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Leatherhead is a town in Surrey, England on the right bank of the river Mole, and at the edge Greater London. Records exist of the place from Anglo Saxon England. Just north-east of the midpoint of Surrey and at a junction of ancient north–south and east–west roads, elements of the town have been a focus for transport throughout its history. A main early spur to this was the construction of the bridge over the seasonally navigable River Mole in the early medieval period. Later the Swan Hotel provided 300 years of service to horse-drawn coaches. In the late 20th century the M25 motorway was built nearby. Between 1894 and 1974 Leatherhead was a urban district. Since 1974 it has been the principal town in the non-metropolitan Mole Valley District of Surrey. It had a population of 11,316 in the UK census of 2011. [edit] History
[edit] Early historyThe earliest evidence of human activity in Leatherhead comes from the Iron Age. Flints, a probable well and two pits were discovered in 2012 during building work on Garlands Road and the finds suggest that the site was also used in the early Roman period. Traces of Iron Age field systems and settlement activity have been observed at Hawks Hill, Fetcham (about southwest of the town centre) and on Mickleham Downs (about to the south). Also to the south, the Druid's Grove at Norbury Park may have been used for pre-Christian pagan gatherings. An Anglo-Saxon settlement at Leatherhead was most likely founded on the east side of the River Mole in the second half of the 6th century. A burial ground, dating to the same period, has been identified on the west side at Hawks Hill. A second cemetery was discovered in 1984 on the site of the former Goblin factory in Ermyn Way (now the location of the offices of Esso). Excavations uncovered the remains of at least 40 individuals and the artefacts found, including knives, buckles and necklaces, suggest that they were pagan burials. From the mid-9th century, Leatherhead was the centre of a royal vill, which encompassed Ashtead, Fetcham and Bookham. The first known reference to the settlement is in the will of Alfred the Great in 880, in which land at Leodridan was bequeathed to his son, Edward the Elder.[1] By the 10th century, there was a minster church in Leatherhead, and the town was administered as part of the Copthorne hundred.[2][3] [edit] GovernanceThe medieval history of Leatherhead is complex, since the parish was divided into a number of manors.[1] The town appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Leret and was held by Osbern de Ow as a mesne lord to William I. Its Domesday assets were one church, belonging to Ewell, and of land. It was valued at an annual income of £1.[4] To the south was the manor of Thorncroft, which was held by Richard son of Gilbert as tenant-in-chief. To the north was the manor of Pachesham, subdivided into two parts, each of which was held by a mesne lord to the tenant-in-chief, Bishop Odo of Bayeux.[4] Finally there are sporadic mentions in surviving documents of a manor called "Minchin", which may have belonged to Kilburn Priory in Middlesex. For the majority of its history, Thorncroft Manor appears to have remained as a single, intact entity, with the exception of the subinfeudation of Bocketts Farm, which took place before 1300. In 1086, the manor was held by Richard fitz Gilbert and it passed through his family (the Clares) to his granddaughter, Margaret de Clare, who married into the de Montfitchet family of Essex. Her great-grandson, Richard de Montfichet, sold the manor to John de Cheresbure in around 1190 and it was next purchased by Philip Basset and his second wife, Ela, Countess of Warwick in around 1255.[5] In 1266, they granted Thorncroft (which provided an income of £20 per year) to Walter de Merton, who used it to endow the college in Oxford that he had founded in 1264. Merton College remained the lords of the manor until 1904 and the continuity of ownership ensured that an almost complete set of manorial rolls from 1278 onwards has been preserved. In 1497, Richard FitzJames, the Warden of the College, authorised the expenditure of £37 for a new manor house, which was used until the Georgian era.[6] In contrast, the manor of Pachesham became fragmented as the Middle Ages progressed. By the time of Domesday book, it was already divided into two parts, the smaller of which was later referred to as "Pachenesham Parva". No written record of either part of the manor survives from the subsequent 200 years, but in 1286 land belongong to Pachesham was recorded as passing to Eustace de Hacche. De Haache rebuilt the manor house in around 1293, which he enclosed with a moat. Excavations of the manor house site (now known as The Mounts) in the mid-20th century provided evidence of several medieval buildings, including a hall, a chapel and a probable stable block. The value of the manor appears to have declined in the mid-14th century and, in 1386, it was let to William Wimbledon for an annual sum of £20. In 1393, one year after a serious fire had destroyed much of Leatherhead, Wimbledon defaulted on the rent and was accused of dismantling several of the manor buildings. From the start of the 15th century, the land was divided between twelve lessees and the manor then disappears from the historical record. Surviving records of Pachenesham Parva from around 1330 suggest that it covered an area of on the east bank of the River Mole, to the north west of the town centre. The manor appears to have remained intact through the Middle Ages and land was added to the estate as the remainder of Pachesham was broken up. By the early 17th century, the area was known as Randalls Farm and, in 1805, the associated land totalled . Reforms during the Tudor period replaced the day-to-day administration of towns such as Leatherhead in the hands of the vestry of the parish church. The vestry was charged with appointing a parish constable, maintaining a lock-up and organising a basic fire service. Until 1834, it also administered poor relief and was responsible for building a workhouse on Kingston Road in 1808.[7]
[edit] Transport and communicationsLeatherhead developed at a crossing point of the River Mole at the intersection between the north-south Kingston-Dorking and east-west Epsom-Guildford roads. The original position of the ford is unclear, but it may have been around upstream of the present Leatherhead Bridge at a point where a continuation of Elm Road would meet the river.[3] The first indication of a bridge at Leatherhead is a local deed dated to 1250, which was witnessed by a "Simon of the Bridge". Later that century, in around 1286, a Peter Dryaw of Fetcham is recorded as mortgaging the annual rent of a house "at the bridge in the town of Ledderede" to Merton College, Oxford. It is possible that the construction of the first bridge coincided with an expansion of the town and the enlargement of the parish church, which took place around 1200. It is not clear to what extent the Mole was used for navigation in the past, but in the early Middle Ages, it is likely that shallow-bottomed craft were able to reach Leatherhead from the Thames for much of the year. In the late 13th century, Thorncroft Manor purchased a shout, a type of boat up to in length, used to transport produce to market. Several schemes were proposed to make the Mole navigable in the 17th and 18th centuries, but none were enacted.
