Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/619

 ELMBRIDGE HUNDRED

��The date of the foundation of ADVOWSON Thames Ditton Church is unknown. It was formerly one of the chapels belonging to Kingston parish, and was granted to- gether with the advowson of Kingston to Merton Priory by Gilbert Norman, Sheriff of Surrey, founder of that house. 74 The canons retained the patronage till 1538." After the Dissolution the advowson passed into private patronage till 1786, when it was bought by the Provost and Fellows of King's College, Cambridge, in whom it is still vested. William Speer, lord of the manor of Weston, presented in 1835." Thames Ditton was separated from Kingston and made a perpetual curacy by Act of Parliament in 1 769." The great tithes belonged to Kingston rectory ; but were afterwards separated, for they were sold by Mr. Bridges to Mr. Onslow with Imber Court. Lord Onslow sold them in 1786. A part of them was ultimately bought by Mr. Taylor of Imber Court and passed with the manor. 78

In 1720 Henry Bridges built 'six

CHARITIES handsome brick houses ' and endowed

them with 30 a year for poor

��WALTON ON THAMES

old men and women. 79 Married couples are now allowed to occupy them. In 1670 Miss Eliza- beth Hill left four others for widows or widowers, which were rebuilt in 1873 by subscriptions, and there are two others, founded by the Rt. Hon. W. W. F. Hume Dick and Helen his wife in 1873.

Smith's Charity is distributed as in other Surrey parishes. In 1703 William Hatton left a ' rugg ' every year for the poor wanting bedclothes (see Molesey), and in the same year he left 20 a. year for the minister if approved by the inhabitants. In 1710 John Wicker left z a year for the poor in bread, and in 1735 Anne Whitfield left 3 ; in 1773 Mary Funge left $, in 1776 Thomas Funge left j3, and in 1784 Josias Mitchener left 9 annually for the same object.

In 1724 'a small close, the rent for the poor,' was returned to Bishop Willis. This seems to be lost.

A Church School was founded in 1860, taken over by a Board in 1881, and enlarged in 1890 and 1895.

An Infants' School founded as Church Schools in 1841 was taken over by the School Board in 1 88 1 and enlarged in 1893.

��WALTON ON THAMES

��Waleton (xi cent.) ; Waletone and Walletone (xiii cent.) ; Waletone (xiv cent.) ; Waletone on Thames (xv cent.).

Walton on Thames is a village 5 miles south-west of Kingston, and the same distance south-east-by-east of Chertsey, on the Thames. It contains 6,701 acres of land and 158 of water, and measures nearly 6 miles from north to south and from 3 miles to I mile in breadth. The soil is river gravel and alluvium near the Thames and by the valley of the Mole, which river forms part of the eastern boundary of the parish while the Thames forms the northern boundary. Further south, where the ground rises to the higher level of St. George's Hill and the adjacent common, the soil is Bagshot sand. The scenery here is very picturesque. The hill is only 2 5 5 ft. above the sea, but it is of irregular form, singularly precipitous and broken in contour in places, and planted with a variety of fine conifers, rhododendrons, and other trees. The roads from London to Chertsey and from London to Guildford pass through the parish, which is inter- sected also by the main line of the London and South Western Railway. Walton Station is a mile from the body of the village.

Walton is now an Urban District under the Act of 1894, divided into the Hersham, Oatlands, and Walton Wards.

The neighbourhood of Walton on Thames is rich in ancient remains. Two cinerary urns have been found half a mile west of the station, and a neolithic flint knife or dagger. 1 Other neolithic flints have been found. An uninscribed gold British coin was found in the river, 1 and an Anglo-Saxon cinerary urn

��from Walton was exhibited at the Archaeological Institute in 1867.' At Oatlands was a large inclosure, variously described as a Roman or British camp, which was destroyed by the Earl of Lincoln in the 1 8th century when he was improving the park. 4 On St. George's Hill is a very considerable fortification. It covers 13^ acres on the highest part of the hill, and is the largest work of the kind in Surrey. The hill is now thickly planted, and covered with fern and brushwood, but the works are complete in circuit, though difficult to trace except in winter owing to the plantations.

The valleys of the Wey and the Mole approach each other closely on either side of the hill. Between the points where these two rivers fall into the Thames there was an ancient ford, Coway Stakes, opposite Halliford, and anyone approaching the ford from Surrey or coming across it from Middlesex would of necessity pass close under this fortification. Coway Stakes Ford has been often taken to be the place where Caesar crossed the Thames on his second invasion. 5

On the other side of St. George's Hill, in the grounds of Silvermere, was a round barrow, removed when the house was built about 1830. In it were three cinerary hand-made urns, with bones and char- coal in them, about 1 8 in. high, 1 6 in. wide at the greatest diameter, and 13 in. at the lip. One of them was preserved at Silvermere.* Four or five British urns were found about 1900 in excavations on the Apps Court estate.

Near Walton Bridge, and removed when the bridge was rebuilt in ^750, were several barrows. 'Spear

��* Leland, Coll. i, 67.

'Sure. Arch. Coll. vii, 222. It it not mentioned in the Valor Ecclftiatticut, and in the Ministers' Accounti of 1540, roll 31 Hen. VIII. Aug. Off. (Dugdale, Man. vi, 148), the following entry occurs in the list of the possessions of the priory : ' Kingston rector. Non

��respond quia annex' honor! de Hampton Court'

"last. Bks. P.R.O. 1835.

"In 1 650 Sir Dudley Carleton quit- claimed to Edward Knipe the chancel of the church of Thames Ditton ; Feet of F. Surr. East. 1650.

78 Manning and Bray, op. cit. i, 462.

467

��" Bishop Willis's Visit 1724. 1 V.C.H. Surr. i, 253. "Ibid. Ibid. 268.

4 Manning and Bray, op. cit ii, 758. 6 See y.C.H. Surr. iv, article on Roman Remains.

6 Brayley, op. cit. ii, 368.

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