THE HISTORY OF MERSTHAM
Written & Compiled by Kevin Austen
Edited by Ian Austen
[Spelling of Merstham] [Ancient History] [Domesday Book] [Stone Quarries]
As you travel south along the London to Brighton Road over the
'scar'
that is the M25 then around Feather's corner, you could be forgiven for
missing the backwater of Quality Street that is the great charm of the
village. It leads between
houses old and new to the grey gateway of Merstham House, guarded
by rampant lions and watched by the impressive overhang of a 15th
century house which was once the local forge.
At the time of Domesday Book the rents of Merstham were helping to
clothe the monks of Canterbury.
Centuries later the wealth brought to the shrine of Thomas Becket
built the chancel of the church, and there is evidence that the
architect who designed it has a hand in several other churches not far
away.
In mediaeval days the Merstham quarries were famous for their sandstone,
which was used in 1259 for the King's palace at Westminster and a
century later for Windsor Castle.
It was used, too, for St. Paul's Cathedral and London Bridge, and
it can be seen in the walls of
St. Katharine's Church.
The lychgate is made from the oak timbers of the old windmill pulled
down when the railway came this way.
Another railway memory lingers in the empty cutting with a little
bridge, beside the Brighton road.
It is a relic of the first public railway in England, The
Croydon, Merstham and Godstone Iron Railway Company, made for goods
traffic in the earliest years of the last century, drawn by horses, and
used chiefly to carry the stone and lime from Merstham to the Thames at
Wandsworth. One of the
humble labourers who worked on it rose to be the builder of three London
bridges, canals and tramways.
He was Sir Edward Banks, who is buried in the nearby village of
Chipstead.
Continuing on along the High Street we find many buildings remain
unchanged since the late 19th Century. To the left a road
leads down to the railway station around which the village has thrived,
becoming a commuter haven for many London employees. The present station
dates from 1905, though it is Merstham's third.
H.M. Morris in the book 'The History of Merstham' explains the various
spellings of Merstham throughout the ages, taken from various official
sources, as follows: -
The spelling for Merstham has varied throughout the ages. In AD 947 the
record shows that the Charter of Eadred or Edwy grants Theyn Oswig
twenty hides (a hide was roughly one hundred acres) in 'Mearsoetham',
the name meaning literally dwelling of the people of the marsh. In AD
820 two alternative spellings are also shown as Mastam and
Mastahaem, and a further ninth century spelling during the reign of
Edward the Confessor is Mersetham. The Domesday Survey of AD 1086
simplifies this to Merstan.
In the twelfth century two spellings are given, namely Mesteham and
Merstham - mear or mere, meaning pool, and meare meaning boundary. The
next hundred years brought further changes as the record shows
Mersteham and Merstam followed by Merysham and Merystham in the
fourteenth century. In the succeeding decade the y was dropped,
subsequent names being Mersham and Mestham, until Mearstham and
Maestham appeared in the eighteenth century. Finally, in the
nineteenth century the name seems to revert to its original twelfth
century spelling of Merstham, although the twentieth century may have
something to add in the way of pronunciation, due to the resounding
shouts on the railway station of 'Merstrum' by porters anxious to make
themselves heard! However, the generally accepted meaning is 'the stone
house by the mere or marsh'
Ancient
History – The Mearsoeti
In the early years of the 1st millennium the marshlands of
Merstham were held by the Mearsoeti,
who no doubt collected tolls, dues and presents from all that passed
along the ridge of their lands.
Early Roman influences in Merstham first come to light when, in around
AD60, Claudia, the daughter of a British king returned from Rome. It is
thought she had been held hostage as insurance of her father’s
allegiance to Rome. Claudia married Prudens, a native Britain serving in
the Roman army, and they settled in Sussex. Their influence extended
from Sussex into Surrey and went a long way in the conversion of the
Mearsoeti
to
the new Christian beliefs. One of the first things they did was to build
a church of wood, wattle and stone. Then, by common consent, the
Mearsoeti set aside the best and driest site for the building, the knoll
to the north east of the village where St. Katharine’s Church stands
today.
