A HISTORY OF SURREY 



made further alterations. The park was destroyed at 

 the time of the Civil Wars, when the Zouch family 

 was royalist. 5 ' 



The manor of SUTTON was held at the time of 

 Domesday by Robert Malet ; Wenesi had held it of 

 King Edward." Robert's lands were confiscated for 

 his adherence to the side of Duke Robert in 1102. 

 Button, which was held as of the honour of Eye, was 

 granted to Stephen, afterwards king. It passed to his 

 only surviving son William, who married the heiress 

 of de Warenne. On his death, 1 1 59, it reverted to 

 the Crown, 69 and although it was still of the honour 

 of Eye was granted separately by Henry II to a cer- 

 tain Master Urric. 60 His son died without heirs, and 

 King John granted Sutton to Gilbert Basset, son of 

 the holder of Woking. 61 It descended to his brother 

 Fulk, Bishop of London, and to his younger brother 

 Philip, 63 and to Aliva, Philip's daughter, who married 

 first Hugh le Despenser, and secondly Roger Bigod, 

 Earl of Norfolk, who claimed it after her death in 

 1 28 1, 63 but whose claim was disallowed in favour of 

 Hugh, Aliva's son by her first husband. It was for- 

 feited with Woking, and with it was granted by 

 Edward III to the Earl of Kent. They continued 

 to be held together for nearly 200 years. In 1521 

 however Henry VIII granted Sutton to Sir Richard 

 Weston, 64 at whose house he was afterwards forced to 

 take refuge when an outbreak of the sweating sickness 

 drove him from Guildford." The manor remained 

 in the Weston family until the 

 end of the 1 8th century, when 

 Melior Mary Weston, the last 

 of her line, bequeathed it to 

 John Webbe on condition that 

 he assumed the name and arms 

 of Weston. 66 The male line 

 of Webbe- Weston became ex- 

 tinct in 1857. The manor 

 passed to F. H. Salvin of Crox- 

 dale, Durham, a grandson of 

 the first John Webbe- Weston. 

 He died in 1 904, and was suc- 

 ceeded by his niece's son, Mr. 

 Philip Witham. 



Owing no doubt to the manors of Woking and 

 Sutton having being held together before the reign 

 of Henry VIII, the old manor-house of Sutton 

 had been allowed to fall into decay. In 1329, 

 after the death of Edmund, Earl of Kent, the house 

 was ruinous and worth nothing. It stood near 

 St. Edward's Chapel, a quarter of a mile from Sutton 

 Place. The field is called Manor Field, and traces 

 of foundations, old encaustic tiles, and an old well 

 exist. 



Sutton Place was built by Sir Richard Weston, 

 most probably about 1523-5, at one of the most 

 interesting periods of English architectural history, 

 and is from every point of view a notable house. 

 Alike in detail and in plan it shows the meeting of 

 the old and new schools ; the ornament is Italian, but 

 the construction is Gothic. There is a hall which had 

 screens, kitchen, and offices after the mediaeval type, 

 but its plan is affected by the desire for exact sym- 



WISTON of Sutton. 

 Ermine a thief azure 

 with fvt tenants there- 

 in. 



metry and balance which its external elevation to the 

 courtyard shows, and in place of stone all windows, 

 parapets, etc., are of terra cotta. 



The plan was quadrangular, four ranges of buildings, 

 with the gatehouse and entrance on the north, in- 

 closing a court 8 1 ft. square. The hall and kitchen 

 were in the south wing, the great chamber and 

 principal rooms in the east wing, and on the 

 north and west were sets of living rooms called 

 lodgings. A fire damaged the north and east wings 

 in 1560, and they were never thoroughly repaired, 

 and the north wing with its gatehouse, after standing 

 in a ruinous state for many years, was pulled down in 

 1782, throwing the courtyard open to the north, as 

 it remains to-day. 



Though the general arrangement of the original 

 house is certain, many points in it are far from being 

 so, and some of these are of particular importance in 

 the history of house-planning. An inventory of 1542, 

 taken at the death of the builder, Sir Richard Weston, 

 is unfortunately not so explicit as could be wished, 

 making no mention of a great hall or dining chamber 

 of any sort, and, as in the contemporary inventory of 

 the Vyne in Hampshire, the word 'chamber' seems 

 to be used for ground- and first-floor rooms alike. 

 The great hall as it appears to-day is a fine room two 

 stories in height (31 ft.), 51 ft. long by 25 ft. wide, 

 lighted on the north by three-light windows and 

 a four-light bay window in each story, and on the 

 south by two three-light windows and a four-light bay 

 also in each story. The exact repetition of these 

 windows may perhaps be set down to the exigencies 

 of symmetry, for, especially in the bays, the internal 

 effect is far from satisfactory, but the fact that all the 

 details of panelling, etc., are of the early part of the 

 1 7th-century raises a question as to whether there 

 was not a first floor over the hall in its original state. 

 The fact that the hall chimney-stack on the south 

 side has not one but three chimneys points in the 

 same direction. The hall fireplace accounts for one 

 of these, and though it is true that there is a cellar 

 under the hall, it is most unlikely that it should have 

 had two fireplaces, and the former existence of a first- 

 floor fireplace seems therefore very probable. 



The upper floor of the east wing is now arranged 

 as a ' long gallery,' 1526. by 21 ft., but although 

 Wolsey had built galleries at Hampton Court before 

 this time, it seems clear that such a room formed no 

 part of the 16th-century house here. Its present 

 form dates only from 1878, and part of it was used 

 as a chapel during the I gth-century. 



In spite of the evidences of Italian influence, the 

 general aspect of the house is Gothic, showing every- 

 where the simple directness and absence of ostenta- 

 tion which mark the mediaeval English country house. 

 The gatehouse was a stately building, as existing 

 drawing! show, being nearly twice as high as the rest 

 of the house, but its treatment was absolutely straight- 

 forward, and no attempt was made to impress anyone 

 approaching the house with a sense of magnificence, 

 all the elaborate ornament being characteristically 

 reserved for the inner walls of the courtyard. Even 

 here there is a certain artlessness in the way it is used 



W Aubrey, op. cit. 



'8 y.C.H. Surr. I, 3250. 



" Tata de Ne-vill (Rec. Com.), 296. 



Ibid. 215. 



Ibid. 227 ; Close, 6 Hen. Ill, m. 3. 



** See Woking, above. Ibid. 



L. and P. Hen. Vlll, iii (i), g. 1324 



(7). 



5 Ibid, vi, 948. 



** Manning and Bray, Hut. of Surr. i, 



384 



131. Mr. Webbe was descended in the 

 female line from the Westons of Prested 

 Hall, Essex, who were related to the 

 Westons of Sutton (Frederic Harrison, 

 Annals of an Old Manor House, 143). 