The turnpike road between Epsom and Horsham, which ran through Leatherhead, was authorised by Parliament in 1755. Turnpikes to Guildford and Kingston were opened in 1758 and 1811 respectively and one of the tollhouses was sited near to the present Leatherhead Institute. Stagecoaches, which had begun to run through Leatherhead to London in the 1680s, increased in frequency after the building of the turnpikes. By 1838 there were daily coaches to Arundel, Bognor and Worthing, which typically stopped at the Swan Inn in the High Street. With the arrival of in 1847, the long-distance coaches were discontinued and horse-drawn omnibuses took over local journeys.[8] The first railway to arrive in Leatherhead was built by the Epsom and Leatherhead Railway Company. The line, which terminated at a station in Kingston Road, opened on 1 February 1859. Initially all trains were operated by the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) and, for the first two months, only ran as far as . The completion of the line through enabled these services to be extended to from April of the same year and, in August 1859, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) began to run trains from Leatherhead to . The Mole Gap through the North Downs had been identified as a potential railway corridor as early as the 1830s, but the line south from Leatherhead to was not opened until 1867. The Kingston Road station, which had been laid out as a terminus, was closed and two new adjacent stations (either side of the present Station Approach) were opened. The LBSCR station, which was closer to the town centre, was initially the only one connected to the line to Dorking. It was designed by C. H. Driver in a fine gothic revival style and is the station that survives today.[9] The LSWR built its station as a terminus, but its line was extended westwards to in 1885. The two railway companies were amalgamated in 1923, when the Southern Railway was formed. All railway lines through Leatherhead were electrified in 1925 and the LSWR station was closed in 1927. In the late 1930s, a southward extension of the Chessington branch line was proposed, but the creation of the Metropolitan Green Belt prevented the scheme from being enacted.[10]
[edit] CommerceThe right to hold a weekly market and an annual fair was granted to Leatherhead in 1248 by Henry III.[1] The market place is thought to have been at the junction of Bridge Street, North Street and High Street and the town stocks were probably in the same area. The market appears to have ended in the mid-Elizabethan era, however the annual fair continued and in the late 17th century was held on 8 September, the feast of the Nativity of Mary. The construction of the turnpikes, and later the railways, attracted wealthier residents to Leatherhead. Many of these incomers had accumulated their wealth as entrepreneurs in London and had no previous connection to the area. By the start of the Victorian era, they were beginning to influence the local economy. Small, family-based manufacturing firms began to grow, engaged in industries such as brick-making, milling of logs, tanning, shoemaking, malting and brewing. In the 1841 census, 18.5% of the town's inhabitants were employed in agriculture-related trades, but forty years later, the proportion had fallen to 5.4%. Larger-scale industries arrived in Leatherhead in the first half of the 20th century. In 1928, the Rayon manufacturing company opened a factory in Ermyn Way, close to the border with Ashtead parish and was replaced ten years later by the manufacturing plant for Goblin Vacuum Cleaners. Also in the 1930s, a silk-making farm and electrical cable factory were established in the town.[11] Following the end of the Second World War, Ronson, the US-based manufacturer of cigarette lighters, opened a manufacturing plant at Dorincourt, to the north of the town. The factory moved to Randalls Road in 1953, but it closed in 1981 when the company went into liquidation. A business park opened in its place.[12] The Ex-services Welfare Society purchased Long House on Ermin Way following the end of the First World War. The charity constructed a factory in the grounds to provide employment for disabled veterans, producing electrical items, such as electric blankets. In 1933, the organisation opened a treatment centre at Tyrwhitt House in Oaklawn Road, named after Reginald Tyrwhitt, its president at the time. In 1981, the factory was purchased by Remploy. It continued to manufacture electrical goods, but under the new ownership, its operations expanded to include the assembly and packaging of mechanical equipment. The Remploy factory closed in 2007, with the loss of 43 jobs. The Ex-services Welfare Society, now known as Combat Stress,[13] continues to operate its treatment centre at Tyrwhitt House in north Leatherhead. Large-scale manufacturing in Leatherhead was short lived and, as the 20th century progressed, the town started to attract service sector industries. Among the research institutes formerly based in the town, Leatherhead Food Research was founded in 1919 and the Central Electricity Research Laboratories (CERL) opened in 1950. Both organisations left the town in the early 2000s. The Ronson and Goblin factories closed in the early 1980s and their sites were redeveloped, in the latter case for the UK headquarters of Esso.[14] The UK head offices of Unilever (on the site of the former CERL) and Hyundai were opened in Leatherhead in 2008 and 2020 respectively.
