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A New View Of Bookham Church

I have taken lots of shots of Bookham Si. Nicolas Church , however , I think this is the first time I have taken the church from this angle .

Now a small few snippets of info about Great Bookham .

According to a charter c.675, the original of which is lost but which exists in a later form, there were granted to the Abbey twenty dwellings at Bocham cum Effingham. This was confirmed by four Saxon kings; King Offa of Mercia and of the nations roundabout in 787; King Athelstan who was "King and ruler of the whole island of Britain" in 933 confirmed the privileges to the monastery; King Edgar, "Emperor of all Britain" in 967 confirmed "twelve mansiones" in Bocham, and King Edward the Confessor, King of the English, in 1062 confirmed twenty mansae at Bocham cum Effingham, Driteham and Pechingeorde.

 

Great Bookham lay within the Anglo-Saxon administrative district of Effingham half hundred.

 

The Domesday Book 1086, which was a survey for taxation purposes, makes the first known distinction between the parishes of Great and Little Bookham, if it is assumed that there was no separate parish at the time of the charter of Edward the Confessor in 1062. Driteham and Pechingeorde are both referred to in the Domesday Book and appear to have been absorbed into the manors of Effingham and Effingham East Court. Great Bookham appears in Domesday Book as Bocheham. It was held by St Peter's Abbey, Chertsey. Its Domesday Assets were: 13 hides; 1 church, 1 mill worth 10s, 20 ploughs, 6 acres (2.4 ha) of meadow, woodland and herbage worth 110 hogs. It rendered (in total): £15.

 

It seems probable, as the number of cottages in Bocham cum Effingham remained constant, that the later charters must have been copies of earlier charters which were not revised to accord with the actual number of cottages at any one time.

 

Jane Austen, whose godfather and cousin Rev. Samuel Cooke was vicar of Great Bookham (1769-1820), is said to have spent time in Bookham whilst writing several of her novels in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Its location is consistent with the geographical details in Emma.

 

C. S. Lewis studied privately with William T. Kirkpatrick in Great Bookham between September 1914 and April 1917.

 

Pink Floyd bass player and singer, Roger Waters, was born in Great Bookham in 1943.

 

Wikipedia failed to mention though that I managed the dry cleaners in the village .

 

Over on the left of the image is a very large tomb , it can be seen in a shot in the first comment box - please click on the photo to read about the tomb .

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Uploaded on September 24, 2025
Taken on September 24, 2025