Template:Wp-Dorking-History and Development

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Pre-history

The earliest evidence of human activity in Dorking comes from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods and includes flint tools and flakes found during construction development in South Street. A Bronze Age ring ditch containing two ceramic urns, was discovered in 2013 during the rebuilding of Waitrose supermarket. Radiocarbon dating of hazelnut shells found at the base suggests that it was dug between 8625 and 8465 BCE and may have enclosed a bowl barrow. Other ditches nearby may indicate the presence of a Bronze Age field system, although the date of these earthworks is less certain. Bowl barrows from the same period have been found at the Glory Wood (to the south of the town centre),^[1] on Milton Heath (to the west) and on Box Hill (to the northeast).

Roman and Saxon

There is thought to have been a settlement at Dorking in Roman times, although its size and extent are unclear. Coins from the reigns of Hadrian (117–138 AD), Commodus (180–192) and Claudius Gothicus (214–270), as well as tiles and pottery fragments, have been found in the town.^[2] Stane Street, the Roman road linking London to Chichester, was constructed during the first century AD and is thought to have run through Dorking.^[2] The exact course through the town is not known and no definitive archaeological evidence has been discovered for the route in the gap between the crossing of the River Mole at the Burford Bridge and North Holmwood.^[2] A posting station is thought to have been located in the area and sites have been proposed in the town centre, at Pixham^[2] and at the Burford Bridge, where the road crossed the River Mole.^[2]

Although the name Dorking implies a settlement that was well established by the time of the Norman conquest, archaeological evidence of Saxon activity in the town centre is limited to pottery sherds.^[3][4][5] Probable Saxon cemeteries have been found close to Yew Tree Road (to the north of the centre) and at Vincent Lane (to the west). In 1817, the so-called "Dorking Hoard" of around 700 silver pennies, dating from the mid-8th to the late-9th centuries, was found near the source of the Pipp Brook on the northern slopes of Leith Hill. In the late Saxon period, the manor and parish were administered as part of the Wotton Hundred and may have been part of a large royal estate centred on Leatherhead.^[6]

Governance

Dorking appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as the Manor of Dorchinges. It was held by William the Conqueror, who had assumed the lordship in 1075 on the death of Edith of Wessex, widow of Edward the Confessor. The settlement included one church, three mills worth 15s 4d, 16 ploughs, woodland and herbage for 88 hogs and of meadow. It rendered £18 per year in 1086. The residents included 38 villagers, 14 smallholders and 4 villeins, which placed it in the top 20% of settlements in England by population.^[6]

In around 1087, William II granted the manor of Dorking to Willam de Warenne, the first Earl of Surrey, whose descendants have held the lordship almost continuously until the present day.^[6] By the early 14th century, the manor had been divided for administrative purposes into four tithings: Eastburgh and Chippingburgh (corresponding respectively to the eastern and western halves of the modern town); Foreignburgh (the area covered by the Holmwoods) and Waldburgh (which would later be renamed Capel).^[7] On the death of the seventh Earl, John de Warenne, in 1347, the manor passed to his brother-in-law, Richard Fitzalan, the third Earl of Arundel. In 1580 both Earldoms passed through the female line to Phillip Howard, whose father, Thomas Howard, had forfeited the title of Duke of Norfolk and had been executed for his involvement in the Ridolfi plot to assassinate Elizabeth I. The dukedom was restored to the family in 1660, following the accession of Charles II.

As the status of the de Warennes and their descendants increased, they became less interested in the town. In the 14th and 15th centuries, prominent local families (including the Sondes and the Goodwyns) were able to buy the leases on some of the lordship lands. One such area was the Deepdene, first mentioned in a court roll of 1399. This woodland was held by several tenants, before being inherited in 1652 by Charles Howard, the fourth son of the 15th Earl of Arundel, in whose family it remained until 1790. The estate was expanded by successive owners, including the Anglo-Dutch banker Thomas Hope and his eldest son Henry Thomas Hope, who commissioned William Atkinson to remodel the main house as a "sumptuous High Renaissance palazzo".

Unlike the neighbouring towns of Guildford and Reigate, Dorking was never granted a Borough Charter and remained under the control of the Lord of the Manor throughout the Middle Ages.^[7] Reforms during the Tudor period reduced the importance of manorial courts and the day-to-day administration of towns such as Dorking became the responsibility of the vestry of the parish church. There was little change in local government structure over the subsequent three centuries, until the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 transferred responsibility for poor relief to the Poor Law Commission, whose local powers were delegated to the newly formed poor law union in 1836. In 1841, the Dorking Union constructed a new workhouse, south of the town centre, designed by William Shearburn. The entrance block still stands and is now part of Dorking Hospital.

A local board of health (LBH) was established in Dorking in 1881 to administer infrastructure including roads, street lighting and drainage. The LBH organised the first regular domestic refuse collection and, by mid-1888, had created a new sewerage system (including a treatment works at Pixham). The Local Government Act 1888 transferred many administrative responsibilities to the newly formed Surrey County Council and was followed by an 1894 Act that created the Dorking Urban District Council (UDC).^[8][9] Initially the offices of the UDC were in South Street,^[8] but in 1931 the Council moved to Pippbrook House, a Gothic Revival country house to the north east of the town centre, which had been designed as a private residence by George Gilbert Scott in 1856.

