Looking from the Chancel along the Nave. I suppose this is the Vicar’s view. St Mary’s Church is a Grade 1 listed building and stands at the highest point in Walton-on-Thames. The Chancel is 14th century and the pillars on the right of the photo date from c1150. There are so many interesting memorials and artefacts inside here. There are connections with New Zealand soldiers from World War I. For more info see https://waltonparish.org.uk/tour/
St Mary’s has connections with the Surrey Diggers (or True Levellers as they called themselves). This was a movement started in 1649 by Gerrard Winstanley two months after the execution of King Charles I. He was a cloth trader from Lancashire whose business in London was ruined by the English Civil War. He moved to Cobham where he stayed with friends and earned his living as a farm labourer. Through a vision he claimed to have, together with stories from many others who were also left with nothing, he produced writings about the rights of the common man. A lot of these were merely pamphlets. The one below was entitled “The New Law of Righteousness” and was published in January 1649.
“When this universal law of equity rises up in every man and woman, then none shall lay claim to any creature and say, This is mine, and that is yours. This is my work, that is yours. But everyone shall put their hands to till the earth and bring up cattle, and the blessing of the earth shall be common to all; when a man hath need of any corn or cattle, take from the next storehouse he meets with. There shall be no buying or selling, no fairs or markets, but the whole earth shall be a common treasury for every man, for the earth is the Lord’s…When a man hath eat, and drink, and clothes, he hath enough.”
He earned a following through his radical views, believing common land belonged to everyone and thus everyone had a right to earn a livelihood from it. With people from Walton and Cobham he set up a commune at St Georges Hill on 1st April 1649. They built places for their families to live and dug the land to plant their crops. They were poor and at first thought harmless, so were left to their own devices. It wasn’t long before wealthy landowners and people in power realised their threat. Those who felt threatened by the Diggers paid local thugs to beat them up, destroy their crops and burn their houses. They and their families were taken prisoner and locked up here in St Mary’s. They were eventually released as there were no grounds to hold them.