History
The village lay within the Anglo-Saxon administrative division of Tandridge hundred.
The settlement appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Blachingelei. It was held by Richard de Tonebrige. Its Domesday assets were: 3 hides; 14 ploughs, 17 acres (69,000 m2) of meadow, woodland worth 58 hogs. Also 7 houses in London and Southwark. It rendered (in total): £15 13s 4d. [3]
In 1225 there is mention of Bletchingley as a borough. In the Middle Ages a borough was created by either the King or a Lord as a potentially profitable element in the development of their estates.
It appears that after the 14th century Bletchingley began to lose its importance as a borough, perhaps losing out to the market town of Reigate to the west. The village retained its status as a parliamentary borough and elected two members to the unreformed House of Commons. By the time of the Industrial Revolution, it had become a rotten borough. Parliamentary elections were held from 1733 in what is now the White Hart inn: a book in 1844 notes this and that 8 to 10 people voted, as well as a sale of the manor for a very disproportionate sum of £60,000 in 1816. [4]
Localities in the parish
Warwick Wold
Warwick Wold is a hamlet immediately southeast of the M25 motorway/M23 motorway interchange and separated by a green buffer from Bletchingley by Lower Pendell Farm, which holds in one of its fields ruins of a Roman house, Lake Farm and Brewer Street Farm. [6]
Pendell House, Pendell Court, and the Old Manor House
Pendell House was designed for Richard Glydd by Inigo Jones to a symmetrical plan. On one of the chimney stacks is the date 1636. Glydd died in 1665, and his grandson John, an MP for Blechingley, came into possession. He died without issue in 1689, and his mother and sister Ann Glydd sold the house to Andrew Jelf, who was succeeded by Captain Andrew Jelf, R.N. His daughters sold it to Joseph Seymour Biscoe in 1803 and he sold to John G. W. Perkins in 1811. On the intestate death of his son John Perkins in 1846 it was the share of his sister, who left it to her sister's grandson Jarvis Kenrick, who lived there in 1911. This is a Grade I listed building, the highest category of architectural listing in the country. [10]
Directly opposite the main road is George Holman's 1624-built larger Pendell Court, [11] built of red brick with stone mullioned windows and tiled roof, marble fireplaces and woodwork. It is now used as a private school. [12]
Backing on to the school along the same partly paved street is a 16th-century house, brown-brick clad, timber framed, refronted in those bricks and extended in the 18th century, with Grade II* listing, known as the Manor House. [13] Above this is a stone coped parapet partially obscuring a plain tiled roof with stone coped gables. [13]
Brewerstreet or Brewer Street
Only 0.6 miles (1.0 km) north of the village, reached by the road at the east end of the churchyard, is Brewerstreet Farm and the old Rectory, parts of which date from the end of the 17th century. [n 1] [14] The house is a two-storey, partly slate-roofed structure that underwent a complete transformation about the middle of the 18th century. In one of the upper rooms is a stone fireplace with a moulded four-centred head and jambs. Grade II listed, the house has three diagonal 17th century chimney stacks to the old left section at the point where it meets the new. In keeping, its central doubled glazed doors has a Doric fluted pilaster (column) surround under flat porch hood. [15]
Brewerstreet Farm is a Grade I listed building house, part 15th century, part Tudor; alterations and extension in 1850; further restoration in the 20th century. Close stud timber framed on a brick plinth with rendered infill, the roof is hipped of Horsham stone, with three symmetrically chimney stacks. A former medieval hall house, it has gabled end cross wings with jettied first floors, curly bargeboards and moulded dragon posts to stairwell corners. [16]
Redhill is a town in the borough of Reigate and Banstead within the county of Surrey, England. The town, which adjoins the town of Reigate to the west, is due south of Croydon in Greater London, and is part of the London commuter belt. The town is also the post town, entertainment and commercial area of three adjoining communities : Merstham, Earlswood and Whitebushes, as well as of two small rural villages to the east in the Tandridge District, Bletchingley and Nutfield.
Lingfield is a village and civil parish in the Tandridge district of Surrey, England, approximately 23 miles (37 km) south of London. Several buildings date from the Tudor period and the timber-frame medieval church is Grade I listed. The stone cage or old gaol, constructed in 1773, was last used in 1882 to hold a poacher.
Warlingham is a village and civil parish in the Tandridge district of Surrey, England, 14 miles (23 km) south of London and 22 miles (35 km) east of Guildford. Warlingham is the centre of a civil parish that includes Hamsey Green to the north. Caterham is 2 miles (3.2 km) to the southwest.
Alfold is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England on the West Sussex border. Alfold is a dispersed or polyfocal village in the Green Belt, which is buffered from all other settlements. The Greensand Way runs north of the village along the Greensand Ridge and two named localities exist to the north and south of the historic village centre which features pubs, a set of stocks and a whipping post.
