Place:Seale, Surrey, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Seale from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"SEAL, a village and a parish in Farnborough [registration] district, Surrey. The village stands under a long chalk ridge, 1½mile S S E of Tongham [railway] station, and 4 E by N of Farnham; and has a post-office under Farnham. The parish contains also the hamlet of Tongham, and comprises 2,967 acres. Real property: £3,636; of which £10 are in quarries. Population in 1851: 508; in 1861: 669. Houses: 135. The property is subdivided. Poyle Park and Hampton Lodge are chief residences. The living is a [perpetual] curacy in the diocese of Winchester. Value: £44. Patron: the Archdeacon of Surrey. The church was mostly rebuilt in 1861. The [perpetual] curacy of Tongham is a separate benefice. There is a national school."

A Vision of Britain through Time states that Seale civil parish only had its name changed to Seale and Tongham in 1963.

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Seale is a village in Surrey, England. It is located in the modern civil parish of Seale and Sands which is in the non-metropolitan district or Borough of Guildford. It is located west of Guildford south of the A31 road in the hilly area known as the Hog's Back. The UK census of 2011 revealed that the parish had 907 people living in 360 households.

The hamlet of Tongham, to the north of Seale, was a chapelry until 1866 and was served by Seale's medieval parish church and rector.

From the Tudor period, as evidenced by memorials in Seale church, the main landowner was the Woodroffe family (of whom two, David and Nicholas, father and son, were Sheriffs of London in 1554 and 1573 respectively). Later, the Chester family, who descended from the Woodroffes through a female line, were the main landowners. They were seated at 'Poyle' in Tongham, on the other side of the Hog's Back. The mansion at Poyle Park is now demolished and its lands subdivided in the twentieth century.

Research Tips

• The ecclesiatical parish is now the parish of Seale Puttenham and Wanborough who have a website with a history section (mostly covering Wanborough).

Surrey Research Tips

Government

Administrative boundaries of the county of Surrey (Surrey History Centre. The centre has a website with a number of useful indexes--titheholders in various parishes, deaths at the county gaol, etc.)

• In 1889 the County of London was created, and the areas of the modern London boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark and Wandsworth were removed from Surrey. The records of these areas are held either by the London Metropolitan Archives or by the local boroughs, but the Surrey History Centre holds pre-1889 Quarter Sessions records for this area.
• Also in 1889, Croydon was made into a county borough exempt from county administration. Croydon became a London borough in 1965, and most Croydon records are held by the Croydon Local Studies Library and Archives.
• In 1965 more of Surrey was lost to London, with the creation of the London boroughs of Kingston, Merton, Richmond, Sutton and an expanded Croydon. For these areas, records are held by the local boroughs (either in their archives or local studies libraries) or the Surrey History Centre. The London Metropolitan Archives may also have some material.
• In 1965 Staines and Sunbury were transferred from Middlesex to Surrey. In 1974 these areas became the new District of Spelthorne. Most records relating to the former Middlesex area are held by the London Metropolitan Archives.
• In February 2020 FindMyPast announced it had added a substantial number of baptisms, marriages and burials to its database for Surrey. FindMyPast is a pay website.

Registration Districts

• Registration Districts in Surrey from their introduction in 1837 to the present. By drilling down through the links you can follow any parish through the registration districts to which it was attached.

GENUKI provisions

The website GENUKI provides a very comprehensive list of reference sources for the County of Surrey. It includes:

• Archives and Libraries
• Church record availability for both Surrey and the former Surrey part of Greater London
• 19th century descriptions of the ecclesiastical parishes
• Lists of cemeteries
• Local family history societies
• A list of historic maps online

History

• The Victoria History of the County of Surrey is a series of three volumes available online through British History Online. The volumes were written over the past hundred or so years by a number of authors and cover various sections of Surrey. A list of the volumes and what each contains can be found under the source Victoria History of the County of Surrey. Both volumes 3 and 4 contain areas which are part of Greater London and parts of modern Surrey.

Maps

• The National Library of Scotland has a website which provides maps taken from the Ordnance Survey England & Wales One-Inch to the Mile series of 1892-1908 as well as equivalent maps for Scotland itself. The immediate presentation is a "help" screen and a place selection screen prompting the entry of a location down to town, village or parish level. These screens can be removed by a click of the "X". The map is very clear and shows parish and county boundaries and many large buildings and estates that existed at the turn of the 20th century. Magnification can be adjusted and an "overlay feature" allows inspection of the area today along with that of 1900. The specific map from the series can be viewed as a whole ("View this map") and this allows the inspection of the map legend (found in the left hand bottom corner. Becoming familiar with the various facilities of these maps is well worth the trouble.

Parishes in the Alton Hundred of Hampshire and the Farnham Hundred of Surrey have been omitted from the Victoria County Histories. This may be because they were set up later than the other hundreds.