![]() It was built in 1822 and is now the only restored surviving tower in a line of signalling stations that covered the entire route.ĭue to ongoing maintenance the Tower is not currently open to the public. It was once part of a chain which was used to pass messages between the Admiralty in Whitehall and the Royal Naval Dockyard in Portsmouth. Take time during your stay to visit the Semaphore Tower on Chatley Heath. It initially looks harsh, but the bare soil is soon covered with purple heather. Ideally, we use grazing cattle, but we also cut shrubs and seedlings and clear some of the woods that were once heathland. Surrey has lost 85% of its heaths in the last 200 years, so we work hard to protect the remainder. You’ll see how we are managing the valuable heathland to make sure that birch and Scots pine don’t take over. It also attracts many rare birds, including the hobby, which is one of the few creatures that can actually catch dragonflies. It is a nationally important site for dragonflies and damselflies, with twenty species recorded. Occupier Services Planning Private Office Property Management Research Savills Earth (ESG Consulting) Valuation Browse by sector Our services cover a broad range of property sectors. Take a drive here and you’ll be rewarded with more than 800 acres of heathland and woodland. ![]() At the junction of the M25 and the A3, they are within easy reach of visitors from across the south-east. Probably this belief in the white bird of the Oxenhams is associated in some way with the wide-spread superstition that the flying of birds around a house and tapping against the window, or resting on the sill, portends death.Getting to these remarkable reserves isn’t a problem. The bird refused for some minutes to be driven away, and a sound like the fluttering of wings is stated to have been heard in the bedroom. Oxenham, then head of the family, in 1873. "The tradition continues in the family, where the reality of the appearances is not doubted, though 'no decided conviction obtains as to their cause.' Recent instances of the ' omen ' are quoted in connection, the most remarkable of which was the appearance of a white bird outside the windows of a house in Kensington a week before the death of Mr. ![]() and stretch eastwards to Leith Hill, the highest point in Southern England. The earliest record of this apparition refers to the year 1618 but in 1641 what is now a rare pamphlet was published, detailing four appearances before the deaths of four members of a branch of the Oxenhams, settled at Zeal Monachorum, in 1635. Ockham Cottages can be found in the historic semi-rural village of Ockham. The ' omen ' consists in the appearance of a ' bird with a white breast,' or of a white bird, before the deaths of members of the family. "Oxenham gave name to a family of repute, one of whose members was John Oxenham, of Plymouth, the first Englishman who sailed on the Pacific, a comrade of Drake at Nombre de Dios, who eventually fell into the hands of the Spaniards and was by them executed as a pirate one of the bravest and most unfortunate of the great seamen of Elizabethan Devon. The surname Ockham was first found in Devon in the parish of South Tawton at Oxenham, famous for 'the Oxenham omen.' ![]()
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