The settlement appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Blachingelei. It was held by Richard de Tonebrige. Its Domesday assets were: 3 hides; 14 ploughs, 17 acres (69,000 m2) of meadow, woodland worth 58 hogs. Also 7 houses in London and Southwark. It rendered (in total): £15 13s 4d.[3]
In 1225 there is mention of Bletchingley as a borough. In the Middle Ages a borough was created by either the King or a Lord as a potentially profitable element in the development of their estates.
It appears that after the 14th century Bletchingley began to lose its importance as a borough, perhaps losing out to the market town of Reigate to the west. The village retained its status as a parliamentary borough and elected two members to the unreformed House of Commons. By the time of the Industrial revolution, it had become a rotten borough. Parliamentary elections were held from 1733 in what is now the White Hart inn: a book in 1844 notes this and that 8 to 10 people voted, as well as a sale of the manor for a very disproportionate sum of £60,000 in 1816.[4]
Historic buildings
The house at Place Farm formed the gatehouse of Bletchingley Place: a great Tudor house, which was given to Anne of Cleves after her marriage to Henry VIII was annulled.[5]
There are nine buildings that date back to the 16th century in the clustered area of the village around its High Street of 90 or so houses.[6]
Bletchingley is architecturally and topologically distinct: the central part of the village is a conservation area with several buildings timber-framed from the late Middle Ages and the village is set in a designated area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB). The Greensand Way runs fairly centrally through the parish, immediately south of the main village street which is part of the A25 road.
Church
St Mary the Virgin Church is just north of the crossroads of the village. Four of the monuments in the churchyard are listed at Grade II, all of them tombs. The reasons for its Grade I listing[1] are:
11th-century tower (ironstone rubble with ashlar dressings); north arcade and south chancel chapel 13th century with 15th-century alterations
Three-light head window to chancel chapel associated with Roger the Hermit of Bletchingley
Stone human head stops to hood moulding of west door
Renewed south door under 15th-century roll-moulded surround in rich battlemented and crocketed Perpendicular porch.[1]
Localities in the parish
Warwick Wold
Warwick Wold is a hamlet immediately southeast of the M25 motorway/M23 motorway interchange and separated by a green buffer from Bletchingley by Lower Pendell Farm, which holds in one of its fields ruins of a Roman house, Lake Farm and Brewer Street Farm.[6]
Pendell House, Pendell Court, and the Old Manor House
Pendell House was designed for Richard Glydd by Inigo Jones to a symmetrical plan. On one of the chimney stacks is the date 1636. Glydd died in 1665, and his grandson John, an MP for Blechingley, came into possession. He died without issue in 1689, and his mother and sister Ann Glydd sold the house to Andrew Jelf, who was succeeded by Captain Andrew Jelf, R.N. His daughters sold it to Joseph Seymour Biscoe in 1803 and he sold to John G. W. Perkins in 1811. On the intestate death of his son John Perkins in 1846 it was the share of his sister, who left it to her sister's grandson Jarvis Kenrick, who lived there in 1911. This is a Grade I listed building, the highest category of architectural listing in the country.[10]
Directly opposite the main road is George Holman's 1624-built larger Pendell Court,[11] built of red brick with stone mullioned windows and tiled roof, marble fireplaces and woodwork. It is now used as a private school.[12]
Backing on to the school along the same partly paved street is a 16th-century house, brown-brick clad, timber framed, refronted in those bricks and extended in the 18th century, with Grade II* listing, known as the Manor House.[13] Above this is a stone coped parapet partially obscuring a plain tiled roof with stone coped gables.[13]
Brewerstreet or Brewer Street
Only 0.6 miles (1.0 km) north of the village, reached by the road at the east end of the churchyard, is Brewerstreet Farm and the old Rectory, parts of which date from the end of the 17th century.[n 1][14] The house is a two-storey, partly slate-roofed structure that underwent a complete transformation about the middle of the 18th century. In one of the upper rooms is a stone fireplace with a moulded four-centred head and jambs. Grade II listed, the house has three diagonal 17th century chimney stacks to the old left section at the point where it meets the new. In keeping, its central doubled glazed doors has a Doric fluted pilaster (column) surround under flat porch hood.[15]
Brewerstreet Farm is a Grade I listed building house, part 15th century, part Tudor; alterations and extension in 1850; further restoration in the 20th century. Close stud timber framed on a brick plinth with rendered infill, the roof is hipped of Horsham stone, with three symmetrically chimney stacks. A former medieval hall house, it has gabled end cross wings with jettied first floors, curly bargeboards and moulded dragon posts to stairwell corners.[16]
The proportion of households in the civil parish who owned their home outright compares to the regional average of 35.1%. The proportion who owned their home with a loan compares to the regional average of 32.5%. The remaining % is made up of rented dwellings (plus a negligible % of households living rent-free).
Governance
There is one representative on Surrey County Council, Chris Farr of the Independent group whose extensive ward is called Godstone.[17] There are three representatives on Tandridge District Council:
^H.E. Malden, ed. (1912). "Parishes: Blechingley". A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 4. Institute of Historical Research. Archived from the original on 9 February 2013. Retrieved 6 November 2012.
The administrative centre is Oxted. The largest town is Caterham. Three of the post towns have urban centres Caterham, Godstone and Oxted. Lingfield and Warlingham are major villages which have post town status. The others are outside the area.
