Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/628

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��the manor, site, and demesne lands of Morehall, and the wood called Sylkesmore coppice. 115 In the 1 8th century and until 1802 at least, the estate, then known as ' the manor of Southwood and Silksmore,' appears to have been held by the Frederick family. 116

The Church of ST. MART consists CHURCH of chancel with north vestry, nave with north and south aisles, west tower, and a south porch used as a vestry.

The earliest church for which evidence exists consisted of an aisleless nave, with a chancel of about the same size as at present. About 1 1 60 a north aisle was added, and early in the I ^th century a south aisle was built and the chancel remodelled or rebuilt. In the 1 5th century the present west tower was built. The tracery of the chancel windows is all modern ; the east window is of three lights with flowing net tracery, and the others are of 14th-century style, the jambs and rear arches so covered with colour wash and plaster that their age is difficult to determine. A north door- way leads to the vestry, which has a square sash window on the east, and in the south wall of the chancel is a 14th-century piscina with two drains and a restored cinquefoiled head, a single tall arched sedile, and close to it on the west a mutilated ogee-headed recess, prob- ably a second sedile. All this work is old, but the south doorway close by has had its outer stonework renewed.

The chancel arch has two chamfered orders with half-octagonal responds and moulded capitals and bases, dating from c. 1330. The nave has arcades of four bays with pointed arches of two chamfered orders like those of the chancel arch and probably coeval, and the south arcade has octagonal pillars and moulded capitals of the same date, but in the north arcade the pillars are of izth-century date, with circular scalloped capitals and moulded bases.

On the east respond of the south arcade is the well-known quatrain on the Holy Sacrament, in late 16th-century lettering renewed :

Christ was the worde and spake it He took the bread and break it And what the worde doth make it That I believe and take it

The north aisle has a modern east window of two lights in 15th-century style. In the north wall are two late 15th-century square-headed windows, of three cinquefoiled lights with square labels and stops. A third between them is a modern copy in wood with red-brick jambs.

In the west wall is a small blocked single-light window, the head trefoiled and apparently of 14th- century date. The aisle wall has been heightened with brick when the gallery was set up. Three windows, each of three uncusped lights, have been inserted. The south aisle has a 15th-century east window with three cinquefoiled lights and tracery, and at the south-east is a like window, but with mullions and tracery removed, with another next to it on the west which retains its tracery. The south doorway is of 15th-century date with a pointed arch under a square head and quatrefoils with shields in the spandrels, each shield bearing a plain cross. There is a trefoiled piscina in this aisle.

��The tower is in three stages with rough diagonal buttresses of brick. There is a modern west door, and above it a modern three-light window. The tower arch has three moulded orders with an engaged shaft to the inner order. On the north and south faces of the second stage are single lights, and the belfry windows are also single lights renewed. There is an 1 8th-century west gallery in the nave, carried by small pillars and a good moulded and carved beam, with a panelled front projecting on brackets ; gal- leries are also set up in both aisles, the organ being in the west gallery, blocking the tower arch. The chancel and nave are ceiled to the underside of the rafters, and have plain tracery and tie-beams which are probably of no great age. There is an octagonal panelled font, dated 1845, and all the rest of the fittings are modern.

On the chancel walls are several monuments, the most interesting being over the south doorway. It bears in an alabaster frame a set of verses ' in further memory of the said Thomas Fitts Gerald ' and Fraunces Randolph, dated 1619, and appears to be a pendant to a larger and now destroyed monument. In the north aisle is the large monument by Roubiliac to Richard Boyle Lord Shannon, Field-Marshal and commander in chief in Ireland, 1740, and close to it on the east a brass to John Selwyn, 1587, keeper of the park at Oatlands, with figures of himself, his wife, and eleven children. Above is a square plate with an engraving of a man riding a stag and plunging a sword into its neck ; this is repeated on the back of the same plate and probably refers to an exploit of the keeper's.

The bells are eight in number : the treble and second by John Warner & Sons, 1883 ; the third inscribed ' The gift of John Palmer, Esq., High Sheriff of this County 1726' ; the fourth by Joseph Carter, 1608 ; the fifth by Richard Eldridge 1606, inscribed ' Our Hope is in the Lord, 1 606 ' ; the sixth is by Warner, 1883 ; and the seventh by William Carter, 1 6 1 o ; while the tenor of 1 6 5 1, by Bryan Eldridge, bears the names of the churchwardens, John Taylor and Thomas James. The sixth was formerly a 15th- century bell by a London founder, inscribed ' In Multis Annis Resonet Campana Johannis.'

The plate consists of a cup of 1757, a cover paten without hall-marks, but c. 1728, a paten of 1713, two flagons of 1757, and a plated almsdish, dated 1829.

The registers date from 1636, but are imperfect.

A scold's bridle is preserved in the church.

In 1086 there was a church on ADrOWSON the land of Richard de Tonbridge, afterwards called the manor of Wal- ton Leigh, and the advowson belonged to the lords of this manor. 117 In 1382 Thomas Leigh conveyed the advowson to Geoffrey Michel. 118 He shortly after- wards enfeoffed John Gray and a number of others, 1 " possibly trustees for Henry Bowett, afterwards Arch- bishop of York, who, in 1413 endowed his newly founded chantry in York Cathedral with 2 acres of land in Walton and the advowson of the church "" for the support of two chantry priests, who had licence to appropriate the church. In 1 542 Robert Gybbon and William Watson, the then chaplains of the

��115 Pat. 21 Eliz. pt. xi.

1" Feet of F. SUIT. Mich. 5 Geo. Ill ; Recov. R. Hil. 12 Ceo. Ill, rot 47 ; Com. Pleaa Recov. R. Hil. 12 Geo. Ill,

��m. 138 ; Feet of F. Surr. HiL 12 Geo. Ill ; Trin. 42 Geo. III.

J1 7 See references given under manor.

474

��119 Feet of F. Surr. 6 Ric. II, no. 9. 119 De Banco R. 491, m. 2. 180 Pat. i Hen. V, pt. ii, m. 19.

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