Chilworth Manor | |
---|---|
Type | Country house |
Location | Blacksmith Lane, Chilworth |
Coordinates | 51°13′14.1″N0°31′51.6″W / 51.220583°N 0.531000°W Coordinates: 51°13′14.1″N0°31′51.6″W / 51.220583°N 0.531000°W |
OS grid reference | TQ 02720 47855 |
Area | Surrey |
Owner | Private |
Listed Building – Grade II | |
Official name | Chilworth Manor |
Designated | 14 Jun 1967 |
Reference no. | 1188708 |
Chilworth Manor is a historic country house located midway between Chilworth, Surrey and St Martha's Hill to the north. [1] The manor is grade II listed by Historic England. [2]
Chilworth was the name of an ancient manorial estate recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) as belonging to Alwin before the conquest, and afterwards to Odo of Bayeux. This then lay within the lordship of Bramley, afterwards partly within St Martha and partly in Shalford, and latterly within Albury. On the site of Chilworth manor house there formerly existed a monastic cell belonging to the Augustinian canons of Newark Priory, Surrey (between Ripley and Pyrford), one of whom probably served the parishioners of St Martha during the middle ages. [3]
Newark Priory was dissolved by Henry VIII and by 1580 Chilworth manor was owned by William Morgan (c. 1525-1602), who also held the neighbouring manor of Tyting with Henry Polsted (whose son Richard Polsted [4] married a daughter of Sir William More (died 1600) of Loseley Park). [3] In 1583 William Morgan settled Chilworth on the marriage of his son John to his first wife, Anne Lumsford, and in 1589 upon John's second marriage, to Margery Goldinge. [5] John was knighted at Cadiz in 1596. [6] His wife, Lady Margaret, extended hospitality to the poet Robert Tofte and his brother at Chilworth, who dedicated his translation of Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato to her in 1598. [7]
In 1602, the year of William Morgan's death, Sir John's daughter Anne married Sir Edward Randyll, [8] and upon this union John bestowed a moiety of the manor of Wotton. [9] Sir John married lastly to Elizabeth Rich, sister of Sir Nathaniel Rich and of Dame Margaret Wroth. He died at Chilworth in 1621 [10] making a settlement of the manor by which his widow, who remarried to John Sotherton the younger, was still residing at the manor at the time of her death in 1633. [11] [12]
Sir Edward Randyll's family held Chilworth for over a century. Soon after the death of Sir John, Chilworth was chosen by the East India Company as the site for its manufactory of gunpowder. A 21-year lease was signed with the Randylls in 1626, but production was stopped in 1632: the Company transferred its interest to Samuel Cordwell in 1637, soon after a contract to supply King Charles I with gunpowder was made, but the king's monopoly expired in 1641. The mills were then demolished to prevent the royalists from seizing them, but by 1643 were working again, now supplying Parliament. On the expiry of the original lease in 1649, Vincent Randyll (the landlord) leased the mills on annual terms. [13]
The south front, the earliest part of the existing manor house, was built during the time in which Chilworth manor was owned by the Randylls. The architect is unknown. Morgan Randyll [14] was MP for Guildford from 1680 to 1712. As a result of the costs involved in the elections, the property was sold to Richard Houlditch, a director of the South Sea Company. After losses incurred in the South Sea Bubble in 1720, the manor was again sold. [5]
In 1725 the widowed Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, became the owner. She added the Marlborough Wing, developed a tiered garden excavated in the sloping hillside which is still known as the "Duchess's Garden". It then passed from her grandson, John Spencer, through inheritances to the Dukes of Northumberland who held it until the 1930s. It was then acquired by Alfred Mildmay who carried out major renovations to the building. [15]
Sir Lionel and Lady Heald bought the manor in 1945 and lived there for over 60 years. Elected MP for Chertsey in 1950, he was Attorney-General in Churchill's post-war government. She worked for many charitable causes including the National Garden Scheme of which she was chairwoman.
Since Lady Heald's death in 2004 [16] extensive restoration work has been carried out and the garden, fittingly, opened as part of the National Garden Scheme.
John Bunyan, who lived nearby at one time, is reputed to have based The Hill of Difficulty in Pilgrims Progress on the path from the manor to St Martha's Chapel. [17]
The house has been featured in a number of films and TV series over the years. [18]
Albury is a village and civil parish in the borough of Guildford in Surrey, England, about 4 miles (6.4 km) south-east of Guildford town centre. The village is within the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Farley Green, Little London and adjacent Brook form part of the civil parish.
