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| The Russell house (now Willow Grange) | The Crosse house (now Burpham Court House) |
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This name comes from the Saxon word "hyrst" meaning a woodland clearance or a wooded eminence. In the days when the whole of Surrey lay within the Royal Forest of Windsor this must have been an apt description of the ridge which runs East-West just north of the present village.
Robert de la Hurst The earliest mention of Hurst appears in 1290, during the reign of King Edward I, when:-
“William le Frances of Worplesdon granted to Agnes de la Hurst his tenement which Robert de la Hurst her father formerly held of him in Villa de Teresworth apud la Hurst, under a rent of 3s 7p”. ("Apud" is the Latin for "at" or "near" while Villa de Teresworth is an archaic name which may have applied to that part of the Manor of Burpham which lay west of the River Wey.)
The name Hurst next appears in 1332, during the reign of Edward I's grandson, Edward III, when Roberto ate Hurst in the Villata of Burgham was assessed for tax of 8d. It seems likely that he was a descendant of the earlier Robert.
Documents which can tell us where people lived and to whom they were related are rarely dated earlier than 1538 when Henry VIII's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, ordered the clergy to start keeping registers of all baptisms, marriages and burials. Not many such registers survive but the original parish register of St Mary's, Worplesdon is still in existence - although the volume for the period 1718-1776 fell to pieces. There was rarely any indication of the part of the parish where anyone lived, except in the names of some of the more important parishioners such as knights, gentlemen and yeomen.
Thomas Russell of Hurst The first mention of Hurst in the Worplesdon parish register is the burial of "Alice Russell, widow of old Thomas of Hurst" on 2nd April 1595. Only a few months earlier the register records the baptism of "Alice, daughter of young Thomas of Burfam" on 15th December 1594 followed soon after by her burial on January 6th 1595 and the baptism of her sister Agnes on March 7th. It seems probable that in due course Thomas of Burfam became another Thomas of Hurst.
So far we have no indication of the exact location of Hurst but we can get a pointer from the fact that an overseer of the will of Thomas the Elder in 1600 was "Thomas Crosse, brother-in-law" and a supervisor of the will of the next Thomas of Hurst in 1619 was "William Crosse my neighbour".
Jumping ahead to 1678 we find that their grandsons "Thomas Russell of Hurst" and "William Cross of Hurst" are both listed among some 70 names in a special section of the parish register which records that:-
"The Churchyard Railes of the Parish Church of Worplesdon are to be made by those whose names are here underwritten together with the true measure thereof in manner and form following."
So it is clear that the name applied to the location of the homes of two prominent and related families.
William Crosse A few years later, in 1686, Daniel Sarll was commissioned to make "A Survey of Land scituate in the Parishes of Worplesdon Wokeing and Stoke belonging to Mr William Crosse of Worplesdon aforesaid". The resultant map, in the archives of the Surrey History Centre, clearly depicts the house now called Burpham Court House. at the junction of Clay Lane and the Woking Road.
The small symbol in the next field seems to correspond to the "ancient brick well" described by Mr Farris in 1963. (sketch based on SHC ref G2/1/1)
An accompanying terrier, or list of land holdings, defines 47 plots totalling over 107 acres and the map shows that these lay wholly to the east of the Woking Road. It illustrates only the Crosse property, which included Watts Farm, Watts Cottage and a house at the crossroads which was eventually demolished early in the twentieth century. The blank areas correspond with what were later called Queen Hythe, Queen Anne and Jacobs Well farms. What we now know as Stringers Common was then called Burgham Green.
It seems reasonable to conclude from what we have learnt about the relationships between the two families that the Russell family lived opposite the Crosse family in the house now called Willow Grange.
Architectural evidence indicates that the "Crosse" house is an early 17th century building but contains earlier parts dating from around 1500 and from the late 16th century. The east wing of the "Russell" house (see sketch at left) is even older, being a complete medieval hall house of yeoman status, probably built in the early 15th century.
In 1693, not long after Daniel Sarll drew his map of the Crosse estate, John Senex published a map of Surrey. It depicts few roads but uses a special symbol to denote "Gentlemens Houses" - no doubt thereby encouraging purchase of the map by the gentlemen thus honoured. Hurst, which was probably intended to refer to both houses, is among the few names shown north of Guildford, such as Sutton (Place), Stoughton (Place) and Burpham (Court Farm). Hurst also appears on the map in John Aubrey's opus sub-titled "A Perambulation of the County of Surrey", which he began in 1673 and completed in 1692.
William Crosse raised a number of mortgages between 1691 and 1715, possibly to extend his holdings by the acquisition of some of the Russell lands, and after his death in 1719 his youngest daughter, Mrs Elizabeth Leeves, took out further mortgages. When she became a widow in about 1758 she took out yet another mortgage in conjunction with her daughter Elizabeth and her son-in-law, Samuel Ayling.
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