CHERTSEY (in Saxon Ceortes Eye or Ceorta's Island), a market-town of England, on the south bank of the Thames, in the county of Surrey, about 25 miles W.S.W. from London by railway. It is connected with Middlesex by a bridge of seven arches, built of Purbeck stone in 1785. The parish church, rebuilt in 1808 at a cost of £12,000, contains a tablet to Charles James Fox, who resided at St Anne’s Hill in the vicinity, and another to Lawrence Tomson, a translator of the New Testament in the 17th century. The principal educational establishments are supported by a foundation bequeathed in 1725 by the liberality of Sir William Perkins; and they afford a free education to upwards of 200 children. Hardly any remains are left of the great Benedictine abbey, which was rebuilt by Edgar in 963 on the site of an earlier monastery established by Earconwald, bishop of London, in the 7th century. Its buildings at one time included an area of 4 acres; but they fell into almost complete decay in the 17th century, and a “fair house” was erected out of the ruins by Sir Nicholas Carew of Beddington. The ground-plan can yet be traced; the fish ponds are still complete; and carved stones, coffins, and encaustic tiles of a peculiar manufacture are frequently exhumed. Among the abbots the most famous was John de Rutherwycke, who was appointed in 1307, and continued, till his death in 1346, to carry on a great system of alteration and extension, which almost made the abbey a new building. The house in which the poet Cowley spent the last years of his life is still extant, and the chamber in which he died is preserved unaltered. The town is the seat of a county court, and possesses a literary institute and an agricultural society. Its principal trade is in produce for the London markets. ...