Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/97

 GODALMING HUNDRED

��THURSLEY

��THURSLEY

��Thoreseley (xiv cent.).

Thursley was originally a part of the parish of Witley. The length of the old parish was about 6 miles from north to south, about 2 miles wide in the northern part, tapering to the south and inclosing the town of Haslemere in an elbow at the extreme south. The boundary was here altered in 1902, by order of the Local Government Board, 7 March 1902, part of Thursley, covering 392 acres, which had been much built over by the extension of Haslemere, being transferred to Haslemere parish.

The area of the parish is now 3,986 acres, 1,202 of which are heath land, and 29 water. The parish is traversed throughout its length by the London and Portsmouth road, which rises in easy slopes for over 2 miles from Thursley Common to the top of Hindhead, 903 ft., or by another survey 895 ft., above the sea.

The road winds below the top of the hill along the edge of the great hollow called vulgarly the Devil's Punch Bowl. The old name was Haccombe, i.e. Highcombe, Bottom. The old road was higher up the slope near the top ; it can still easily be seen. The stone marking the site of the murder of a sailor of name unknown, by three fellow travellers in September 1786, is now by the side of the new road. But the crime was committed upon the old road, which was diverted in 1826. The murder is further commemorated by a tombstone, with a bas-relief of the act, in Thursley Churchyard. The perpetrators were hung in chains on a gibbet by the side of the road, pictures of which exist. The whole district was formerly extremely wild and dangerous. Pepys travelling in Surrey in 1668 engaged a guide to conduct him over the road from Guildford to Petersfield. This was a mere track. A properly metalled road was made first in accordance with an Act of Parliament of 1749 f r completing the road from Kingston to Petersfield. The road which branches off from Hindhead to Haslemere and into Sussex, to Midhurst, was made at the same time. The view from Hindhead challenges comparison with any in the south of England. Though not so extensive as that from Leith Hill, which including the Tower is 60 ft. higher, the foreground is more broken and diversified. The whole western half of the South Downs lies in front to the south, the Hampshire chalk hills to the west, the whole country to the Thames Valley is overlooked northwards. The advanced position of the hill, jutting out south- ward from the Green Sand range of Surrey, yields a view eastward along the middle of the Weald, with the Leith Hill range on one hand, the South Downs on the other, and Crowborough Beacon, in Sussex, appearing in the blue distance beyond. Till some forty years ago the spot was still desolate. The ' Royal Huts," the old inn, was the only house except two or three cottages which stood near it. Since then, Professor Tyndall having led the way, many houses have been built, but not on the top of the hill, and not generally in Thursley parish. The summit, and all the beautiful open common to the north, has been preserved as open space, by

��the purchase of this part of the waste of the manor of Witley, from the representatives of the late Mr. Whitaker Wright, by subscribers for the Commons Preservation Society (1905). Thursley is still a purely rural parish ; there is a small village near the church, and a small collection of houses at Bowlhead Green, where a Congregational chapel was built in 1865. The picturesqueness of the parish is not exhausted with Hindhead. The view from the churchyard westward is very fine, and the valley of Cosford is very beautiful.

The soil is the Lower Green Sand almost entirely ; the parish merely touches the Atherfield and Wealden clays on part of its south-east border. The Hammer Ponds, which formerly worked iron forges and a furnace owned by the Smiths of Rake, Witley, are partly in the parish. On the common, but in Frensham parish, are the curious conical sand-hills called the Devil's Jumps. They are natural, not, as has been supposed, barrows. Neolithic implements have been found, an axe-head by Mr. lolo Williams, now in the Charterhouse Museum, some arrow-heads and flakes, also in the Charterhouse Museum. The farm near the church seems to belong to the 1 6th century in the back part and interior. The principal landowners are Mr. R. W. Webb of Milford House, Witley ; the Earl of Derby, Captain Rushbrooke of Cosford, Mr. Yalden H. Knowles, and Mrs. Gooch.

There has never been a separate manor of Thursley, but the manor of Witley extends over the parish. In the 1 6th century tenants of Witley Manor were holding lands at Jordans, Robyns, Bagleys, and else- where in the ' hamlet ' of Thursley. 1

The church of ST. MICHAEL* CHURCH THURSLEr, was originally a chapel- of-ease to Witley. The mother church is mentioned in Domesday, but this is not, making it a matter of doubt whether there was a chapel on the site prior to about noo, which is the approxi- mate date of the earliest features in the existing building. There are a number of 1 8th and igth- century monuments in the churchyard, among which is the famous 'sailor's tomb,' mentioned above.

The church is constructed of Bargate stone rubble with Bargate stone and chalk dressings in the old parts. The same rubble, with dressings of Bath stone

���Pl&n&s

before

1860

Scale oi

��ST. MICHAEL, THURSLEY : PLAN AS BEFORE THE ENLARGEMENTS OF 1860, ETC.

��1 Misc. Bks. (Land Rev.), vol. 290, fol. 129.

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