manors evolved. Highlights of the often influential tapestry of powerful owners include (but are not limited to): Medieval to 19th century The Victoria County History (Surrey: 1911) cites numerous mentions in the Assize Rolls, Patent Rolls, Feet of Fines and the ecclesiastical records of Westminster and Lambeth Palaces. Traditionally the parish included the areas of the current civil parish and measured about 4½ miles from north to south, and from 2 to 2½ miles from east to west and contained 6,400 acres of land and 12 of water. The neighbourhood was for a time one of the wildest in Surrey: sheep-stealers, smugglers, and poachers found a refuge in these remote hills. Some of the cottages have, still existing, very large cellars (excavated easily in the sandy hill), stated by H.E. Malden to have been "far too large for any honest purpose, and were no doubt made for storing smuggled goods till they could be conveniently taken on to London". In 1671, a Shere man called Edward Bound was charged by church authorities with "playing cricket on the Sabbath" and was exonerated, one of the sport's earliest references. Iron was worked from the stone and into implements in centuries before the 18th century in Shere. In 1911 great quantities of watercress were grown which is no longer the case; the principal area in southern England for this being near New Alresford in Hampshire. 19th century Holmbury St. Mary up in the Greensand Ridge was a modern village term devised in 1878 for the two hamlets of Felday in Shere and Pitland Street in Shere and Abinger, when the place became a civil parish and ecclesiastical parish. The Church of England schools were built in 1860 and enlarged in 1900. School Shere Infant and Nursery School has been serving the local community since 1852, celebrating its 175th birthday in 2017. The school received a 'Good' status from the Ofsted inspection in December 2015. Landmarks St James' Church The church of St James is in the Early English style, most being 12th, 13th and 14th century. It replaced an earlier Anglo-Saxon church mentioned in the Domesday Book. Constructed of ironstone rubble with sandstone buttresses, it was restored in 1895 by S. Weatherley. By the north chancel wall there is a 14th-century quatrefoil window and squint – belonging to an Anchorite cell used by Christina Carpenter in the 14th-century. There is 14th-century glass in