DOMESDAY SURVEY 



r A HE Domesday Survey of the county of Surrey is neither long 



nor of special interest. Its length, indeed, is proportionate 

 enough to the actual area of the county when we compare it 

 with its neighbours in the south-east of England, the counties of 

 Kent and Sussex ; but its relative lack of interest is accounted for by other 

 causes. Sussex, largely isolated by tracts of forest and of marsh, had an 

 ancient life of its own, typified by its bishop's see ; Kent, with two sees 

 within its borders, and, like Sussex, largely isolated by its geographical 

 position, possessed a body of local customs, of which the entry in Domes- 

 day is full of interest and of value. In Dover also it possessed a town of 

 which there is a full and a striking survey. Compared with these 

 historic counties, Surrey, in more respects than one, stood at a dis- 

 advantage. With no bishop of its own, with no great town, it did not 

 even contain the seat of a Norman earl or great baron. And worst of 

 all, we have no such entry of local administration and customs as affords 

 so precious and so welcome a break in the normal monotony of Domes- 

 day. Geographical conditions were accountable, in no small degree, for 

 Surrey's lack in historical importance. On the one hand the south of 

 the county was largely forest waste ; on the other, the proximity of 

 London would exercise so great an influence that its northern portion 

 must have turned its eyes to Southwark rather than to Guildford. In- 

 stead, therefore, of a county town forming a centre for local life, Surrey, 

 we shall find, even then, possessed in Southwark an urban district over- 

 shadowed by the great city that lay beyond the bridge and inevitably 

 bound to become a mere suburb of London. 



This is, I think, the new fact that a careful study of Domesday 

 reveals to our eyes. Guildford, for such importance as it possessed, was 

 indebted only to its position in a gap of the chalk uplands, which made it 

 the meeting-place of certain roads, and, therefore, of some commercial as 

 well as strategical consequence. The west and the south-west of the 

 county, for which it would have formed a natural centre, were largely 

 occupied by heath and woodland. Southwark, on the contrary, in the 

 north-east, was surrounded by a close array of villages, by places bearing 

 the familiar names of Lambeth, Kennington, Walworth, Bermondsey, 

 Hatcham, Peckham, Camberwell, Brixton, and Battersea, to say nothing 

 of Clapham, Wandsworth, Balham, Streatham, and Tooting. But the 

 relative position of Southwark and of Guildford at the time of the 

 Domesday Survey must be separately discussed below. 



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