Another rare form of brass is that of a little chrysom child, Ellen Bray; another, a curious engraving of Lady Anne Norbury, with four tiny sons and four tiny daughters gathered at her feet in the folds of her gown. There are imposing monuments to Sir Thomas and Lady Vincent, Sir Thomas enormous in trunk hose and his Lady with her hair elaborately frizzed in a Paris hood. In the body of the church, the pulpit is a magnificent piece of early seventeenth century carving, and to the wall near it is fastened a wrought-iron hour-glass, which must have measured many a weary discourse. Another of Stoke D'Abernon's possessions is one of the finest thirteenth century oak chests in the southern counties.
Stoke D'Abernon Church.
Outside, the church is interesting in other ways. You can see in the south wall of the chancel a large slice of Roman herringbone brickwork, perhaps brought by pre-conquest builders from some villa or other ruins close at hand; and on the south wall of the nave, high up, is a sundial which before the conquest probably stood above the old south door. With so much that is old and venerable in the building and its monuments it is dismal to add that much, also, that was old and venerable has been destroyed. It is probably the worst restored of all old churches worth restoring.
Stoke D'Abernon has a claim on the attention of those about to marry. The manor-house is the first which is recorded as having been lent for a honeymoon. So I learn from Mr. J.H. Round, writing in the Ancestor. When William Marshall, in 1189, secured the hand of the heiress of the Earls of Pembroke, who was as good as she was beautiful, he proposed that they should be married on her own estates on the Welsh border. His host, however, a wealthy Londoner, would not hear of such a thing, and insisted on their being married in London and paying the cost of the wedding himself. After the ceremony, as the Society papers of the time might have put it, the young couple left for Stoke D'Abernon in Surrey, the peaceful and delectable country mansion of Sir Enguerrand D'Abernon, kindly lent for the occasion. Mr. Round has extracted this the earliest known reference to an orthodox honeymoon in the country, from the bridegroom's poetical biography, L'histoire de Guillaume le Marechal:—
"Quant les noces bien faites furent,
E richement, si comme els durent,
La dame emmena, ce savon,
Chies sire Angeran d'Abernon,
A Estokes, en liu paisable
E aesie e delitable."
The bill for the trousseau of the heiress has also been discovered, entered in the Pipe Roll of the year. It cost £9 12s. 1d.
The road from Stoke D'Abernon runs north-west through the two Cobhams, Church Cobham and Street Cobham. The little Plough Inn, which acts as refreshment-room for Cobham railway station, suggests the proper spirit of village revelry. A spreading yew arbour should shade good ale from the summer suns, and by the side of the garden across the road, gay with geraniums, see-saws and swings, runs a tiny stream, rippling down to the Mole.
Unlike the Wey, the Mole runs by few churches. Only five, Horley, Betchworth, Leatherhead, Stoke D'Abernon, and Cobham, stand near the river, and only Stoke D'Abernon actually on its banks. Stoke D'Abernon, too, has the best view from the churchyard across the stream, over a broad stretch of grassland on which partridges call and rooks stalk majestically. At Cobham you can scarcely see the Mole when you are in the village, but there are few prettier glimpses of its stream than the brimming pool by the road outside. A grey mill stands in the stream, double-wheeled and doubly silent; swans oar themselves leisurely about the eddies, and the meadow beyond in May is a sheet of kingcups.
