Rowledge | |
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The Square, including village sign |
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Rowledge shown within Surrey | |
Population | 1,578 (2001) |
OS grid reference | SU822432 |
District | |
Shire county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | Farnham |
Postcode district | GU10 |
Dialling code | 01252 |
Police | Surrey |
Fire | Surrey |
Ambulance | South East Coast |
EU Parliament | South East England |
UK Parliament | |
Rowledge is a village in England on the Surrey–Hampshire border, centred south of the A31 and Farnham. Neighbouring villages include Wrecclesham, Spreakley and Frensham. To the south west of the village is the Alice Holt Forest; to the west is Birdworld.It is in the Waverley Ward of Farnham, Wrecclesham and Rowledge.
Rowledge is centred in a southwest corner of Surrey, 3 miles (4.8 km) south west of the town of Farnham.
The relatively late (19th-century-created) ecclesiastical parish of Rowledge remains, unusually, one which straddles the Hampshire border: St James' Church, a few homes and Rowledge Primary School are in Hampshire. This two-county arrangement, which in respect of the same land applied to the largest contributor, Frensham, is unusual. It was formed in 1869 from parts of Farnham, Frensham and a very small percentage of Binsted parishes and includes the hamlets of Holt Pound and Bucks Horn Oak in Hampshire.
Rowledge had a Civil Parish, covering the area within Surrey, now forms part of the Waverley ward of Wrecclesham and Rowledge. The area of Frensham after marginal falls, fell from 8,807 acres (3,564 ha) within the 10 years before 1901 to 7,656 and fell during the 20 years before 1951 to 5,204 acres (2,106 ha), with its westerly hamlets gaining new local administration accordingly.
The village is bounded to the north by the Bourne Valley (an "Area of Strategic Visual Importance" or ASVI) and Wrecclesham and Boundstone/Upper Bourne; to the west by the Alice Holt Forest; to the east by open countryside and to the south by further open countryside (an "Area of Great Landscape Value" or AGLV).
The area was from the Norman Conquest agricultural manorial, common land and land not suited for cultivation termed waste: it included large farms and scattered cottages. In the West End part to the south and in the Hampshire mostly forested part 19th century replacements of some of these exist. In the 1841 Census, there were only about 50 dwellings and 250 inhabitants within the boundaries of what is now known as Rowledge. Evidence on the ground is thin: no listed building is in the parish on the National Heritage list. Fir Grove House, later rebuilt as Frensham Heights by Charles Charrington, the brewer, and now a private school is in the southern part of the parish. A rather haphazard pattern of trackways and footpaths traversed the area which still exist today and formed the basis for the present-day road network.