Fake 13

In the margins of a recent visit to Wisley garden centre we came across Wisley village, a village which appears to consist mainly of Wisley church (dedication unknown), Church Farm (with large & fancy red brick barn) and various dependent cottages.

The church is old, having been built in 12th century and not much altered since, apart from a Victorian restoration. Presumably the village was one of those which, for one reason or another neither died nor prospered and just hung on. Views across what might once have been water meadows to the Wey.

Once in the gift of the Black Prince who had a hunting lodge somewhere in the area, and for a long time in the gift of the Onslow family (of Clandon House (see reference 1) and Onslow Square), then into the clutches of the Guinness family and now back in the bosom of the church, that is to say with the Bishop of Guildford.

Scored as a fake because of the fake Norman west windows added by the Victorians, described by Pevsner in his characteristically snooty way as 'bad neo-Norman'. With the paragraph following describing the main buildings at the garden centre as a 'weakened and sweetened version of Lutyens Tudor'.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/clandon-redux.html.

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