Churt is a village and civil parish in the borough of Waverley in Surrey, England, about 5.5 miles (8.9 km) south of the town of Farnham on the A287 road towards Hindhead. A clustered settlement is set in areas acting as its green buffers, which include the Devil's Jumps. The west of the village slopes down to the steep edge of Whitmore Vale, which is mostly in Headley, Hampshire; at the foot of this bank is a steeply cut brook which defines the Hampshire border. There are forests and heathland by and atop the Greensand Ridge, and the hamlet of Crosswater is in the north of the parish.
History
Churt's origins are Saxon. The village as Churt and Cherte[2] is recorded in the 14th century as part of the "Great Sacks", and a tything of Farnham of the Bishop of Winchester; a subsidy roll assessed it at £3 9s ¼d (very roughly equivalent to £3,123 in 2023), presumably annually.[3]Frensham Great Pond, dug to provide one such spiritual leader, Hædde, with fresh fish, is less than 10m beyond the north border.
Upon the establishment of the chapelry of Frensham in the 13th century, it became part of that entity short of a parish, which stretched as far south as Shottermill, a neighbourhood today of western Haslemere.[4] Stating how the high common land was for tenants here of the lord of the manor, a court leet of 1540 ordered John Baker not to overburden it with his cattle ('beasts').[3] A case (in the national Court of the Exchequer) of 1692 asked whether Churt was in the Weald and whether wood cut from such land was tithe-free, and the juries answered both questions in the affirmative; the judges approved and refused a further appeal.
Almost opposite the parish church of St John, which was built shortly before the parish was created in 1865, is the old forge, built in about 1600 and now a Grade II listed building.[5] A barn in the western fields next to the farmhouse of Green Cross Farm was built in the 16th century in Tudor style of wooden framing on a brick plinth, and is also Grade II listed.[6] There are several other listed buildings in the village.[7]
The parish is roughly square and gradually slopes down to the northwest and steeply by the western border, where it is drained by a straight brook (feeding into the Wey) which demarcates the border with Hampshire. In the north are sudden hills, or knolls, three of which are described as 'curiously conical sandhills' in the Victoria County History (1911),[3] and are recorded on maps as the Devil's Jumps.
Industrialist Frank Mason spent the later part of his life in the area and provided the community with the village hall which remains the hub of the village.
David Lloyd George lived in Churt at his house Bron-y-de. His secretary and mistress, and later second wife, Frances Stevenson, also had a house there. The cricketing brothers Harry Walker and Thomas Walker were born in the village. The Police's drummer, Stewart Copeland, had a short spell in the village with his family. John Hunt, later Lord Hunt of Tanworth, Cabinet Secretary, lived in the village at Hale House until 1968 with his wife Magdalen. [10]Charles Wylie, who lived in Crosswater Lane, was a member of the successful 1953 Mount Everest expedition.[11]
Composer and pianist Eva Ruth Spalding (1883-1969) lived at Tyndrum, Pond Lane, Churt from the 1940s until her death in 1969.[14]
Culture
Since 1980, Churt has had an amateur dramatic society (CADS) which performs shows in the village hall.[15]
Sports clubs
Churt Recreation Ground is home to Churt Juniors Football Club, which caters for children in age groups from Under 5s to Under 11s. Children from Under 7s and above play matches in the North East Hampshire Youth League.
The proportion of households in the civil parish who owned their home outright compares to the regional average of 35.1%. The proportion who owned their home with a loan compares to the regional average of 32.5%. The remaining % is made up of rented dwellings (plus a negligible % of households living rent-free).
^Henry Elliot Malden, ed. (1906). "Parishes: Frensham: Churt". A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 2 p.609. The Internet Archive. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
^ abcdHenry Elliot Malden, ed. (1906). "Parishes: Frensham: Churt". A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 2 p.613. The Internet Archive. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
^Henry Elliot Malden, ed. (1906). "Parishes: Frensham: Churt". A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 2 p.580. The Internet Archive. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
