HORLEY CHURCH.
BY Major HEALES, F.S.A., M.R.S.L.
THERE are two methods by which we may endeavour to ascertain the history of a building, one, which may be called the literary method, consists of research into the evidence drawn from contemporary or other records of a more or less early date; and the second, which we may term the inductive method, consists of an examination of the evidence afforded by the structure itself. If the results obtained from these two differing methods agree, or are not discordant, then we need have no hesitation in affirming their correctness; but if they disagree, the building itself affords, of the two, the most reliable evidence.
It is not often, however, our good fortune to find any historical account of an ordinary village church drawing its origin from a remote period; and, failing such at Horley, we must therefore content ourselves with what information we can extract from the structure, to be corroborated or modified when the work of "restoration" is commenced, and the walls are stripped of their casing of plaster and cement.
There is no mention of Horley in "Domesday Book," and it would rather appear from a document (hitherto un -noted) to have been a ville in the parish of Herteley; possibly Horley and Herteleia[1] may have been subsequently united in a parish of Horley, for I am aware of no other record of Herteley. The deed is a convention
- ↑ The name may be Herceleia, the letters t and c being often indistinguishable. The name under either spelling is not mentioned by Manning and Bray.
