Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/83

 GODALMING HUNDRED

��HASLEMERE

��HASLEMERE

��Hasulmore (xiv cent.) ; Haselmere (xvi cent.).

Haslemere is a market town and a small parish 9 miles south-west of Godalming, of irregular form about 2 miles in breadth at the south end, and nearly 2 miles at the greatest measurement from north to south. The soil is mainly the Lower Green Sand, but the parish also extends over some of the Atherfield Clay and the Wealden Clay. It includes part of Weydown Common, and Grayshott Common to the north, and open land about East (or Haste) Hill to the east, and other open land ; but is mostly agricultural land or woodland. The parish is traversed by the Portsmouth line of the London and South Western Railway, and by the road from Guildford to Midhurst.

It contains 2,253 acres. A part of the town was in the parish of Thursley, but has been transferred to Haslemere by the Local Government Act of 1 894. The house called Weycombe was trans- ferred from Chiddingfold to Haslemere by order of the Local Government Board, 1884.'

The woollen industry existed here as elsewhere in West Surrey, and the iron works at Imbhams and in Witley gave employment to charcoal burners, called colliers as elsewhere in Surrey, in Haslemere parish. The names of Foundry Road and Hammer Lane imply ironworks in the parish.

The present industries include brick and tile works, and several handicrafts introduced of late years by artistic and benevolent residents or neighbours, such as the linen, silk, and cotton weaving in Foundry Road, introduced by Mr. and Mrs. King of Witley circa 1 895 ; tapestry, by Mr. and Mrs. Blunt ; silk weaving, by Mr. Hooper ; artist's wood and cabinet works, by Mr. Romney Green ; faience and mosaic works by Mr. Radley Young, in Hammer Lane ; weaving of ecclesiastical vestments, etc., by Mr. Hunter, on College Hill. The local museum and library, very far superior in plan and arrangement to the ordinary local museum, is connected with these local industries, as part of a general scheme to revive artistic taste and intellec- tual interests in a country place. But though Haslemere is a centre for a residential district, which since Pro- fessor Tyndall first built a house upon Hindhead has housed a remarkable body of literary, artistic, scientific, and otherwise distinguished residents, from Professor Tyndall and Lord Tennyson downwards, the greater part of the residential district is outside the parish of Haslemere, though a considerable number of houses have been built, or old houses adapted, in the place itself.

The tradition preserved by Aubrey ' that Haslemere was a place of ancient importance, once possessing seven churches, but destroyed by the Danes, is of no value. It is unsupported by a scrap of documentary evidence, and is contrary to probability, as the place, unnamed in Domesday, was on the confines of the Wealden Forest, in a generally thinly inhabited country and was neither an ancient parish nor an ancient manor. It was a chapelry of the parish of Chiddingfold and was part of the first royal and then episcopal manor of Godalming. Old Haslemere, on

��East Hill, also called Haste Hill in deeds, south-east of the town, was merely a tenement in the 1 4th cen- tury, 3 but the name ' Churchliten field ' there * and ' Old church-yard ' of Haslemere are suggestive of a church having been on the spot. The place where the present church stands, upon the opposite side of the town, was called Piperham. 5

The boundaries of Surrey and Sussex have perhaps been slightly altered here to the loss of Surrey. On 6 September 161 6 some forty inhabitants of Haslemere and the neighbourhood sent a letter to Sir George More, lord of the hundred and manor of Godalming, complaining that some two years back John Misselbroke had altered the course of the stream called Houndley's Water, near Carpenter's Heath, where it formed the county boundary, and that Richard Boxell of Linch- mere in Sussex had kept up the diversion.' Carpenter's Heath was the name of the land about Shottermill, on the borders of Godalming and Farnham Manors and Hundreds. Though the diversions deprived Sir George of land, no further action appears to have taken place.

Cinerary urns, made on a wheel, with calcined bones in them, and some flints about them, but no bronze or iron, were found in Mr. Rollason's meadow, called Beeches, between Haslemere and Grayshott, and were presented to the local museum in 1902. Close by was the floor of a kiln, with tesserae and burnt stones and charcoal. Neolithic flint implements are fairly common in the neighbourhood.

There are Congregational and Particular Baptist chapels in Haslemere.

The town is beautifully placed on the slope of a gentle hill Black Down ridge its church lying away from the town on a high spur. There is 3 market-house, placed in the middle of the wide street on the site of the Town Hall. It is not in itself of any great antiquity or beauty, but it harmonizes with its surroundings. For grouping, colouring, and the artistic setting of trees, creepers, and lovely backgrounds the streets of Haslemere are justly renowned ; and the new houses blend on the whole very happily with the old : but considered individually for antiquity or architectural merit they cannot com- pare with the houses of Godalming. Tile-hanging is the characteristic feature of the houses, which are mostly gabled and of brick or timber and plaster construction, with, in many cases, fine brick chimney stacks, and tiled roofs. Besides the High Street, which contains many picturesque examples of low-pitched gabled houses, there are interesting old houses in Shepherd's Hill (half timber and tile-hanging, to upper story, with plastered cove below) and East Street, which latter has a good moulded brick cornice. Most of these appear to date from early in the iyth century, but there are a few perhaps of earlier date, and a number belonging to the 1 8th century.

Haslemere, which was originally only

BOROUGH a tithing of Godalming, seems to have

first gained importance through itt

market, which was especially mentioned with the manor

��1 Loc. Govt. Bd. Order 165 31.


 * Hitt. ofSurr. (ed. 1718), iv, 28.

8 Godalming Hundred Rolls, Loseley

��MSS. fanim. The rent of Old Haslemere was 6d. per acre to the lord.


 * Gent. Mag. 1802, pt. ii, p. 817.

45

��* See below, under the account of the church.

Loseley MS. date cited.

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