Percy Woods (1842-1922)
Image: Photograph of Percy Woods, Godalming Museum Collections. Photography by Matthew Gordon.
Percy Woods (1842-1922) was born at Brook House in Hart’s Lane (now called Mint Street), Godalming. His father was Charles John Woods (1811-1868), solicitor, coroner and Godalming’s first Town Clerk, who was himself the son of a local solicitor, Henry Meale Woods (1776-1841).
His background, as part of a long-established local family, and with access to deeds in his father’s practice dating back hundred of years, inspired Woods to research the history of Godalming ‘Hundred’ (an area extending to Cranleigh and Haslemere). He was a central part of a network of local historians and antiquarians, one of the campaigners for the town to have a museum. He built up his own collection of documents, and undertook the investigation, and in many cases transcriptions of every relevant document he could find in public repositories and private archives.
The 1861 census returns reveal Woods was a solicitor’s clerk in the family firm in Godalming. In 1863 he entered the Civil Service, obtaining a nomination to the Admiralty, and after the death of his father moved to Guildford. He transferred in 1880 to the Treasury, where he was employed in the accounts department until his retirement in 1902; he was made a CBE for his services.
He married in 1881 Helen Mariah Trimmer, the daughter of Robert Trimmer, the rector of Holy Trinity and St Mary’s in Guildford. She died only seven years later leaving him with two young daughters. Although he lived during his working life closer to London, first in Clapham, and after the death of his wife near his brother-in-law in Bromley, Kent, he moved back to Guildford on retirement. He was a generous donor to Godalming, presenting the Mayoral chair in 1908, and a silver bowl in memory of Queen Victoria.
For 22 years he was a member of the Surrey Archaeological Society, serving on its council, and contributing many articles to the Proceedings, and acted as Hon. Secretary for the society’s Guildford district. He was a founder member of the Surrey Record Society.
Woods died in 1922 at his home, ‘Sylvan’, in Epsom Road, Guildford, and was buried in Nightingale Road Cemetery, Godalming, next to his parents, whose gravestone still stands.
Godalming Museum Local Studies Library was named ‘The Percy Woods Library’, and a portrait photograph of Woods can be seen above the fireplace. His deed collection and the notes and transcripts he produced are now in the museum, most of the latter bound into fifty-nine huge volumes. They have been indexed on a Microsoft Access Database, and all the information and original illustrations have been digitised and can be reproduced. The deeds are listed on the Museum catalogue.
Why does Percy Woods deserve such notice? Anybody interested in finding out about the history of a place or family in West Surrey has reason to be very grateful to Percy Woods. A senior civil servant, Woods was from a family which had lived in Godalming for at least three hundred years, and his main leisure activity in his long life was research into the history of his area. He died in 1922, having sought out and written down details of deeds, wills, court cases and parish records relating to every town and village of the ‘Godalming Hundred’, an area stretching as far as Cranleigh and Haslemere. The notes and transcriptions, in his meticulous handwriting, run to more than 18,000 pages, now bound into 59 huge volumes, which can be consulted in the Museum Library.
If you live in an old property in this area, or have ancestors who did, Woods almost certainly recorded something of interest to you. You do not need to trawl through the indexes of the National Archives or local record offices, or wrestle with obscure old handwriting and Latin – it’s all here!
Image: Part of the Percy Woods Collection, Godalming Museum