Limpsfield

Limpsfield is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England, at the foot of the North Downs close to Oxted railway station and the A25. The composer Frederick Delius and orchestral conductor Sir Thomas Beecham are buried in the village churchyard. The village contains are 89 listed buildings.

The village lay within the Anglo Saxon Tandridge hundred. Limpsfield appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Limenesfeld. It was held by the Abbot of Battle Abbey, Sussex. Its Domesday assets were: 1 church, 1 mill worth 2s, 19 ploughs, 1 fishery, of meadow, woodland worth 150 hogs, 2 stone quarries, and 3 nests of hawks. It rendered £24 (of silver) per year to its feudal overlords. Old Court Cottage in Titsey Road, formerly the manorial court of the Abbot of Battle, is grade I listed building and dates from c. 1190 1200 (including aisle posts and arcade plates) with alterations in the late 14th century, and a 16th century crosswing. Reginald Mason cited this in 1964 as an outstandingly important early example of a timber framed building in the south of England. The parish church of Saint Peter was constructed in the late 12th century and is a grade I listed building, extensively restored in the 19th century. The tower, with two light plate tracery windows of c.1260, is made of ironstone rubble with stone dressings and dressed stone to north aisle. In addition it has a wooden shingled spire with a wooden cross surmounted. St Peter's church is also home to the last stained glass windows produced by John David Hayward, who lived for many years in nearby Edenbridge; the window depicts Saint Cecilia. Hayward was a leading artist in stained glass in the 20th century. There are approximately twenty medieval buildings within the parish, and there are 89 listed buildings.

The village heart is in a conservation area and some of the surrounding area is National Trust land including Limpsfield Common. Staffhurst Wood is also within the parish boundaries and is notable for its bluebells in spring. Limpsfield Chart has a golf course and cricket club. Limpsfield itself has a football team and a tennis club and its current cricket club is a united team with Oxted, named Oxted & Limpsfield Cricket Club with two grounds. The village is served by Oxted railway station. Limpsfield Grange is a SEND school for girls and formerly an open air school.

The civil and ecclesiastical parish area is grouped to the north and south of Hurst Green, Surrey. The built up section is north of Hurst Green and both east and north east of Oxted. The lowest elevation is 62m at Staffhurst Wood on the south western parish boundary on the River Eden, Kent and highest is just east of the town centre at Grubstreet Copse at 163m; (Titsey being a separate civil parish north of the village and higher on the North Downs). The M25 motorway is to the north and Junction 6 for Godstone is just 3 1/2 miles west. The adjacent High Chart, south east of Limpsfield, is a large area of woodland, owned by the National Trust, which has a network of footpaths. The remains of a Roman road, the London to Lewes Way, pass through the woods east of the village, where it makes an eastward diversion from its alignment to avoid steep slopes. It passes through Crockham Hill before returning to its line near Marlpit Hill. In the village is the C of E church of St Andrew, which it is the place of worship of 'a Conventional District' in the ecclesiastical parish of Limpsfield and Titsey, built in 1895. There is a pub The Carpenters Arms in the centre. Within it is the halfway point in the Greensand Way long distance footpath which runs for 110 miles from Haslemere in Surrey to Hamstreet in Kent along the Greensand Ridge.