WOKING HUNDRED 



WEST HORSLEY 



WEST HORSLEY 



Horsaleges (ix cent.) ; Orselei (xi cent.) ; Horslegh 

 (xiii cent.). 



West Horsley lies 6 miles north-erst of Guildford 

 and the same distance south-west of Letherhead. It is 

 bounded on the north by Ockham, on the east by East 

 Horsley, on the south by Shere, on the west by- East 

 Clandon and Send and Ripley. Blackmoor Heath, in 

 the north of it, was transferred to Ockham 15 March 

 1883,' and an outlying fragment of Wisley which 

 bordered on West Horsley was also made part of 

 Ockham at the same time. The parish is over 3 

 miles from north to south, and over one mile from 

 east to west, and contains 2,672 acres. Like its 

 neighbours east and west it reaches from the top of 

 the Chalk Downs, across the chalk, the Thanet and 

 Woolwich Beds, and part of the London Clay. The 

 church is just upon the edge of the chalk, the scat- 

 tered village on the next soil. Netley Heath, however, 

 which is in the parish, is a bed of sand and gravel 

 lying upon the chalk. There is still seme open 

 ground upon the Downs, but the greater part of the 

 commons has been inclosed. The village is scat- 

 tered about the lanes, but a few houses are clustered 

 together at Horsley Green. The church has very few 

 houses near it, except West Horsley Place, and is close 

 to the border of East Horsley parish. 



The road from Guildford to Epsom passes through 

 West Horsley, and the Guildford and Cobham line 

 is in the northern part of the parish. 



West Horsley Place (see below) has literary interests 

 connected with it. It was the seat of John Lord 

 Berners, who made the first English translation of 

 Froissart's Chronicle in the reign of Henry VIII. It was 

 shortly afterwards the house of the Earl of Lincoln, 

 whose wife, in whose right he held it, was the widow 

 of Sir Anthony Browne, and was by birth Lady 

 Elizabeth Fitzgerald, daughter of the Earl of Kildare, 

 celebrated by Surrey the poet as the ' Fair Geraldine.' 

 She resided at West Horsley after her husband's death, 

 and corresponded in very unpoetic style with Sir 

 William More at Loseley, where several of her letters 

 are preserved, including an invitation to Sir William 

 to come to her house during the crisis of the Spanish 

 invasion of 1588, dated 30 July, and expressing the 

 consternation in the court at the news that the 

 Spaniards were over against Dover in Calais Roads. 

 Carew Raleigh, son of Sir Walter, was a later owner, 

 and he sold it to Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of 

 State to Charles I, who died in 1669. Sir Edward's 

 son, Sir John, was Clerk to the Privy Council and died 

 in 1704. His son Edward, who died in 1726, was 

 Treasurer to Queen Mary. Their correspondence 

 was preserved at West Horsley, and a schedule of the 

 papers was drawn up by Edward Nicholas in 1720.' 

 A considerable part of the collection was purchased 

 for the British Museum in 1879, and now forms part 

 of the Egerton MSS. 2533-2562. But it is unfor- 

 tunately only a part of what once existed. The 



whole collection seems to have passed into the posses- 

 sion of Sir John Evelyn of Wotton, after the death of 

 William Nicholas in 1 749. Dr. Thomas Birch made 

 transcripts and a catalogue of the papers in 1 750-1, de- 

 scribing them as in the possession of Sir John Evelyn. 

 Some of them are still at Wotton, and were printed 

 by Bray at the end of his edition of John Evelyn's 

 Diary and Correspondence, 1 8 1 8. The rest are supposed 

 to have been returned to West Horsley, whence they 

 passed to the Museum in 1879, but a great many 

 papers referred to by Birch, whose transcripts are 

 in the British Museum, 3 are now lost. The missing 

 part included a History of the Long Parliament, 

 covering 285 pages in Sir Edward Nicholas's own 

 hand. Only fragments of this and of three letter- 

 books, from 1648 to 1658, survive. 



Extracts from the papers have been edited for the 

 Camden Society and the Royal Historical Society in 

 1886, 1892, 1897, and a fourth volume is in the 

 press. Inferior to the Loseley MSS. in local interest, 

 they are by far the most valuable general historical 

 collection preserved in any Surrey house. 



There is a valuable collection of historical portraits 

 at West Horsley of the Nicholas family and 17th- 

 century persons of note, Raleigh, Weston Earl of 

 Portland, Clarendon, Hobbes, Compton Bishop of 

 London, Ben Jonson, Anne of Denmark, Nell Gwynn, 

 and others. 



Woodcote Lodge in this parish is the residence of 

 the Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Roscoe. The Rectory house 

 was built by the Rev. C. H. S. Weston in 1819, a 

 mile away from the church, near Horsley Green. 



In West Horsley were 362 acres of common fields 

 and 1 6 acres of common meadow. The Inclosure 

 Act was in 1802.* By it 79 acres of common arable 

 and 88 acres of waste on Netley Heath were appro- 

 priated as a glebe. Five acres and a half are assigned 

 for the repairs of the church. 



There is a Wesleyan <_hapel in this parish. 



Broomhouse on the Epsom road is the property of 

 Lord Rendel, and is used as a convalescent home for 

 Poor Law children. 



In 1786* a house and orchard were recorded as 

 left for a school by an unknown donor. In 1813 

 Mr. Weston Fullerton built and endowed a school. 

 The Rev. C. H. S. Weston further endowed a school 

 with 760 in 1845. The present school (National) 

 was built in 1 86 1. Mr. Weston's endowment is paid 

 to this, and it seems that Mr. Fullerton's school had 

 been previously amalgamated with Mr. Weston's. 



The earliest mention of WEST HORS- 

 M4NOR LET occurs in the gth century, when a 

 certain Dux Alfred granted it to Werburg 

 his wife.* Bricsi held it in the time of Edward the 

 Confessor,' and at the time of the Survey it was in the 

 possession of Walter son of Other, 8 from whom the 

 family of Windsor descended.' Hugh de Windsor, 

 grandson of Walter, 10 held a knight's fee in West 



1 Loc. Govt. Bd. Order 14283. 



* Not by William his younger brother 

 as usually stated ; see Introduction by Dr. 

 Warner to vol. i of Nicholat Pafm (Cam- 

 den Series), 1886. 



Add. MSS. 4180. 



4 42 Geo. Ill, cap. 4$. 



* Return to Par/. 



Kemble, Cod. Difl. no. 317. 



353 



1 V.C.H. Surr. i, 323. 



Ibid. 



Collins, Hist. Coll. ofFam. 

 10 Ibid. 7. 



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