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. 