From then very little is known of the area until when, in AD893, two
armies of Danes invaded Saxon territory in the south of England. They
fought their way through Hampshire, Berkshire and into Surrey. Finally
they were met and defeated at Farnham by the army of King Alfred’s son,
Edward, later Edward the Elder.
Edward followed the retreating Danes and completed his victory at Battle
Bridge. The discovery of swords whilst planting lime trees in the
Battlebridge area
of Merstham indicates the probability of a skirmish having taken place
in the area. However the
defeat of the Danes once again left the Mearsoeti to
themselves until the Norman invasion in 1066 and the commissioning by
King William of the Domesday Book.
Merstham and The Domesday
Book
In 1066 in one of
England’s most famous battles the then Duke William of Normandy defeated
the English King, Harold, at Hastings. The new King, William I, known as
‘The Conqueror’, was crowned at Westminster Abbey on
Christmas Day 1066. In 1086 William ordered a survey designed to
register the landed wealth of the country in a systematic fashion, and
determine the revenues due to the king.
This survey, known as the Domesday Survey,
was written in Latin and consisted of two volumes. The two books, one of
450 pages, the Great Domesday, and the other of 382 pages, The Little
Domesday, were on parchment and bound in thick wooden covers secured
with brass plates. Surrey was the described in the first Domesday Book
and an entry mentioning Merstham read “In Chercefelle Hundred the
Archbishop himself holds Merstan for the clothing of monks.” It
continues: “There is a church and a mill worth thirty pence, villeins in
grass and eight acres of meadow.”
The property of Merstham in the Chercefelle
Hundred was recorded as five hides, which would have been approximately
five hundred acres and valued at twelve
pounds. The Lord’s rent was set at 25 fat hogs
and 16 lean hogs, which seems to prove that oak trees flourished and the
area was suitable for pigs (acorns being part of the staple diet of wild
boar).
The Stone Quarries
Field terraces on the southern slope of the
North Downs overlooking the stone quarries at Merstham suggest the area
was inhabited and cultivated perhaps as early as pre-Roman times. It is
fairly certain that the Romans quarried here. The original entrance to
one of the quarries was lined to form two continuous arches. Every stone
in the smaller arch was inscribed with the Roman numeral VII and it is
thought that the Roman VII legion was responsible for this quarry.
Next we turn to medieval times and it is in this period that we are able
to put names to the quarry masters of the area. Records prove that the
green sandstone had been in more than just local demand. In 1259, in the
accounts of the building of the King’s Palace at Westminster we find,
amongst the names of the purveyors of freestone, the name of Peter of
Merstham. The price paid for the stone at this time was 6 shillings per
cwt.
In 1360 John and Philip Prophete were appointed wardens of the quarries
at Mesteham and Chalvedon, near Reigate and empowered to press masons
and other workmen to prepare materials there for the works at Windsor
Castle. Any man who refused was sent as a prisoner to Windsor.
In 1395 William Prophete, thought to be a relative of John and Philip,
supplied stone from the Merstham quarries for the building of Henry
VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey.
Knoop & Jones in their book ‘The Medieval Mason’ record that ‘Eton
College used freestone from Merstham in the mid 1400s, paying 1s 8d per
load at the quarry and a further 2s 8d for transporting it to Eton.’
The next period in history when demand for Merstham stone was known to
have been heavy was in the re-building of London after the Great Fire of
1666. It was used in the building of London Bridge and it seems
inevitable that it was used elsewhere.
We next know something about the ownership of the quarries in 1745 when
the Merstham estate and manor belonged to Paul Humphrey, who left it to
his sister and her husband John Tattersall. They were childless so the
land passed to John’s brother James Tattersall, who put it up for sale
in 1784. In May 1788 Tattersall sold the estate to William Jolliffe of
Petersfield, where he was a Member of Parliament, for £40,000. This was
the beginning of the association of the Jolliffe family with Merstham.
