One of the features of the village is an enormous wall, built by one of
the Lords Grantley who had Wonersh Park, and put up the wall,
apparently, to prevent neighbours and passers-by from gazing with too
great enthusiasm at his lordship's grass and trees. It was a brother of
the third Lord Grantley, George Norton, Recorder of Guildford, who
married the famous Mrs. Norton, one of the three beautiful
granddaughters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
Besides Lord Grantley's wall, the village holds some charming old
cottages, several of them carefully restored, and two or three
square-set, solid eighteenth-century houses. There is also a slender
brick chimney of elaborate design of which Wonersh residents are justly
proud. The village, indeed, conveys the impression of being
affectionately cared for, which is not always the case with villages
which belong so much to builders long dead; but nothing, perhaps, is a
better example of the care with which the past is preserved than the
church, which is a perfect piece of restoration and scholarly rebuilding
combined. It is the work of a Surrey architect, Sir Charles Nicholson, a
neighbour at Chilworth, who carried out his difficult task in 1901, and
has since written an interesting little pamphlet on the church's
history. Two or three peculiarities distinguish the interior. One is a
crypt, paved with fourteenth-century encaustic tiles, which Aubrey
describes as "a vault strongly barricaded with iron." Another is a
magnificent Flemish chandelier, not a common adornment of a chancel. A
third is a high tomb of Sussex marble, which bears no inscription. But
the person buried in it must have been of considerable distinction, for
the cassia in which the remains Were embalmed still sweats from the
marble in wet weather--a grisly barometer. Possibly within may rest the
remains of one of the Westons or Carylls, both of which were great
families of the neighbourhood. It was John Caryll, buried in this
church, on whom was written an epitaph quoted by Aubrey, but not now to
be found. The eight lines of rhyme ended with what was perhaps thought
appropriately cheerful resignation:--
"And now, which long before he did desire,
Caryll sings Carrolls in the Heavenly Choire."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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