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Friends of Woking Palace |
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Hoe Place part two |
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The history of Hoe Place is inextricably bound up with that of Woking Palace and the Royal Manor of Woking. The Palace stood in a park the boundaries of which were roughly the present day Old Woking Road, Pyrford Common Road, Church Hill and Newark Lane with the River Wey as its southern boundary. The Manor itself was held by Edward the Confessor and continued from that time to be held by the Crown or an appointee. In 1189, the site of the Palace had been established. It was Henry VIII when he came into possession of the Manor who was responsible for turning the manor house into a Palace.
After Henry’s death, the Palace ceased to be frequented by its Royal owners and in 1620 the Manor was granted by James I to Sir Edward Zouch, it is said for favours granted. Sir Edward abandoned the Palace and built himself a new manor house on the site of the present Hoe Place. There is some evidence that some of the material from the Palace were reused in the construction of the new house. The process of robbery of material from the Palace continued up to the acquisition of the Palace site by Woking Borough Council in 1988. With the abandonment of the Palace, the park was turned over to farming and a number of farmhouses built, some say partly with bricks from the Palace. Round Hill Farm and the Old House are possibly two of these farmhouses.
Sir James Lloyd appears in the 1664 Hearth Tax return residing at a house with 25 hearths in Heathside tything together with The Lodge House in the same tything. This large house must have been that built by Sir Edward Zouch and the precursor of the present Hoe Place. Sir James succeeded his father Sir John Lloyd, buried in St Peter's and who had married the widow of James Zouch, the son of Sir Edward Zouch.
Manning and Bray say that the present house was built by James Zouch, grandson of Sir Edward and last male heir of the family on whose death in 1708 without issue, the property descended to Sophia his niece (see below), daughter of his sister Sophia and heir by law. They also say that the original house put up on the site by Sir Edward Zouch was pulled down by John Walter. Since that gentleman did not purchase the property until 1730, see below, it follows that, if Manning and Bray are correct, both old and new houses existed on the same site until that date.
The parish registers record the birth of Elizabeth and Anne in February and November 1706 daughters of Mr Charles Abel of Ho-bridge, the marriage of Richard Bird, yeoman and Katherine Wood at Ho-bridge in 1709 and the birth and burial of their daughters, Katherine, Martha, Anne, Elizabeth, Mary and Sarah all of Ho-bridge. It is likely that this family was living at Hoe Place rather than at the adjacent Hoe Bridge Farm since the father, is described as Mr Richard, and James Zouch had left the Zouch family property of the Hermitage to the said Katherine Wood. One of the surviving daughters, Katherine married Thomas Lambourn, yeoman of Woking in 1732 and the other, Sarah married, as her second husband, Alleyne Walter in 1754, see below, almost certainly he who purchased Hoe Place in 1761.
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