Surrey open day

Last weekend it was heritage day in Surrey, so we took the opportunity to take in some sights between Little Bookham and Effingham - this last being notable for being the end of the one of the railway lines which serves Epsom, and for one particular occasion when I was stuck there, so tired that I lost vertical hold on the canopy planking.

We started by parking in the car park for what appeared to be a fancy girls' school, occupying what had been the big house in the area, with the owners moving into the home farm adjacent.

School buses

A school which was well equipped with mini buses and which was surprisingly smart inside, at least in the vicinity of the headmistress's office and reception; not like an institution at all. However, not approving of such places, we beat a hasty retreat to the ancient barn next door, seemingly once the tithe barn belonging to the nearby church, of which more below.

Corner of ancient barn

A large and ancient barn on which, by the look of it, a great deal of money had been spent. It was not clear to me how they were going to get it back, although it did seem to function as a sort of higher grade village hall and they did do weddings. They also did tea and cake, so we took that in the handsome grassed court yard adjacent, once, by the look of things, the stable yard.

Next stop the small but ancient church of All Saints, Little Bookham.

All Saints

The remnants of the arcade of the south aisle clearly visible in what is now the outside wall. The second such aisle, removed in the second half of the fifteenth century. The church was also notable for its hatchments (according to OED a corruption of the word achievements, as in Black Prince at Canterbury Cathedral, as noticed at reference 2) and for its scratch dial. A new-to-me sort of small sundial built into the side of a suitable window to help the priest keep proper time.

Yew entire

Yew detail

Ancient yew in the yard to complement the ancient church, with impressive looking certificates attesting to its being of the order of 1,300 years old, that is to say some hundreds of years before the conquest.

The next church, St. Lawrence, just a short walk along the Bishop's Walk, so named for it being thought to be the part of the route taken by the medieval bishops when checking up on their churches, a checking up which involved something of a procession. Litter, sumpter mules, outriders and all?

The lady rector was in residence when we arrived and was able to tell us about rectors and vicars, with the latter being subordinate to the former. Also that the endowments attached to churches, big ones for good livings and small ones for bad livings, still existed after a fashion, but the income all went into one big pot, and all priests are now salaried, probably in much the same way as civil servants with salary scales and annual increments. This church was once in the gift of Keble College and several recent rectors had been graduates, perhaps fellows, of same.

Her lady assistant told us about the church and sold us the jam noticed at reference 3.

Periodic tiling of floor

The floor of the church played to my current interest in periodic tilings - that is to say tilings which repeat like wallpapers - an interest which arises from their possible use to express textures in the texture nets of LWS-N and which is being fully serviced by the substantial reference 4. Being coloured is, in this connection, quite wrong as texture nets are used to express colour, they do not have colour in their own right.

Bell keys

An interesting contraption underneath the spire, once used to ring the bells, with the hooks above connected to wire bell pulls which disappeared up into the ceiling. Unclear how one could ring a large bell with such a small contraption, given that the usual form was strapping bell-ringers swinging on large ropes.

We also made the acquaintance of an interesting chap who had just come home after 25 years or more overseas. He had been paper boy for the village, then did twenty years in Germany then five years at the Singapore end of the Malaysian peninsular. His English sounded more German than Surrey and his wife (not present) came from one of the large islands further east, perhaps Borneo or Sarawak. He avoided telling us what he was doing in all these places, but he did know all about the white rajah noticed at reference 5. His story was that the Brooke family did well there, got on well with their charges. Perhaps as white men from far away, they were better placed to hold the ring between the various - often feuding - communities than a local. Rather like the magistrates brought in to hold the ring for a year in places like Florence, a custom I learned about in the course of the visit noticed in the vicinity of reference 6. Possibly called the 'Podestà'.

Catholics

The last church of the day was the Catholic Church of our Lady of Sorrows (reference 7), made possible by the generosity of someone who had made a good deal of money out of railways in South Africa, a colleague of Rhodes, the chap who is supposed to be being struck out of the record at Oxford on the grounds of now being considered to be an undesirable. Handsome interior which reminded us of the rather newer, Anglican church at Weston Green, Esher, regularly visited in connection with the Ripieno Choir.

Devotional reading

Devotional reading provided by the Catholic Truth Society. Must be a very Tory shire to bother having a pop at the commies in this particular way.

Pie pub

Took lunch in a large public house named for the chap last mentioned at reference 8. A public house which included an odd smell of wood fire (odd because there was no fire) and several locals, actually drinking at lunchtime. We took chicken pie with sparkling water, pie which was not bad at all and came with vegetables which were surprisingly good. The small, nicely cooked carrots, for example, might well have actually been prepared on the premises. Cheerful waitress. Mysterious bit of marble in the background; presumably salvage from somewhere or other.

Legion

Coming out, we came across the British Legion Hall, up for sale. A facility too far in a village which mainly seemed to consist of very grand houses for people who made or had made their money up in London? Note ashtray outside: lots of ex-servicemen are heavy smokers, so did the smoking ban mark the end of their road?

Redevelopment

A rather larger batch of rather newer buildings up for a redevelopment. It looks as if they have been able to make up a good size parcel of land, just the thing for an even newer estate. Or was there something wrong with the first one?

PS: we learned later that the current headmistress of the Manor House School has a background in physical education. This may explain the fleet of mini-buses, needed on sports' afternoons to take the away half the school's teams off to their various fixtures.

Reference 1: https://www.manorhouseschool.org/.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/01/sewing.html. The achievements were subsequently visited at Canterbury a month or so later.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/09/secret-state.html.

Reference 4: Tilings and Patterns: an introduction - Branko Grünbaum , G. C. Shephard - 1989. Abridged version.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/05/sheepstor.html.

Reference 6: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=Via+San+Gallo.

Reference 7: https://www.effinghamandfetcham.org.uk/.

Reference 8: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/haig-two.html.