i5» 
NATURE NOTES 
EXCURSIONS. 
Saturday , June 16. — Owing to rather showery weather only fourteen mem- 
bers assembled at Cobham Station to visit Stoke d’Abernon Church and the 
Manor House, by kind permission of Mr. and Mrs. Phillips. 
On arrival at the church Mr. Philip M. Johnston read a most interesting and 
able paper on the architectural and historic features of the building, from which 
paper we are permitted to give a few extracts. The church is dedicated to St. 
Mary the Virgin, whose emblem, the rose, appears on the vault-boss of the 
chancel. The church, prior to 1866, consisted of a nave, north aisle and chancel, 
with the Norbury Chantry on the north. It then possessed a short wooden bell- 
turret and spire at the west end. The works of 1866 involved the removal of 
this and a substitution of a miniature bell-tower at the N.W. angle, the lengthen- 
ing of ,the nave and aisle, the rebuilding of the chancel arch on different lines 
and the making of a new east window. These were carried out at the cost of 
the late Canon Phillips; but much of the work done was detrimental to the 
archaeological interest of the church. The plan of the Saxon church can be 
clearly traced, and large parts of the walls of that period (circ. goo to 1000 A.D.) 
remain, including a piece of herring-bone work in Roman bricks, a sun-dial and a 
door to the original Priest’s Chamber, high up in the south wall of the nave. 
The height and thinness of the Saxon walls — both early characteristics — are 
noteworthy. The chancel has a very marked inclination to the north — a peculiarity 
shared with Fetcham Church higher up the River Mole, the dimensions of which 
also correspond very closely with those of Stoke d’Abernon. The north aisle 
dates from about 1190, and there are the remains of a painted Crucifixion 
(coeval) on the eastern face. The chancel was remodelled in the beginning of the 
Early English period (circ. 1210), when the beautiful stone and chalk vaulting and 
the graceful lancet remaining in the south wall were inserted. There are con- 
siderable remains of contemporary wall-painting, including part of a “Majesty,” 
or the “Worship in Heaven as seen in the Apocalypse.” Sir John Norbury, in the 
close of the fifteenth century, built himself a handsome Chantry Chapel on the 
north of the chancel, with a fine tomb, subsequently wrecked by the Reformers, 
and a fireplace. 
The church chest is a very noteworthy feature, and may be dated with 
certainty at about 1230. It is one of the most perfect of a group of such chests 
dating from the first half of the thirteenth century, and all distinguished by such 
marks as the “ pin-hinge ” and roundels of shallow geometrical patterns carved 
upon the front. The seven-sided pulpit, very richly carved in cedar, is another 
and was doubtless made to the order of a member of that family early in the 
seventeenth century. The grotesque caryatides that act as brackets to the 
pulpit stem, the richly inlaid sounding-board (now dismounted) and the contem- 
porary iron hour-glass bracket are all worthy of note. 
In the chancel are the famous brasses of the d’Abernons : that of the elder 
Sir John being the oldest remaining of this class of memorial in England. He 
died in 1277, his son in 1 327, and both are admirable examples of the armed knight 
at those dates. They are very' fine specimens of engraving, and the earlier one 
still retains portions of the original blue enamel that formed the field of the shield. 
Among other memorials are brasses of a chrysom child, Dame Anne Norbury 
exceptionally fine piece of ancient woodwork. It bears the arms of the Vincents, 
and her children, a coffin-slab to “ Richard the Little,” parson of Stoke in the 
early part of the thirteenth century, and a fine series of late sixteenth and early' 
seventeenth century monuments to the Vincent family and others in the Norbury 
Chantry. 
Aftea tea Mrs. Phillips, the Lady of the Manor, most kindly conducted the 
party over the Manor House, where are to be seen many fine pieces of half- 
timbering. The house is a veritable museum of old furniture both British and 
foreign, and the collection of pictures includes a very fine series of the works of 
George Morland, some forty in number. 
After passing a very hearty vote of thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Phillips for their 
kindness and courtesy, the party started to walk to Oxshott. Our thanks for this 
excursion are due to Mr. Wilfred Mark Webb, who secured the necessary per- 
missions, and to Mr. Philip M. Johnston, of the Surrey Archaeological Society, 
for his guidance at the church. 
