Normandy, Surrey

Normandy
Surrey
Normandy war memorial
Location
Grid reference:	SU926516
Location:	51°15’27"N, -0°39’20"W
Data
Population:	2,987  (2001)
Post town:	Guildford
Postcode:	GU3
Dialling code:	01483
Local Government
Council:	Guildford
Parliamentary constituency:	Woking

Normandy is a small village in Surrey, set just to the north of the long chalk ridge known as the Hog's Back. It lies close to the western edge of the county, towards the border with Hampshire. The parish has been home to a number of notable residents, including William Cobbett.

Normandy with its rural setting has many footpaths, bridleways and other small roads suitable for horse riding, cycling and walking. It is the start point of the Christmas Pie trail which leads you into Guildford by way of a trail through woods, commons and meadows.

Location

As well as the village of Normandy by the crossroads of the Guildford-Aldershot Road (the A323) and Hunts Hill Road and Glaziers Lane, the parish also includes the villages of Christmas Pie, Willey Green, Wyke, Flexford and Pinewoods. With the exception of Pinewoods, the hamlets of the parish, although distinct, are strung together a continuous line of largely residential properties. Pinewoods remains separated by much open land and is close to Ash.

Normandy is found between Guildford and Aldershot. In the south of the parish, between Normandy and Flexford, stands Wanborough railway station, not in Wansborough at all (which is a village close to Normandy in the next parish) but so called because the owner of the land on which the station was built lived in Wanborough. Development locally is restricted as the village lies within the Metropolitan Green Belt.

Normandy Common lies to the north of the village; to the south there is mainly arable farmland.

Names of the village and its hamlets

As a parish, the history of Normandy is the combined history of its constituent hamlets which in modern times include Christmas Pie, Flexford, Willey Green, Wyke, Pinewoods and Normandy proper.

Christmas Pie is the south-western hamlet, named after the Christmas family, who are named often in the court records of the Manor of Cleygate from 1513 onwards. "Pie" is derived from the term "pightel" meaning a small piece of arable land. Before 1920 there was no hamlet here but a field called "Pie Field" near the crossroads of Westwood Lane and Flexford Lane, once owned by the Christmas family, whence the name of the hamlet.

Flexford was once called Flaxford, meaning flax meadows by a stream. The ancient industry here was the making of linen from flax.

Pinewoods developed around the beerhouse called the Nightingale in the far west of the parish in the nineteenth century. The woods from which it derives its name are only to be found to the north of the hamlet and this hamlet developed in isolation from the rest of the parish and is still separated from the other hamlets by open land. The buildings of the Nightingale pub remain but now house an Indian restaurant.

Willey Green is at the lowest point of the parish and was once prone to flooding. Being so located made this area damp and ideal conditions for willow trees to grow, which give the hamlet its name: willow lea. Until the twentieth century it was the westernmost portion of the parish of Worplesdon.

Wyke appears in the Domesday Book as Wucca, a hide (about 120 acres) held by Godric from Earl Roger. The Domesday Book mentioned a hall which is thought to have been where East Wyke Farm now stands and where remains of Surrey White Ware pottery have been found. Names such as Wuccha, Wicca, Week and Wick have been used, some of which are preserved in place names in the hamlet (such as Weekwood). Finally Wyke was settled upon, and this too is the name of the ecclesiastical parish that has covered Normandy since 1847, that of St Mark's Wyke.

Normandy itself is the least sure in origin. The village public house, the Duke of Normandy, was built in the 1860s and is named after the village, not the village from it. It has been suggested that the monks of the Abbey of Waverley named the village after their homeland in northern France because it resembled Normandy's countryside, but the Abbey's lands did not extend to Normandy. The court records of the Manor of Cleygate, which begin in 1513, first mention Normandy in 1604 when referring to the Normandy Causeway, which had previously been called the Frimsworth Causeway. In the same year a garden in Normandy is referred to. Frimsworth was an older recorded settlement name, and had also been known as Frymsworth and Frymlesworth. However, it coexisted for some time with the village of Normandy and historians are satisfied that the two names referred to different parts of the parish. Frimsworth itself no longer exists as a name for any part of the parish, but was located between Normandy and Willey Green.

The name of Normandy originally referred to the area around Normandy Common and the manor house known as Normandy Farm, once leased to William Cobbett. Local historians have suggested that Normandy Common may be the same common referred to in Cleygate records as a part of the Manor in the north and west "lately called Noebodies Common." Such an appellation would be applied because the area was on the boundary of two manors and belonging to neither or disputed by both, and local historians speculate that "Nobodies" may have been corrupted or softened into "Normandy".

History

There is evidence on the parishes eastern border of Romano-British occupation in the form of temple remains.

In late Saxon England the lands were within the holdings of Earl Godwin, father of King Harold II. Later, the Domesday Book of 1086, in its account of the manor of Henley (now represented only by the Henley Park manor house), records that the manor covered large parts of what is now Normandy, as well as Ash; Normandy though was not mentioned by name as the name not being known until 1604. The lands remained within the ancient manor of Henley until the end of the 14th century.

Towards the end of the 14th century the manor of Cleygate began to be carved out of the manor of Henley. As a manor, Cleygate is first mentioned when Henry VI granted the manor to his half-brother, Jasper the Earl of Pembroke. After Jasper was attainted by Edward IV his lands were forfeit, but were passed back to him in 1485 when his attainder was reversed. After that, the Manor passed through a number of hands, reverting to the Crown on more than one occasion.

By the time the final part of the Manor of Cleygate was sold to the War Department in 1876, most of the Manor had been sold to private individuals, and that included much of what is now the parish of Normandy. The three private estates making up the parish were those of Henley Park, Westwood and Normandy Park. Normandy Farm was the final home of the early 19th century radical reformer and agrarian William Cobbett, the author of Rural Rides.

Into the twentieth century Normandy retained its agricultural base. The locality of Normandy was considered for the site of a "New Town" to be called "New Norman" in the 1943 Town and Country Plan produced by the Surrey Federation of Labour Parties. However, this did not come to pass and the village into the twenty-first century remains protected within London's green belt.

Big Society

• Normandy Archery
• Normandy Cricket Club
• Normandy Football Club
• Normandy Historians
• Normandy Scouts
• Normandy Tennis Club
• Normandy Train Club

Normandy has an annual Guy Fawkes Night firework display located in a field at the back of The Elms Centre on Glaziers Lane. The event usually takes place on the 5th November every year. During the event, volunteers would parade down a bridleway next to the field holding torches, and would throw the torches onto the large bonfire to light it. The fireworks are all set off by hand, not by electronics.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Normandy, Surrey)

• Normandy, local history site
• War memorial