Churt

Coordinates: 51°08′10″N 0°46′37″W / 51.136°N 0.777°W / 51.136; -0.777

Churt is a village and civil parish in the borough of Waverley in Surrey, England. It is on the A287 road between Hindhead and Farnham. A clustered settlement set in areas acting as its green buffers, which include the Devil's Jumps. The west of the village declines in height to the steep edge of Whitmore Vale, which is itself mostly in Headley, Hampshire. At the foot of this bank is a steeply cut brook which defines the Hampshire border. Old boundary stones are visible at the junction of Green Lane and Green Cross Lane. The town of Farnham is centred 5.5 miles (8.9 km) north. The village has forests and heathland by and atop the Greensand Ridge, at a lesser height than, for example, Gibbet Hill, Hindhead 3 miles (4.8 km) south east.

History

Its origins are Saxon. The village as Churt and Cherte 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 with a figure: £3 9s ¼d, (very roughly equivalent to £2,208 in 2016) presumably annually.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. 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'). 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.