Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/65

 GODALMING HUNDRED

��GODALMING

���GODALMING : BASHING BRIDGE

��The hamlet of Hashing contains many old cottages of architectural interest, and an ancient bridge over the Wey. One of the cottages is on the river close to the bridge. It is largely of timber framing. The other cottages at Lower Eashing form a highly picturesque group, with high-pitched roofs, hipped gables, and dormers of half-timbered construction, with a specially fine and lofty group of chimneys, connected with the main roof by a sort of lean-to. An ivy-clad stone wall to the fore-court heightens the artistic effect, and within the court is an ancient well-house, retaining its old wheel and bucket. 13 Another cottage in this neighbourhood has a fine crow- stepped chimney. Near Eashing House is a brick and timber building, with circle work in the gable. Eash- ing House itself was built by Ezra Gill in 1729-36 on the site of the house called Jordans.

Eashing Bridge, of three low stone-built round arches, with breakwaters between them, is probably of early 1 3th-century date. It has lately been acquired by 'The National Trust for the Preservation of Places of Natural Beauty and Historical Associa- tions.' It was formerly repaired by the lord of the manor. In 1568 it is presented in the Hundred Court as valde ruinosa, the obligation of repair being
 * on the queen. But in 1588 it was ruinosa still. 1 *

The name Eashing is of great antiquity. It is mentioned in Alfred's will, where it was left to his nephew ^Edhelm. In the Burghal Hidage, a docu- ment attributed by Professor Maitland to the loth century," it appears as a site of a fortified place, where

��the expression myd jEicingum shows that it was a tribal name. The burn is not likely to have been here. There are two tithings of Godalming, Lower Eashing where are the hamlets of Lower and Upper Eashing, as here described, and Upper Eashing Tithing, quite separate from it. The latter is High Tithing ' of the Hundred Rolls, about Busbridge, which name has superseded it as the name of a hamlet. Bus- bridge seems to have been named from a family who came from Kent, in 1384 spelt ' Burssabrugge ' and ' Burrshebrugge' (Hundred Rolls). There was other land called Bushbridges the possession of the same family in the Godalming common fields. James de Bushbridge sold Bushbridge or Busbridge to John Eliot of Godalming under Henry VIII. 18 His grand- son Laurence Eliot sailed with Drake round the world. His son William, born 1587," was knighted 1620. He built the old house of Busbridge, to judge from the features of the building, and formed the park, having a grant of free warren in his lands of 500 acres in 1637," and died 1650. His son William, born 1624, died 1697, leaving a son William, born 1671, who died 1708. His brother Laurence sold the property in 1 7 1 o. It passed through the hands of various owners. Among these was Philip Carteret Webb, F.R.S., born 1700,

���ELIOT of Godalming, Azure a fesse or.

��18 These cottages are illustrated in Mr. Nevill's Old Cottage aid Domestic Architecture of South-west Surr. (ed. 2), 65 ; a,nd in Old Cottages and Farmhouses in Suirr. by W. Galsworthy Davie, and

��W. Curtis Green, pi. 22, 23, 24, and 29.

14 Loseley R.

15 Maitland, Dam. Bk. and Beyond, 502 et seq.

2 7

��18 Survey of Godalming, I, 2, 3, Edw. VI.


 * ' Godalming Registers.

18 Pat. R. 1 3 Chas. I, pt. xxvii.

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