Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/613

 ELMBRIDGE HUNDRED

��frequented it. Beyond the ' Swan ' is the bronze foundry of Messrs. Hollinshed & Bruton, where the statue of the late Queen Victoria, designed by the Princess Louise and destined for Calcutta, was cast a few years ago, and where the process known as fir perdu was revived. On the opposite side of the ferry is Boyle Farm, formerly the property of Edward Sugden, Lord St. Leonards, a distinguished lawyer and Lord Chancellor of England, and famous for the igth century law-suit concerning his will. 14 The estate is gradually being cut up, and the house, which belongs to Mr. H. Mainwaring Robertson, is now unoccupied. The Lodge, a picturesque old house with high surrounding walls by the side of the road leading from the village to the Green, is the property of Sir Guy Campbell, bart., and in the churchyard are the remains, brought from Paris, of his famous ancestress Pamela Fitzgerald. Thames Ditton House also faces the river, but its beautiful sweeping lawns once famous for their smoothness are now only a rough field. It was the property of the late Rt.-Hon. Hume Dick, M.P., who built a picture gallery for his art collection and otherwise altered the house. It afterwards passed to Mr. G. B. Tate. Ditton Lodge retains a small park with some very fine trees which can be seen from the railway. It is now the property of Lord Mexborough. The manor-house belongs to Mr. H. Speer, and is built on the sloping side of the hill which leads from the river to the station : the road branches at the station, one branch going to Imber Court and the other to Weston Green and Esher. Weston House, formerly the property of General Sir John Lambert, K.C.B., and of his son General John Lambert, has lately been pulled down, and the grounds are now the site of an almost entirely new village. Ruxley Lodge is the residence of Lord Foley, Gordon Lodge of Sir Richard D. Awdry, K.C.B. The Green is only divided by a few houses from Esher Common and Weston Green.

Claygate was formed as an ecclesiastical parish from Thames Ditton in 1841. As the name implies, it is upon the London Clay, here capped in places by sand in the southern part of the parish, and was probably traversed by an old road running from Kingston Hill to the ford of the Mole near the square entrenchment in Letherhead parish (q.v.). It is under the same urban council as Thames Ditton. The church, Holy Trinity, is of stone in 1 4th-century style, with a tower. It was built in 1 840, enlarged in 1 860, and restored in 1902. A vicarage house was built in 1843. The school was built in 1838 as a Church school, and enlarged in 1849. ^ was rebuilt by the School Board of Thames Ditton in 1885. There is a Baptist chapel, built in 1 86 1.

��THAMES DITTON

Claygate has grown very much of late years since the opening of the Cobham line to Guildford ; Claygate station on this line was opened in 1885. There are brick and tile works near the station.

Claygate is in Kingston Hundred, in which the eastern part of Thames Ditton parish seems to have been always reckoned.

There appears to have been no manor MANORS in this parish known exclusively as the manor of Thames Ditton." The name is applied to a manor in several deeds of the Evelyn family in the iyth century, but it was probably used as an alia for the manor of Clay- gate, q.v.

The manor of CLAYGATE was given to the Abbot and convent of Westminster by Tosti," probably the son of Earl Godwin. The monks held it at the time of the Norman Conquest," and until the dissolution of their house, when it fell into the hands of the king. In 1538 Cuthbert Blakeden obtained a lease of the manor from the Abbot of Westminster which was subsequently assigned to Juliana his widow, who married John Boothe. 18 In 1553 the reversion of the manor in fee was granted by Edward VI to John Child at a rent of 9 8/. 8</. 19 and not long after Child sold the estate to David Vincent, who died seised of it in 1565.* From him the manor passed to his son and heir Thomas Vin- cent," and afterwards to Thomas's son Sir Francis Vincent. In 1603 George Evelyn died seised of the re- version of the manor after the death of Sir Francis." Before 1613 the manor was in the hands of the Evelyn family, and in that year Thomas Evelyn, who then held it, settled it on his son Sir Thomas Evelyn and Anne his wife in tail male, with contingent remainders successively to his younger sons George and William." Thomas Evelyn the elder died in 1617, and was succeeded by his eldest son Sir Thomas." From him the manor decended to his son Sir Edward Evelyn, kt. and bart., who held it in l685.* 5 He died in idgz, 26 and his son George Evelyn having died childless in 1685," his estates passed to his daughter Sophia Evelyn. She must have conveyed the manor to her sister Lady Penelope Alston, for Sir Joseph Alston, husband of Penelope, held a court.* 8 Joseph Alston their son settled it on his marriage in 1718, but died childless, and his brother Evelyn Alston sold it to Lord King before 1721." Lord King was in possession of the tithes in \']i'l? > His lineal

���EVILYN. Axure a griffin passant and a chief or.

��14 Diet. Nat. Biog. 'The mysterious dis- appearance of his will, which he had made some years before his death, occasioned a lawsuit which established the admissibility of secondary evidence of the contents of such a document in the absence of a pre- sumption that the testator had destroyed it anima revocandi* He died in 1875*

14 The manor of Ditton, which Wadard held of the Bishop of Bayeux in 1086, has been identified in V.C.H. Surrey, i, 305.1, as Thames Ditton. Further research shows that the Domesday manor was apparently one of the manors of Long Ditton in Kingston Hundred (q.v.)

��"Dugdale, Man. Angl. (ed. 1846) i, 294.

" f.C.H. Surr. i, 306.

are monuments in Thames Ditton Church to Juliana and both her husbands.
 * Surr. Arch. Coll. vii, 126. There

19 Manning and Bray, op. cit. i, 460.

90 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccxl!!, 131.

" Recov. R. East 9 Eliz. rot. 1003.

M Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccxc, 124. George Evelyn's mother was a daughter of David Vincent. Pedigree given to Aubrey by Sir John Evelyn before 1671.

"'Feet of F. Surr. Mich, n Jas. I.

463

��u Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2) ccclxxii, 161.

M Recov. R. East. I Jas. II, rot 8.


 * Ditton Registers.

W Ibid.

98 Ct. R. in possession of William Bray. But in Manning and Bray, op. cit ii, 461, there must be a misprint in the date 1691, unless the manor was conveyed before Sir Edward's death on the marriage of his daughter Penelope in 1690.

lj Deeds communicated to William Bray after the description of Claygate was written. See Manning and Bray, Hist, of Surr. iii, 15.

n Feet of F. Surr. HiL 1 3 Geo. I.

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