Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Collections of the Surrey Archaeological Society, 1871, Vol. 5: Part II
The sound of the name Chiddingfold at once points to a Saxon origin. We look first to Domesday Book, which, considering its period and the circumstances under which it was compiled, is the most extraordinary work of the kind that the world can produce: it is a wonderfully complete national assessment for rates and taxes. Formed with that object, it specifies care fully every knight's fee, and every acre of land, whether arable or pasture, the number of villanes and bondmen, the mills, the ploughs, and even the number of fat swine which the oak and beech forests were capable of main taining; but this business-like work only incidentally mentions, if it mentions at all, the fact of there being a church; and archaeologists will generally concede that the circumstance of no church being mentioned in Domesday Book affords little presumption against the existence of one at the time. Though that great work mentions no church at Chiddingfold, the village may, not improbably, have had its humble place of worship.
That one existed in 129] is clear: about that year was compiled, by direction of Pope Nicholas IV., a work, which may be called an Ecclesiastical Rate-book;1 it mentions the church of Chiddingfold, with a chapel (haslemere), producing an annual income of £20 (by no means a bad living, considering the comparative value of money at that date), and the rate of taxation being a tithe, consequently amounted to £2.
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