[edit] Residential developmentLeatherhead began to expand at the start of the 20th century and the population grew from in 4,694 in 1901 to 5,491 in 1911. New housing developments were built between 1900 and 1905 in Fairfield, Highlands and Kingston Roads, and Queen Anne's Garden. Later in the decade, houses were constructed in Copthorne, Clinton, Reigate and Woodville Roads, Kingston Avenue and St Nicholas Hill. The first council housing in the town, a development of 59 houses in Poplar Road, was built by Leatherhead UDC in 1921. Preference for rehousing was given to ex-servicemen and their families. In 1925, 90 council houses were constructed in Kingston Road. Private residential developments also occurred around the same time, including the construction of the St Mary’s Road estate, on the site of the former Elm Bank mansion, south of the town centre. The Givons Grove estate, to the south of the town, was developed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Originally a constituent of Thorncroft Manor, it was an area of arable land, known as "Gibbons Farm", named after a prominent local family. In 1919, the estate was bought by the aircraft manufacturer, Humphrey Verdon Roe, whose wife, Marie Stopes, would live at Norbury Park for 20 years from 1938.[15] It was sold to a consortium of developers in 1927, who divided the land into plots for housing. Similarly in 1935, Yarm Court was sold and the estate developed for housing. Following the end of the Second World War, new housing was constructed to the north of the town centre, along Cleeve, Kingston and Copthorne Roads, to replace properties damaged by bombing. [edit] Leatherhead in the world warsAt the start of the First World War, members of the 20th Battalion of the University and Public Schools Brigade of the Royal Fusiliers were billeted with local residents. The recruits were primarily drawn from the Manchester area and underwent training at Randalls Farm. The Kensington Rifles of the London Regiment were also garrisoned in the town in the month before their deployment to the Western Front in April 1915. Later that year, the first of 63 Belgian refugees arrived in Leatherhead, remaining in the town until the end of the war. Concerns that the town's water supply might be poisoned by enemy spies, prompted the authorities to arrange a guard on the waterworks on Guildford Road. Many of the duties were undertaken by the local Scout troop and members of the Boy's Brigade, which was affiliated with St Mary's Church.[16] Many local men joined the Dorking and Leatherhead Battalion of the Volunteer Training Corps, which was formed with the intention to defend the local area in the event of invasion. In October 1914, a Red Cross Hospital opened on Bull Hill. By March 1915 it had 33 beds and was fully occupied. It closed in February 1919.[17] Elsewhere in the town, the Forty Foot recreation ground was used to grow wheat and Venthams, a local firm of coachbuilders, began to manufacture munitions.
From the outbreak of war, the defence of Leatherhead was coordinated by the XII Corps of Eastern Command, reinforced from July 1940 by VII Corps GHQ Mobile Reserve. The 3rd Infantry Brigade of the 1st Canadian Division was posted to Dorking and Leatherhead, and was responsible for completing the construction of Young Street between Givons Grove and Fetcham. The local unit of the Home Guard, Company F of the 6th Battalion of South Eastern Command, was formed with 200 recruits in May 1940. The training centres for the company included the Drill Hall on Kingston Road and an anti-tank obstacle was installed at the east end of the High Street, close to the Leatherhead Institute. The Home Guard company was disbanded four years later, once the threat of invasion had passed. Leatherhead experienced two main periods of bombing during the war. The first wave of attacks took place from late 1940 until early 1941. During the first raid, early in the morning on 27 August 1940, 20 high-explosive bombs were dropped along the border with Ashtead. The clubhouse of the golf club suffered a direct hit, but the civilians taking cover in the shelter beneath it were fully protected and survived without injury. In October of the same year, the oil storage tanks next to the waterworks were set alight by an incendiary bomb. The resulting fires could not be extinguished until more than 24 hours later. In March 1941, St Andrew's Catholic School was almost completely destroyed by a bomb. During the second period of bombing, in the summer of 1944, 16 V-1 flying bombs landed in the Leatherhead area, including one at Thorncroft Manor. [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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