| Description | Merstham manor sits on the North Downs just above Reigate in east Surrey. Accounts survive from 1259 in the usual format of receipts and expenses, with accounts for corn and stock, and some attached inventories of manorial stock and utensils. A number of the accounts are now missing top or bottom sections; these may have been cut off not long after the rolls were drawn up as the remaining, untitled sections have a note at the top in a fifteenth century hand recording the year and that the account is a Merstham one. The accounting official is titled 'serjeant' or 'reeve', the terms being apparently interchangeable. By 1388, this official is also accounting, in the same roll, as bedel for the nearby Charlwood. By 1394 he is farming Merstham for a fixed sum and collecting the rents of Mertsham and Charlwood. By 1406, he accounts solely for Merstham. |