The Marland Family

Marland places: Banstead

The most tangible clues to the Merland family's century and a half of interest in this Surrey parish are street names. The whole area of the manor of Preston is covered by a 1950s housing estate (Ref.1), from which all the buildings they would have known have been erased, although curiously many of the ponds and woods which appear on the nineteenth century maps have been kept.

Great Burgh, further north, was built by (probably) William Merland and became the seat of the Buckles. It survived until the late nineteenth century, and has now been replaced by a more modern house on the same site. The only known relic of the old house is some heraldic glass for the Buckles, moved to the Parish Church (Ref.2).

Great Burgh, from Lambert's "Banstead"

Preston Hawe seems to have been a moated manor house. Excavations are said to have been carried out there in 1952/53, but no report has been published (Ref.3). The nearby Chapel of St Leonard stood in a wood called Chapel Grove, on a site which now adjoins a road of that name. It was completely ruined by the beginning of the nineteenth century (Ref.4), and even the foundations were later robbed out for building materials. It was excavated by Lambert (Ref.5).

Sources:

1. Ian Nairn, Niklaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry; Buildings of England - Surrey, 1971

2. H.C.M. Lambert, History of Banstead in Surrey, 1912

3. Surrey Archaeological Journal, v.53, 114

4. Owen Manning and William Bray, History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey (1814)

5. H.C.M. Lambert, Surrey Archaeological Journal, v.37, 71