Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 7.djvu/142

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48
WORKING MANOR.

water-wheel for filling the moats. This court contained the gardens with fruit-trees.

If the massive foundations which remain are to be taken as indicating the site of the buildings above described, it is clear that they were included in the first of these courts, and that the gate-house and drawbridge by which it was entered stood where is now the way into the farm premises. Such being the case, the second court must have been that on the west of the first, and in which were the gardens, stew-ponds, &c. I take the reservoir to be the square sunken area to the south-west of the second area inclosed with a moat.

The Society is indebted to Lieutenant Wynne, R.E., for the plan showing the line of the several foundations of the old buildings.

In the Survey of the Woking Domain made on the death of Philip Basset (1272) there is not any mention of a park ; but in the Survey made when Roger Earl of Norfolk yielded up to Hugh Dispenser (1282), there seems to have been " a Small Park of xl. acres of the yearly value of 13s. 4d." In the next Survey (1327) there occurs " a Park for Ix head of Deer, the Pasture, if no Deer are kept, 6s. 8d." In the Survey of 1331, "Pasture in the Park 10s." In the Survey of 1411 we find " a Park inclosed, the Pasture thereof, besides feed- ing the deer, is worth 10s."

From this it is clear that the park, or inclosed ground, was of small extent, allowing feed for deer at the rate of one head per acre, a common calculation now ; and as it is at times described as pasture, and estimated as such, it was merely so much of the meadow-land about the mansion as sufficed to maintain a small stock of deer for the supply of the table of the owner when in residence. I am informed that the grass-land of the farm at present agrees very closely with the 40 acres of the several surveys.

From the Surveys of the reigns of Edw. II., Edw. III., and Henry IV. it would appear that the extent of land inclosed as park continued the same. Subsequently, but at what time is uncertain, the extent of the park was