This was the first in-person indoor talk we had been able to have since before the lockdown in March 2020.
It covered the story of our village as shown through maps and was given by Liz Bonsall and Madeline Hutchins. There was a PowerPoint presentation with enlargements of maps and then a wide variety of maps on tables to pore over.
Among the earlier maps were the 1736 Rowed Map of Caterham, 1762 Rocque’s Map of Surrey and Estate Maps of a similar date. They then went through early Ordnance Survey and Tithe Maps of the Nineteenth Century, to more recent changes shown on Twentieth Century maps. There were maps included with land title / house deeds showing detail useful when tracing your house history. Bringing it right up to date, Liz covered online resources with the Surrey Interactive Map and the HER – Historic Environment Records.
Investigating the maps allowed us to see:
Where boundaries used to be and are now.
Where there used to be houses and they have gone.
Where there were fields and woods and when houses were built on them.
The changing pattern of tracks, paths and roads and a surprisingly large number of road name changes.
Where the 25 ponds were in 1868 and what was going on with all those Trig Point symbols in the 1950s? Where were the Hop Kilns? And where was Caterham Golf Course?
There were answers to most of the questions, but also some that need further research.
40 people came to the talk and browsed the maps afterwards. £200 was donated to the Friends of Chaldon Church from the income from the event.