Birtley Green - Pre 1600

Pre 1600

Bramley is a Saxon name meaning a clearing in the broom. Birtley to the south is also Saxon and means a clearing in the birch.

Before the Saxons arrived the wider area was lightly settled. The builders of the Iron Age fort at Hascombe (in use from c.200 to 50BC) probably included farmers from the Wintershall and Thorncombe Street areas of present day Bramley, but there is no evidence for early settlement in the village area and no evidence of any Roman settlement.

The settlement appears in six large parcels in the Domesday Book as Brolege or Bronlei. It was held by the Bishop of Bayeux. Its Domesday Assets were: 39½ hides; 3 churches, 5 mills worth £1 6s 0d, 39 ploughs, 20 acres (81,000 m2) of meadow, woodland worth 100 hogs. It rendered (in total): £83 14s 8d.

The Anglo-Saxon settlers of Wonersh - the name means a crooked field - may have been the people who developed the Linish Bramley. This name means a flax-stubble field and in 1843, when the Tithe Assessment map was drawn, it covered the area now occupied by the Library, Blunden Court and Old Rectory Close. Flax was used to make linen but before spinning and weaving the stems were "retted"; soaking in running water, a procedure which could have used the stream which also powered the mills.

Bramley is mentioned in the Domesday Book, at which time it was the largest and most valuable manor in Surrey, and was granted to Odo of Bayeux (William the Conqueror's half-brother)

Cranleigh Waters flows through the village. There were two mills - probably both here at the time of the Domesday survey, Bramley Mill and Snowdenham Mill, to the latter of which Emply Lane (now a bridleway) led from the higher land around Wintershall.

At the time of Domesday (1086) the Manor of Bramley was far larger than present day Bramley and comprised most of the western half of Blackheath Hundred, extending to the Sussex border and including Shalford, Wonersh, Hascombe and West Cranleigh.

Coronation Oak green today is all that remains of the original village green at the centre of the village. It was once the crossroads where Linersh-lane, the road from Wonersh, met Deep Lane, the original route from Wintershall, and the first Mill Lane (moved in the 1820s), which started from the north side of the house now called 'Saddlers', which was previously known as 'Corners' or 'Old Corners'. There is a reference to a moated manor house near the village green, which would probably have dated from the 14th century; it survived to the early 19th century.

At some date during the Middle Ages the village's arterial A281 road through the village leading to Birtley Green around the east slope of Hurst Hill was established as an alternative Horsham and main Loxwood and Billingshurst (all West Sussex) route from Guildford, as was the road from Thorncombe Street to Bramley (Snowdenham Lane) and Wonersh, the village centred immediately east of the street and Cranleigh Waters only 0.5 miles (0.80 km) away Station Road).

By the mid 16th century there were 63 houses in what was called Bramley township, 22 of them within half a mile of the church. The most important house in the village was probably the present East Manor; its external staircase was added in the 1580s, when it would have been seen from the village green, demonstrating the importance of the owners at a time when domestic staircases were still rare.