A HISTORY OF SURREY
��WINDLESHAM
��Wyndesham (xiii cent.) ; Wyndelesham (xiv cent.) ; Wynsham (rvii cent.).
Windlesham is a parish on the north-west border of the county, 25 miles from London. It contains 3,672 acres, and measures 5 miles from north-east to south-west, and 3 miles from north-west to south- east. It is bounded on the north-west by Berkshire, on the east and south by Chobham, on the west by Frimley. It is in Woking Hundred, 1 but is isolated in Godley Hundred, to which Chobham and Frimley belong. This corner of the county appears, from absence of notice in Domesday, to have been very sparsely inhabited. Godley Hundred was the land of the abbey of Chertsey, and when Chertsey early ac- quired property the hundred was extended. Windles- ham and Bagshot, never belonging to Chertsey, were never incorporated into the hundred. But the boundary between Surrey and Berkshire was known, and was delineated as the boundary of Windsor Forest by the perambulations of 1226 and 1327.'
The neighbourhood has yielded bronze implements, now in the Archaeological Society's Museum, Guild- ford, and a certain number of neolithic flints.
The village of Windlesham is a scattered one, and though almost entirely modern, is picturesquely situated in rolling and well-wooded country. The church is some distance from the village, on high ground. The plan of the village defies analysis, and is of very recent growth. A few examples of late 18th-century work remain, but these are rapidly giving place to modern cottages and villas. The roads and lanes by which the parish is traversed, though erratic in their course, are picturesque in the extreme, with magnificent hedges and well shaded by fine timber.
The soil of Windlesham and Bagshot is the barren Bagshot sand, with extensive peat beds. Diggirfg in the peat reveals the former existence of a forest of small oaks. The peat produces the only important industry of to-day, the raising of rhododendrons, azaleas, and so on, in nursery gardens those of Messrs. Fromow and Messrs. Waterer employing a great deal of labour. Bagshot Heath, part of which was called Windlesham Heath, covered a great deal of the parish ; there is still some uncultivated land, and the heaths extend beyond the parish. The great south-western road from London passes through the parish. The London and South Western Wokingham and Reading line cuts its extreme end, and the Ascot, Aldershot, and Farnham branch runs through it for some distance, with a station at Bagshot, opened in 1878. Sunningdale station, on the Wokingham branch, is just inside the parish. It was opened in 1856.
The old road had been the source of great pros- perity in Bagshot till it was superseded by the rail- way. Thirty coaches a day passed through, and there were many inns, since closed. The most interesting
��history of the place is in connexion with Windsor Forest, and its bailiwick in Surrey. The tenure of Bagshot in the Red Book of the Exchequer is per serjentiam veltrariac, i.e. providing a leash of hounds. The later history is full of the exploits of highwaymen, who found the wild country hereabouts specially favourable for their purposes.
The Inclosure Act of 1812 inclosed much of Bag- shot Heath, and also inclosed the common fields of Windlesham.* Inclosure had begun before, for in 1768 the lords of the manors and the freeholders gave land inclosed from the waste for charitable purposes. 4
There are a considerable number of gentlemen's houses about Windlesham. The Camp is the resi- dence of Sir Joseph Hooker, F.R.S., &c., &c. ; Ribsden, of Mrs. Christie ; The Towers, of Lady Elvey. Woodcote House is a boys' school.
There are an Institute and Reading-room built in 1880, and enlarged in 1901 ; the Institute and Reading-room at Bagshot were founded in 1862. The schools (built as National Schools in 1825, now Provided) were taken over by a board in 1871. They were enlarged in 1889.
Bagshot was a tithing of Windlesham. There is a church there dedicated to St. Anne, and also a Wesleyan Methodist chapel.
Bagshot Park, long the property of the Crown, was formerly the residence of the Duke of Gloucester, son-in-law to George III, and now of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught.
Pinewood is the residence of Lady Elphinstone ; Penny Hill of Mr. L. Floersheim ; Hall Grove of Mr. Stephen Soames.
A school was built at Bagshot in 1870, and taken over by the newly-formed Windlesham School Board in 1871. It was enlarged in 1893.
The manor of WWDLESHAM MANORS (Winlesham, xiii cent. ; Winsham, xvii cent.) belonged in the Middle Ages to the small convent of Broomhall in Berkshire. Land in Bagshot was granted to the Prioress of Broomhall by Henry III in 1228.* But Windlesham appears among the manors granted to Westminster by Edward the Confessor in his foundation charter. It was apparently transferred to Broomhall at an unknown date.
The priory of Newark had a grant of land in Windlesham in 1256,* and had the advowson of the church. 7
Joan Rawlyns, Prioress of Broomhall, made a voluntary surrender of the property of her house in 1522.' In the next year Windlesham was granted to St. John's College, Cambridge,' who still hold it.
The manor of BdGSHOT in early times was royal demesne, and may have formed part of the forest of Windsor.
There are traces of two distinct holdings in Bag- shot. About 12 1 1 one Hoppeschort held 30;. worth of land in Bagshot, 10 which, according to Testa tie
��1 Subi. R. of 1 4th century.
1 V.C.H. Surr. i, 357-9. Bromhall, on this boundary (now Broomhill), is the proper name of the manor of Windlesham, held by St. John's College, Cambridge.
��* Tithe Commutation Ret., Bd. of Agric. s Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), Jtrxvii,
- Parl. Ret. of Char. 1786. 132.
9 Pat. 14 Hen. VIII, pt. ii, m. 5.
RtJ Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), ii,
- .
��Tithe Commutation Ret., < Parl. Ret. of Char. 1786. 6 Cal. Chart. R. 1226-57, p. 70. 8 Harl. Chart. 55, B. 41. 1 y.C.H. Surr. ii, 103
��456.
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