PUTNEY, a parish in the western division of
the hundred of BRIXTON, county of SURREY, 4 miles
(S. W.) from London, containing 3304 inhabitants.
In Domesday-book this place is styled PuteM, and
it was subsequently called Puttenheath, or Pottenheath,
since contracted into its present name. The village is
situated on the southern bank of the Thames, opposite
to Fulham, with which it is connected by a wooden
bridge. Queen Elizabeth was a frequent visitor here
at the house of Mr. Lacy, who also had the honour to
entertain James I., a short time before his coronation.
During the civil war in the reign of Charles I., a bridge
of boats was constructed across the Thames, and forts
were built on each side of the river, by order of the
Earl of Essex, on the retreat of the royalists to Kingston,
after the battle of Brentford; and in 1647, the headquarters
of the army under Cromwell were fixed at
Putney, while the king was a prisoner at Hampton Court.
An ancient ferry over the Thames at this place is mentioned
in Domesday-book, as yielding to the lord of
the manor of Wimbledon a toll of twenty shillings per
annum. In 1729, the bridge was erected in pxxrsuance
of an act of parliament, at the expense of £23,975,
subscribed by thirty shareholders, who purchased the
ferry for £8000. Here was a fishery at the time of
the Norman Conquest, and smelts are now caught
in great abundance. Putney is within the jurisdiction
of the court of requests for the western division of the
hundred of Brixton, for the recovery of debts under
£5. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the deanery of
Croydon, which is within the peculiar jurisdiction of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, endowed with £600 parliamentary
grant, and in the patronage of the Dean and
Chapter of Worcester. The church, dedicated to St. Mary,
was founded as a chapel of ease to Wimbledon, and was
rebuilt about the reign of Henry VII.: it has a handsome
stone tower at the west end, and at the east end
of the south aisle is a small chantry chapel, erected
by Nicholas West, Bishop of Ely, and having the roof
adorned with rich tracery, interspersed with the arms of
the founder, who was a native of Putney, and became
a favourite of Henry VIII., by whom he was employed
in various embassies. In 1684, Thomas Martyn bequeathed
lands for the foundation and support of a
charity school for twenty boys; and by a decree of the
court of Chancery, in 1715, the property was vested in
trustees: it produces about £ 270 per annum, from
which the master receives £80 per annum, and the
boys are boarded, clothed, and educated. An almshouse
for twelve poor women, dedicated to the Holy
Trinity, was erected by Sir Abraham Dawes, who, by
will in 1639, endowed it with a rent-charge of £40,
which, with subsequent benefactions, produces an
income of £110 per annum. On Putney heath, to the
south of the village, is an obelisk, erected by the corporation
of London, with an inscription commemorating
an experiment made, in 1776, by David Hartley, Esq.,
to prove the efficacy of a method of building houses
fire-proof, which he had invented, and for which he
obtained a grant from parliament of £2500. On the
heath also is a semaphore station, forming part of the
line of communication between the Admiralty office
and Portsmouth. Putney was the birthplace of Bishop
West, already mentioned; of Thomas Cromwell, who
was made Earl of Essex by Henry VIII., but .perished
on the scaffold; and; of Edward Gibbon, the celebrated
author of the " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,"
born in 1737, and died in London, in 1794. John
Toland, a noted freethinking writer, died at Putney in
1722, and was interred in the churchyard; and Robert
Wood, Under Secretary of State, who published " The
Ruins of Palmyra," and other curious archaeological
works, was interred in the new burial-ground, in 1771.