Merstham is a town in the borough of Reigate and Banstead in Surrey, England. It lies 17 miles south of Charing Cross just beyond the Greater London border. Part of the North Downs Way runs along the northern boundary of the town. Merstham has community associations, an early medieval church and a football club.
Chaldon is a village and civil parish in the Tandridge District of Surrey, England. The village is situated high on the North Downs, immediately west of Caterham and 15.8 miles (25.4 km) south of Charing Cross, the traditional centre of London.
Godstone is a village and civil parish in the Tandridge District of Surrey, England. It is 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Reigate, 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Oxted, 22 miles (35 km) east of Guildford and 18 miles (29 km) south of London. Close to the North Downs, both the North Downs Way and the Greensand Way pass through Godstone.
The Greensand Way is a long-distance path of 108 miles (174 km) in southeast England, from Haslemere in Surrey to Hamstreet in Kent. It follows the Greensand Ridge along the Surrey Hills and Chart Hills. The route is mostly rural, passing through woods, and alongside fruit orchards and hop farms in Kent and links with the Stour Valley Walk near Pluckley in Kent. The trail was opened on 15 June 1980 and is jointly managed by Surrey and Kent Councils who fully updated it in 2012.
Limpsfield is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England, at the foot of the North Downs close to Oxted railway station and the A25. The composer Frederick Delius, orchestral conductor Sir Thomas Beecham and clarinettist Jack Brymer are buried in the village churchyard. The village contains 89 listed buildings.
Buckland is a village and civil parish in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England, between Dorking and Reigate, its nearest towns. The civil parish is bordered by the North Downs escarpment in the north. The area contains a number of sand pits.
Wonersh is a village and civil parish in the Waverley district of Surrey, England and Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Wonersh contains three Conservation Areas and spans an area three to six miles SSE of Guildford.
Burstow is a village and civil parish in the Tandridge district of Surrey, England. Its largest settlement is Smallfield. Smallfield is 2.5 miles (4.0 km) ENE of Gatwick Airport and the M23 motorway, 7.5 miles (12.1 km) southwest of Oxted and 1.8 miles (2.9 km) east of Horley. Crawley is a nearby large commercial town, 3.7 miles (6.0 km) southwest of Burstow and 5 miles (8.0 km) southwest of Smallfield. Towards the outside of the London commuter belt, some residents commute to the capital by road or rail from here as London is 24.5 miles (39.4 km) to the north or Horley railway station is accessible.
Bletchingley Castle is a ruined castle and set of earthworks partly occupied by three buildings. The Scheduled Ancient Monument is directly beside the Greensand Way below it to the south in the village of Bletchingley in Surrey. The site's tower standing from c.1170 to 1264 had a panorama from one of the narrower parts of the Greensand Ridge, which runs from mid-Kent to south-west Surrey.
Tandridge is a village and civil parish in the Tandridge District, in the county of Surrey, England. Its nucleus is on a rise of the Greensand Ridge between Oxted and Godstone. It includes, towards its middle one named sub-locality (hamlet), Crowhurst Lane End. In 2011 the parish had a population of 663 and the district had a population of 82,998.
Crowhurst is a village and civil parish in the Tandridge district of Surrey, England. The nearest town is Oxted, 3 miles (5 km) to the north. Rated two architectural categories higher than the medieval church is the Renaissance manor, Crowhurst Place, which is a Grade I listed building.
Nutfield is a village and civil parish in the Tandridge District of Surrey, England. It lies in the Weald immediately south of the Greensand Ridge and has a railway station at South Nutfield which is one stop from Redhill, on the Redhill to Tonbridge Line. It includes a watersports park and picnic destination, Mercers Country Park.
Busbridge is a village in the civil parish of Godalming, in the borough of Waverley in Surrey, England that adjoins the town of Godalming. It forms part of the Waverley ward of Bramley, Busbridge and Hascombe. It was until the Tudor period often recorded as Bushbridge and was a manor and hamlet of Godalming until gaining an ecclesiastical parish in 1865 complemented by a secular, civil parish in 1933. Gertrude Jekyll lived at Munstead Wood in the Munstead Heath locality of the village. Philip Carteret Webb and Chauncy Hare Townshend, the government lawyer/antiquarian and poet respectively owned its main estate, Busbridge House, the Busbridge Lakes element of which is a private landscape garden and woodland that hosts a wide range of waterfowl. On 1 April 2024 the parish of "Busbridge" was renamed to "Munstead and Tuesley".
Reigate was a hundred in the historic county of Surrey, England. It was geographically consonant with the southern two thirds of the current Borough of Reigate and Banstead together with two parishes in Tandridge and fractions of former parishes in the London Borough of Croydon and Borough of Crawley, West Sussex. Accordingly, it included the medieval-established town of Reigate with its motte castle and land which became the towns of Redhill and Horley.
The Church of St John the Baptist, Outwood, is the parish church of Outwood, Surrey, England.
