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Godalming
town and area
History
and Houses
For
centuries Godalming was the centre of West Surrey’s woollen manufacture
despite its rise and fall elsewhere and quite
surprisingly Godalming
was also the first town in the world to have a public electricity
supply in 1881.
Bargate stone
was not only used for the parish church, but also for the
construction of Charterhouse school. However, Surrey is
not generally well known for building with stone. Although used since Romano-British times it was
never exploited fully during the medieval and Tudor
periods. Timber was the accepted material and thousands
of timber-framed houses still survive in Surrey to prove how
good it was and how high the level of
craftsmanship. Most stone that was quarried
elsewhere in Surrey was Reigate
Firestone from under the North Downs at Merstham.
Surrey's quarries were used largely in the royal service and
Surrey's commoners had to do without!
Charterhouse School
~ Moved from Finsbury in 1872
into a complete set of new buildings by P.C. Hardwick.
They consist chiefly of one big open-ended quadrangle, facing
southwest, all in Bargate stone.
The chapel was built as a war memorial in 1922-7 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.
It shows the numbers killed form the classes of
1911 and 1912 and brings home the effect of the Great War in a
fearful way.
Unstead Park ~ 1 mile
east of Godalming ~ Built c1780 and then called
Farley Hill is a carefully detailed late 18th century stock-brick house.
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