Chilworth is a village in the Guildford borough of Surrey, England. It is located in the Tillingbourne valley, southeast of Guildford.
Guildford Castle is in Guildford, Surrey, England. It is thought to have been built by William the Conqueror, or one of his barons, shortly after the 1066 invasion of England.
Sir Lionel Frederick Heald, QC, PC was a British barrister and Conservative Party politician.
The River Tillingbourne runs along the south side of the North Downs and joins the River Wey at Guildford. Its source is a mile south of Tilling Springs to the north of Leith Hill at grid reference TQ143437 and it runs through Friday Street, Abinger Hammer, Gomshall, Shere, Albury, Chilworth and Shalford. The source is a semi-natural uninhabited area. The catchment is situated on sandstone which has a low rate of weathering. The Tillingbourne is 24 km (15 mi) in length.
St Martha is a hillside, largely wooded, small civil parish in the Guildford borough of Surrey towards the narrower part of the west half of the North Downs. It includes three homes north of St Martha's Hill, a southern knoll of the range of hills but almost all its population is south of this, in much of the village: Chilworth which is divided between it and Shalford parish. This results in an overlapping of areas where it is wished to consider the village of Chilworth. Chilworth gunpowder works mark the southern border of the entity, and are a well-preserved, publicly accessible area of bourne-side former industry, which helped to provide much of Surrey's contribution toward the gunpowder for many years of the British Empire.
Sir Richard Onslow was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1628 and 1664. He fought on the Parliamentary side during the English Civil War. He was the grandson of one Speaker of the House of Commons and the grandfather of another, both also called Richard Onslow.
Robert Tofte was an English translator and poet. He is known for his translations of Ariosto's Satires and his sonnet sequences Alba, The Months Minde of a Melancholy Lover (1598) and Laura, The Toyes of a Traveller: Or, The Feast of Fancie (1597). He also authored a partial translation of Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato and was possibly responsible for the popular and anonymous Batchelar's Banquet (1603) as well. Tofte is perhaps most famous for his incidental reference to Love's Labour's Lost in Alba, the first mention of that Shakespeare play in print.
Sir George More was an English courtier and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1584 and 1625.
The Law Brook or Postford Brook is a stream in the Surrey Hills AONB which feeds the Tillingbourne which in turn feeds the River Wey. It is notable in its own right chiefly for its industrial vestiges and records.
John Geree was an English Puritan clergyman preacher, and author of several tracts engaging in theological and political issues of the day, who was silenced for nonconformism but later reinstated. His elder brother Stephen Geree (1594-1665), also a Puritan minister and author, maintained his ministry through the Commonwealth and Restoration in Surrey.
Sir William More, of Loseley, Surrey, was the son of Sir Christopher More. The great house at Loseley Park was built for him, which is still the residence of the More Molyneux family. Of Protestant sympathies, as Sheriff and Vice-Admiral of Surrey he was actively involved in local administration of the county of Surrey and in the enforcement of the Elizabethan religious settlement, and was a member of every Parliament during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. He was the owner of property in the Blackfriars in which the first and second Blackfriars theatres were erected. He has been described as "the perfect Elizabethan country gentleman" on account of his impeccable character and his assiduity and efficiency of service.
Sir Christopher More was an English administrator, landowner, and Member of Parliament. More was the son of John More, a London fishmonger, and his wife, Elizabeth. He was active in local administration in Sussex and Surrey, and from 1505 until his death held office in the Exchequer, rising in 1542 to the post of King's Remembrancer. His sister, Alice More, was the fourth wife of Sir John More, father of Sir Thomas More.
Hatchford is a hamlet in the English county of Surrey outside the town of Cobham ; it traditionally includes the contiguous hamlet of Pointers Green.
Robert Gage, of Haling, Surrey, was an English politician.
John Sotherton the younger (1562–1631) was an English judge, member of a prominent parliamentary, judicial and mercantile family of London and East Anglia, who became Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer in 1610.
Henry Polsted of Albury, Surrey, was an English politician.
George Austen, of Guildford and Shalford, Surrey, was an English politician.
Thomas Dalmahoy was an English politician as the (co-)Member of Parliament for Guildford, 1664-1679. His left-handed marriage is notable in that he married the widow of his family's patron, killed at the final foray of the English Civil War, the Battle of Worcester, having served as his master of the horse attending to his travel arrangements — the patron was the Duke of Hamilton.
Morgan Randyll, of Chilworth Manor, Surrey was an English lawyer and Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1679 and 1722.