p.m. 49 Edw. Ill, pt ii (ist nos.), no. 46.

18 Burke, ut sufra.

u Chan. Inq. p.m. 6 Hen. V, no. 30. 14 See Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccccxiii, 7'-

457

��It i noteworthy that it was not origin- ally part of the honour of Gloucester, but of the honour of Clare, as being part of the original grant to Richard de Clare whose descendant Gilbert acquired the honour of Gloucester from his mother in 1225. It it correctly described as of the honour of Clare in Testa de fftvill (221).

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