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Cobham is a village in the Borough of Elmbridge in Surrey, England, centred 17 miles (27 km) southwest of central London and 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Guildford. It is on the River Mole and had a population of 9,739 in the UK census of 2011. [edit] Hatchford
Hatchford is a hamlet outside the town of Cobham but within the pre-1974 civil parish; it includes the contiguous hamlet of Pointers Green. [edit] History
Cobham is an ancient settlement whose origins can be traced back on the ground through Roman times to the Iron Age. It lay within the Elmbridge hundred. Cobham appears in Domesday Book as Covenham and was held by Chertsey Abbey. Its Domesday assets were: 12½ hides; 3 mills worth 13s 4d, 10 ploughs, 1 alike unit of meadow, woodland worth 40 hogs. It rendered altogether £14 per year to its feudal system overlords. Historically, Cobham other than outlying farms comprised two developed areas, Street Cobham and Church Cobham. The former lay on the Portsmouth-London Road, and the building now known as the Cobham Exchange was once a coaching inn. The latter grew up around St Andrew's Church, which dates from the 12th century. Although much altered and extended in the 19th century, the church preserves a Norman tower and is a Grade I listed building (the highest architectural category). The village's population was reported as 1617 inhabitants in 1848. The arrival of the railway in the 1880s led to the expansion of the original village, the eastern fields and southern areas towards the railway station becoming suburbanised during the 20th century. A 1960s improvements scheme widened the entrance to the High Street from River Hill to the south which was very narrow, removing a few historic and picturesque buildings, replacing some with less ornate brickwork glass-fronted buildings suitable as shops. Subsequently, the High Street has developed into a local shopping centre. [edit] Aviation and motor industriesCobham is from Brooklands and played host to associated and its own aviation and motoring activity in the 20th century. Leading motor engineer and car designers Reid Railton and Noel Macklin set up a manufacturing facility, building Railton road cars at the Fairmile Works from 1933 to 1940. An example is displayed at Brooklands Museum in the same borough. In World War II, after a major aircraft factory, Vickers-Armstrongs, at Brooklands was bombed by the Luftwaffe on 4 September 1940, with heavy loss of life and many more injured, the Vickers Experimental Department was quickly dispersed to secret premises on the Silvermere and Foxwarren Park estates along Redhill Road. Engineer and inventor Barnes Wallis also carried out important trials catapulting models of his 'Upkeep' bouncing bomb across Silvermere Lake around 1942 and conducted spinning trials with larger prototypes at 'Depot W46' (the largest of the three dispersed sites). Vickers had numerous other wartime dispersed depots locally and those within the boundaries or whose nearest village was Cobham included Corbie Wood and Riseholme (on Seven Hills Road), Conway Cottage and Norwood Farm. Despite its proximity to Brooklands and Wisley airfields (both active until the early 1970s), Cobham saw relatively few aircraft crashes. Most notable was a Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter which flew low over Brooklands apparently in trouble and crashed at Cobham on 16 March 1944; the pilot survived and little else was published of this incident. During World War II aircraft company Airspeed Ltd set up a design office at Fairmile Manor which designed the civil aircraft the Airspeed Ambassador before moving back to Portsmouth in the late 1940s. After the war, Vickers' Experimental Department continued to use two of the Redhill Road sites (now known as 'Foxwarren') and built aircraft prototypes there such as the Viscount airliner and Valiant V-bomber, until it moved back to the main factory at Brooklands in the late 1950s. In the 1970s residents Mike Chambers ran a business building Huron Formula Fords and a Formula Atlantic car at the Silvermere works and Geoff Uren prepared the BMW team saloon cars and Graham Hill's Jägermeister-sponsored Formula 2 car. From 1972 to 2011 Cobham Bus Museum occupied an ex-aircraft hangar (used mainly by Vickers-Armstrongs as a machine shop) next to Silvermere golf course in Redhill Road. The bus museum reopened as the London bus museum at Brooklands Museum on 1 August 2011. The former premises have been replaced by a care home. [edit] Surrey Research Tips[edit] GovernmentAdministrative boundaries of the county of Surrey (Surrey History Centre. The centre has a website with a number of useful indexes--titheholders in various parishes, deaths at the county gaol, etc.)
[edit] Registration Districts
[edit] GENUKI provisionsThe website GENUKI provides a very comprehensive list of reference sources for the County of Surrey. It includes:
[edit] History
[edit] Maps
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