198 
NATURE NOTES 
Chertsey you will find the squared and sometimes tooled stones of the old church 
and the other Abbey buildings. Near this spot you could find more than else- 
where. The walls are made of them, the stables are built of them, my house is 
entirely constructed of Abbey stones, and should my political opponents consider 
my conduct deserving the treatment meted out by the Gordon Rioters one hundred 
and twenty years ago to those who differed from them and pull the house down, 
antiquaries had better come down at once for they will find great treasures in the 
walls of the very house that is before your eyes. Some of the most beautiful of 
the fragments on those shelves were taken out of the walls when the house was 
added to in 1898. Nay, the stones were not only used above ground, but 
Chertsey is swampy in places and it is necessary to make firm causeways for 
roads, and we are told, and I verily believe it, that the High Street of Chertsey 
has been made up to the height it now occupies and where it is rarely touched 
by floods, out of the stones of the old Abbey. Excavations made in any of the 
surrounding land are almost sure to bring treasures to light. When the Woking 
Water Works laid their mains along Colonel’s Lane, a great many tiles, carved 
stones, and even one gold ring were brought to light by the workmen, and a 
small drain laid from the stable yard yielded more of these tiles and fragments. 
“ The history of the Abbey is practically a meagre chain of formal documents 
and a record of the works of one or two of the distinguished abbots. We begin 
with the Deed Gift by Frithwold, dated 666. We have the cartulary enrolled in 
the public Record Office, a MS. record in the British Museum, and we have a 
few more bills and accounts, and that is all. The work of the greatest abbot that 
ruled there, Rutherwyk, 1307-1344, survives in the form of fish-ponds or stews 
of which seven or eight remain, but only three are still devoted to the old uses. 
These, however, are full of fish, and have their inlet and outlet sluices. The 
alders that originally surrounded them have given place to hazels and daffodils, 
but they are to be seen in the garden of Mr. Boyce close by. Rutherwyk was a 
man of talent and apparently a shrewd man of business, who greatly increased 
the Abbey property. It is recorded that Edward III. and his court visited the 
Abbey in 1 341 - It was soon after his time that the legend, recorded first by 
Albert Smith, of how a maiden, Blanch Heriot, stopped the ringing of the 
curfew, occurred in the Wars of the Roses, when her lover was sentenced to die 
at curfew. The curfew still rings at Chertsey as it has rung for one thousand 
years, from Michaelmas to Lady Day. The news came and the girl hid herself 
in the belfry, and by various clever devices secured that the bell should not ring, 
knowing that a pardon was on its way, and the life of her lover was spared. The 
legend, which is a genuine Chertsey record, has been made into a well-known 
American poem, but this book gives it in its original form. Albert Smith was a 
native of Chertsey. On the suppression of the monasteries in 1536, Chertsey was 
at first leniently dealt with, and although the abbots and monks were dispossessed, 
they were allowed to retire to Bisham near Marlow, further up the river, but for 
some reason or another this arrangement was altered and they were removed and 
scattered and the place became derelict, as I have described. It remained until 
1672, when Dr. Hammond obtained possession of the site and built a house which 
was one of the principal houses in Chertsey until the year 1810, when it too 
disappeared. The most distinguished tenant was Sir Nicholas Carew, Master 
of the Buckhounds to Charles II. Of this house there is shown a picture and 
plan. It came into the hands of Mr. Robert Hinde, the great London brewer of 
the eighteenth century, and of his lands I also show a plan. The house had 
probably by the beginning of the nineteenth century lived its life, for first the 
outbuildings and then the house itself were pulled down and the whole place 
reverted to dairy farm. A few cottages appear to have been put up and the last 
trace of these was pulled down this jear in rebuilding the kitchen and adding a 
room. In the year 1852 Mr. Grunbridge built the house before you, at least 
the original, which has been added to since, and subsequently built the house 
beyond. 
“ It is somewhat a matter of regret to an inhabitant of Chertsey that your 
learned Society can carry away so little of the history of the most distinguished 
building that Chertsey ever had. The reference to Chertsey in Shakespeare is 
well known. King Henry VI. was buried here in 1471. Removed front the 
Tower to Blackfriars, the body, according to Stow, barefaced and coffinless, was 
put on a boat after his death and rowed thence to Chertsey in 1471, and subse- 
