A HISTORY OF SURREY 



bases of the sedilia are also peculiarly good, and the 

 two centre ones are of Sussex marble, together with 

 their shafts. The seat levels are stepped up, and the 

 piscina has a credence shelf and an elegantly moulded 

 bowl with two circular basins. 69 



Ancient roofs, no doubt coeval with the walls, 

 remain in the nave and transepts, but that of the 

 chancel is of modern deal. Perhaps the most inter- 

 esting feature in the church is the 1 3th-century 

 seating in the nave, in an almost perfect state. The 

 design of the standards, which is nearly alike in the 

 dozen or so ancient benches, is quaint resembling a 

 pair of cows'-horns with balls on the tips ; and round 

 the edges is worked a hollow chamfer. These benches 

 had a narrow plank for seat lately widened and a 

 thick rail to rest the back against, the space between 

 it and the seat being filled with a thin plank. They 

 stood upon a continuous oak plate or curb, which has 

 lately been done away with, and a separate block put 

 under each standard. 60 In the vestry is preserved part 

 of the very graceful fleur-de-lys termination of the 

 quire stalls of the same date the only fragment 



PLAN OF DUNSFOLD CHURCH 



remaining. It resembles others of like pattern at 

 Merrow, Effingham, and Great Bookham in this 

 county. An Elizabethan or Jacobean altar-table is 

 also preserved in the vestry. 



The walls of the church appear to have been 

 painted at about the time of the completion of the 

 work with a series of very small subjects, of which 

 copies made at the time they were discovered have 

 been framed and hung up in the nave. They seem 

 to have been executed chiefly in red outline, and on 



round the whole of the nave under the string- 

 course.' 61 On the east wall of the nave and transepts 

 the remains of a hunting-scene, with a hare and stag, 

 suggested the mediaeval allegory of The Three Dead 

 and the Three Living of which subject there is a 

 painting in existence at Charlwood Church, Surrey. 61 

 St. Christopher and St. George appear to have been 

 painted on the north wall of the nave, probably in the 

 1 5th century, and an undecipherable painting of this 

 later period still remains within the space occupied by 

 the timber tower, on the south wall of the nave. 



Some grisail'e quarries, coeval with the windows, 

 still remain in the chancel, and the bordering of the 

 modern glass in the east window is copied from the 

 old. The font with small circular bowl in Sussex 

 marble is of uncertain date, but probably late 13th- 

 century, although some authorities have placed it as 

 late as the latter part of the lyth century. The only 

 mediaeval monument now visible is a stone slab dug 

 up in the nave and now placed in the south transept, 

 which has moulded edges, and probably once bore a 

 cross. It is a monumental slab and not a coffin-lid. 

 Aubrey mentions a gravestone 

 in the chancel to 'John Ship- 

 say, Dr. of Divinity, Rector of 

 the Parsonage of Dunsfold,' 

 who was ' chaplayn to King 

 Charles the First,' and died in 

 1665, but this is no longer to 

 be seen. 



The registers commence in 

 1628. The first volume, which 

 ends in 1653, is partly tran- 

 scribed in volume two, which 

 contains baptisms to 1810, 

 burials to 1812, marriages to 

 1752. The registers of bap- 

 tisms and marriages are com- 

 pleted in volumes three and 

 four. They contain, among 

 other items of interest, a record 

 that Sarah Pick, on 1 8 March 

 1665, 'did penance in a white 

 sheet,' with the remarkable ad- 

 dendum that ' She was excom- 



cated code die': and another notice of the penance in 

 private of one 'J. Barnes and An his wife' in 1667. 



There is a silver cup of I 566 and a ewer of 1578 

 among the church plate ; also an old pewter tankard- 

 shaped flagon, no longer used. 



Of the six bells three are modern, added in 1892. 

 One, recast in 1893, was by William Knight of 

 Reading, 1583, inscribed multit annis resonet campana 

 Johannis. Another bears the date 1621, and the 

 inscription ' Our hope is in the Lorde ' : and a third 



the south wall of the nave, immediately westward of of 1 64.9 is by Bryan Eldridge, 



the transept arch, ' the scheme of human redemption 

 was probably set forth, commencing with the Fall of 

 Man, and ending with the Coronation of the Blessed 

 Virgin the last within a quatrefoil ... A band 

 of interlacing, or chain-work, is said to have run 



The advowson of the parish 

 church was at first in the hands 

 of the king, who granted it with 

 that of Shalford to St. Mary Spital without Bishops- 

 gate in 1304-5 ;" it followed the history of Shalford 



59 The range of aedilia and piscina 

 at Preston, Sussex, is a coarse edition 

 of these. Trotton, Lynchmerc, and 

 Sompting, Sussex, have very similar pis- 

 cinae. 



Burstow, Chiddingfold and Witley, 

 in Surrey, have one or two seats of some- 



what similar character and date. Did- 

 ling, Sussex, Minstead in the New Forest, 

 Winchfield, Hants, Clapton in Gordano, 

 Somerset, and Churchdown, Gloucester- 

 shire, are other examples of nave seating 

 of the late I3th or early 141)1 cen- 

 tury. 



9 6 



" J. L. Andre, F.S.A, Surr. Arch. 

 Coll. xiii, 9. 



82 Another was found at Fetcham in 

 this county, and the same subject was 

 formerly to be seen over the chancel arch 

 at Battle, Sussex. 



* Chart. R. 33 Edw. I, no. 49. 



