History of St Andrew’s Church
Gatton, St. Andrew’s Church, 1890 Photographic Survey and Record of Surrey no. 595
St Andrew’s is one of the oldest parishes in Surrey and is unique in its ability to have survived over the years, having remained a small hamlet, when other hamlets have developed into towns. Earliest documentary evidence of its existence appears to date back to 880AD. Until recent years it had no school or Public house. A church has existed in the parish since the Doomsday Survey 1086. The present Church of St Andrew dates back to the 15th Century.
Grade I listed church with 13th century origins but extensively altered in 18th and early 19th centuries. Outstanding overall as an extreme example of 19th century antiquarian interests and for the quality of its collection of imported 15th and 16th century timber fittings and stained glass mostly introduced in 1834 by Lord Monson. The family pew is described by Pevsner as ‘among the best in the country’.
The church, essentially a chapel for the Hall that is reached from the house by a covered walkway, was richly improved within its simple exterior with imported woodwork in 1834: the pulpit and altar, bought from Nuremberg were hopefully attributed at the time to Albrecht Dürer; the carved doors came from Rouen; the presbytery stalls from a disestablished monastery in Ghent, the altar rails came from Tongeren; stained glass for the windows, and the wainscoting of the nave and carved canopies came from Aarschot, near Leuven. The Gothic screen at the West end came from an unidentified English church, where it had been dismantled and was about to be burnt. “Gatton, rebuilt in the 1830s, is a bijou” reported Nikolaus Pevsner “perhaps the best example in the country of the tendency for the church to become an extension of the landlord’s parlour or sculpture gallery.”