Starting promptly from Leatherhead station at 10am (served from London Waterloo
via Clapham Junction and Wimbledon, and London Victoria via Clapham Junction
and Sutton, Surrey), this tour of five churches situated above and below the North
Downs first visits St Mary’s West Horsley with a 14th century effigy to a de Berners priest,
some 16th century brasses, two 17th century monuments to the Nicholas family
(one probably by Gibbons), and an 18th century tablet by Nicholas Read, a pupil of
Roubiliac.
From there we travel south over the crest of the Downs to St Peter & St
Paul’s at Albury (CCT) where the chief interest is the Drummond Chapel of the early
1840s, a fine example of A W N Pugin’s architecture and decoration combined with
John Hardman’s brasses. Then back up the Downs to All Saints Ockham, a church
associated with the philosopher William of Ockham but possessing an early 18th
century octagonal mausoleum as a setting for a Rysbrack masterpiece erected for Lord
Chancellor King, now accompanied by monuments to King’s descendant Lord King,
executed by Richard Westmacott Jun, and Lord Lovelace, almost certainly by his
favourite architect C F A Yoysey, with lettering by Gill.
After our lunch stop (see below) we will visit St Mary’s Stoke D’Abernon, famed for its early
brasses to Sir John d’Abernon (father and son) re-dated to the 14th century, but also
containing other brasses and monuments to their descendants ending with a roman Ciborium
containing the ashes of Edgar, Viscount D’Abernon (d.1941). Our final stop is at St
Nicholas’s Great Bookham, with a large collection of brasses and monuments from
the 13th to 19th centuries including a dual commemoration in brass and stone of Robert
Shiers (1668), 18th century monuments by Thomas Carter and a fine military
concoction to Cornet Geary, killed during the American War of Independence in
- We should be back at Leatherhead station by 17.30 at the latest.
Lunch will be in the restaurant of Squire’s Garden Centre, a five minute walk from
Stoke D’Abernon Church, and can be pre-ordered from a set menu (to be sent later,
not included in price). Detailed guide notes and menu will be emailed when
completed (please send an A4 s.a.e for paper copies if required).
To register, email the organiser, Andrew Skelton, at