Great Bookham, Surrey
Historical Description
Bookham, Great, a village and a parish in Surrey. The village stands 2¼ miles from Leatherhead, and has a station on the L. & S.W.R., 21 miles from London. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Leatherhead. The parish comprises 3294 acres; population of the civil parish, 1172; of the ecclesiastical, 1085. Bookham Grove, Eastwick House, and Polesden are fine residences in the neighbourhood. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Winchester; net value, £527 with residence. The church contains some handsome Norman pillars and arches, and some fine monuments to the Howards, Spiers or Moores, also a brass tablet with a quaint inscription to Sheriff Slyfield of the time of Queen Elizabeth. Slyfield Place is now a farmhouse, and contains some fine panelled rooms with handsome ceilings of Italian workmanship.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Surrey | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Bookham St. Nicholas | |
Hundred | Effingham | |
Poor Law union | Epsom |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
Ancestry.co.uk, in association with Surrey History Centre, have images of the Parish Registers for Surrey online.
Churches
Church of England
St. Nicholas (parish church)
The church of St. Nicholas is an ancient edifice of stone, exhibiting a mixture of the Early Norman and Late Perpendicular styles, and has a tower with spire containing a clock and 2 bells; there are several stained windows, some brasses, and many monuments to the Howards of Effingham, descendants of the Lord High Admiral, who opposed the Spanish Armada, and to the Slyfield, Shiers and Moore families: on the east wall of the chancel is an inscription recording the fact that the original chancel was built by John of Rutherwyke, Abbot of Chertsey, in 1341: the church was restored in 1885, at a cost of over £3,000, and affords 400 sittings: in 1897 a lych gate was erected at a cost of £125.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Great Bookham from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Bookham, Great (St. Nicholas))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Surrey is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Great Bookham are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Surrey papers online:
Visitations Heraldic
The Visitation of Surrey, 1662-1668 is available on the Heraldry page.