In 1802 William Jolliffe’s son, Hylton, inherited Quarry Dean. Hylton
and his younger brother William, an ordained clergyman, were magistrates
at Reigate and as such were approached by the sponsoring committee of
the Croydon, Merstham and Godstone Iron Railway. From that moment on the
history of the Quarry Dean quarries and the iron railway were bound
together.
Hylton Jolliffe went into partnership with Edward Banks in the early
1800s, but finding his time taken up with other matters he handed over
the business to his brother, the Reverend William Jolliffe. Their
business became one of the principle engineering contractors in the
country.
In 1801 George Valentine Hall, a boy of 15 or 16 from Horsham came to
work for Jolliffe & Banks. He seems to have become manager of the
quarries and is thought to have moved into Quarry Dean soon after
marrying local girl Jane Burgess. In 1824 he leased the estate from the
Jolliffe family and went into business on his own account. Later in 1824
Jolliffe & Banks commenced work on the ‘new’ London Bridge. Again
Merstham stone, now supplied by George Hall, was used but this time
protected by granite. In 1835 George Hall took his eldest son, James,
into the business. This was the beginning of Hall & Co. Ltd., building
material contractors, who still survive in Redhill today.
In 1841, and with James Hall’s decision to open a depot in Croydon, the
quarries at Merstham had seen their heyday. There seems to be no doubt
of the sentiment felt by George Hall for Quarry Dean and he died at the
old house in 1845. On his death his three sons, James, Joseph and
Charles formed a partnership and continued as Hall Brothers.
Business at Croydon was increasing and by 1860 the trade at Merstham had
changed almost totally to the burning of lime in the chalkpit, although
it was still the practice of the Halls to use Merstham stone in the
building of their offices and depots in the south of England. In 1864,
when the lease on the quarries expired, the Halls found it impossible to
agree new terms with their landlords, the Jolliffes. So they transferred
the business to Coulsdon. This ended 63 years of association between the
two families.
A notice in the Surrey Gazette dated 19th April 1864 read:
Notice by Hall Brothers, late of Merstham Grey Stone Lime Works, that
they resigned the above works on 5th March at expiration of their lease
in consequence of being unable to effect such terms for a renewal as
they could accept. The works had been used by them for nearly 40 years,
and now to give them up so unexpectedly, with only a few weeks notice,
without any remuneration for the trade, has caused them great loss and
disappointment... Their business in grey stone and chalk lime, cement,
slates, sand, coal etc is carried on as usual at Croydon, Coulsdon,
Redhill and Reigate.
One of the last major buildings believed to have used stone quarried at
Merstham was the Kingston Baptist Church situated on Union Street in
Kingston-Upon-Thames, which was completed in 1864.
On the 14th July 1867 Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, carried
out a series of tests at the Merstham Quarry. These tests were to
evaluate the use of dynamite in quarry blasting.
In 1872 Mr. J.S. Peters took over the lime works and in 1890 the rest of
Quarry Dean. He built a separate railway line, pulled by a little steam
engine known as Gervase, which ran from the lime kilns to the new
Merstham Station. In 1934 he formed the Merstham Grey Stone Lime Co.
which continued until 1956. In 1961 the Croydon Corporation bought the
lime pit for the dumping of refuse and by 1970 had almost restored the
original contour of the hill.
March 1972 saw the start of the building of the M23 motorway and the
east west M25, completed in February 1976. With this major construction
work it was inevitable that the character of the Quarry Dean and
Rockshaw Road area of Merstham was dramatically changed. The building of
the road caused a serious risk of collapse in the caverns left by the
underground quarrying. It was therefore deemed necessary that many of
the caverns must be filled in and their entrances sealed.
It seems almost ironic that these ancient quarries, used for so much
building and road construction in the south of England, were almost
totally destroyed by the modern day road builder. Today a local caving
club now has access to three of the old mines, the largest Bedlams Bank
having over ten miles of open passages.