at least as old as her time: but the visit of the queen must have been made to an earlier house.
I place the date of the present house at about the year 1620, and think it affords positive evidence that no part can be of earlier date.
But I ought to state that a house must have stood here at an earlier period, and which belonged to a family also named Slyfield.
We learn from Manning and Bray that this manor belonged to this family in the time of Henry VII., and that in 1507 the trustees of Thomas Slyfield conveyed the manor, with those of West Clandon, Weston, and Paperworth, in fee to his son Henry. In 1522, Thomas Slyfield was settled here, and John, his son and heir apparent, died here in Feb. 1529-30.
Edmund Slyfield, of Slyfield Place, was sheriff of the county in 1582, and died in 1590, and was buried in the parish church of Great Bookham, where there is a monument to his memory.
Edmund Slyfield, the grandson of Henry Slyfield, sold all the estates; and this was bought by Henry Breton, who died in 1647, and was buried in Great Bookham Church.[1]
Henry Breton, in 1614, sold the estate to George Shiers, who died in 1642, leaving his second son Robert his heir; he died in 1668, and his son George Shiers was created a baronet in 1684; he died unmarried in 1685, and left his estate to his mother Elizabeth, from whom it passed to Exeter College, Oxford.
I shall presently endeavour to show you that the present house was built by the Shiers family.
At the present time we do not look upon the house in its complete state, many of the buildings having been destroyed. It, however, appears that the remaining gable formed the centre of the garden front, and that a wing extended towards the south, with a range of
- ↑ A sketch of the pedigree of the Slyfield family is given in a Paper on Great Bookham Church, by Major Heales, in the Collections of this Society, Vol. V. p. 47.