The Local Government Act 1972 created Mole Valley District Council (MVDC), by combining the UDCs of Dorking and Leatherhead with the majority of the Dorking and Horley Rural District. In 1984, the new council moved into purpose-built offices, designed by Michael Innes, at the east end of the town.

Transport and communications

Following the end of Roman rule in Britain, there appears to have been no systematic planning of transport infrastructure in the local area for over a millennium. During Saxon times, the section of Stane Street between Dorking and Ockley was bypassed by the longer route via Coldharbour and the upper surface of the Roman road was most likely quarried to provide stone for local building projects. Two routes linked the town to London, the first via the Mole crossing at Burford Bridge to Leatherhead and the second, the "Winter Road", climbed the south-facing scarp slope of Box Hill from Boxhurst and ran northeastwards to meet the London-Brighton road at Tadworth.^[10]

The development of Guildford ( to the west) was stimulated by the construction of the Wey Navigation in the 1650s. In contrast, although several schemes were proposed to make the Mole navigable, none were enacted and transport links to Dorking remained poor. As a result, the local economy began to suffer and the town declined through the late 17th and early 18th centuries.^[10]

The turnpike road through Dorking was authorised by the Horsham and Epsom Turnpike Act of 1755. The new turnpike dramatically improved the accessibility of the town from the capital. A mail coach operated return journeys between Dorking and London six days per week and several stagecoaches used the route daily until the mid-19th century. In contrast, the east-west Guildford-Reigate road remained the responsibility of the parishes through which it ran and only minimal improvements were made before the start of the 20th century.^[11]

The first railway line to reach Dorking was the Reading, Guildford and Reigate Railway (RG&RR), authorised by Acts of Parliament in 1846, 1847 and 1849. Dorking station (now ) was opened in 1849 northwest of the town, initially as a temporary terminus for trains from . Local residents had expressed a preference for the station to be sited closer to the town centre at Meadowbank, but since the line passed through a deep cutting at this point it was deemed impractical to provide the necessary freight facilities at this location. Two years later a second station, now known as , was opened on the same line.

The second railway line to serve the town was authorised by Acts of Parliament in 1862 and 1864 and was opened by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway in 1867. A west-south connecting spur to the RG&RR was provided on opening, but was removed around 1900, before being briefly restored between 1941 and 1946 as a wartime resilience measure.^[12]

was provided with extensive goods facilities, a locomotive yard and a turntable (later the site of the car park).[13] It was built with two platforms, but a third was added in 1925, when the railway line was electrified from . The original building was demolished in 1980 and was replaced by a larger structure, designed by Gordon Lavington, which integrated the station with offices for Biwater.

In the late 1920s, improvements were made to the Dorking-Reigate road (now the A25), including the construction of Deepdene Bridge over the River Mole. The bypass road (now the A24) was opened in 1934 following considerable local opposition to the route, which cut through the Deepdene estate.

Commerce and industry

A market at Dorking is first recorded in 1240 and in 1278, the sixth Earl of Surrey, John de Warenne, claimed that it had been held twice weekly since "time out of mind". The early medieval market was probably centred around Pump Corner and between South Street and West Street, but it appears to have moved east to the widest part of the High Street by the early 15th century.^[7]

In the century following the Norman conquest, agricultural activity was focused on the lordship lands, which lay to the north of the Pipp Brook. However, as the Middle Ages progressed, woodland to the south and west of the centre was cleared enabling farms owned by the Goodwyns, Stubbs and Sondes families to expand.^[14] By the start of the Tudor period, there were at least five watermills in Dorking – two at Pixham (one on the Pipp Brook, owned by the Sondes and one on the Mole, owned by the Brownes), two close to the town centre (both owned by the manor) and one at Milton, on the road to Westcott. There may also have been a windmill on Tower Hill.^[15]

The town flourished in Tudor times and, in the 1590s, a market house was built between what is now St Martin's Walk and the White Horse Hotel.^[16] The antiquarian John Aubrey, who visited the town between 1673 and 1692, noted that the weekly market (which took place on Thursdays) was "the greatest... for poultry in England" and noted that "Sussex wheat" was also sold. The free-draining Lower Greensand found in the Dorking area is particularly suited for rearing chickens and the local soils provide grit to assist the birds' digestive systems. The Dorking fowl, which has five claws instead of the normal four, is named after the town. Wine made from the wild cherries that grew in the town was another local speciality. A 'cherry fair' was held in July in the 17th and 18th centuries, and was revived in the 20th century at St Barnabas Church, Ranmore. Aubrey also recorded that an annual fair took place on Ascension Day.^[17]

Chalk and sand were quarried in Dorking until the early 20th century. Chalk was dug from a pit on Ranmore Road and heated in kilns to produce quicklime. In the medieval and early modern periods, the lime was used to fertilise local farm fields, but from the 18th century onwards (and especially after the construction of the turnpike to Epsom in 1755), it was transported to London for use in the construction industry. Sand from the Folkestone Beds was quarried from several sites in the town, including at two pits in Vincent Lane.

Caves and tunnels were also dug in the sandstone under several parts of the town. Many were used as cellars for storing wine bottles, but deeper workings followed seams of silver sand, which was used in glass making. Most of the surviving caves are privately owned and not accessible to the public. A well-known example is the cockpit beneath the former Wheatsheaf Inn in the High Street, in which fighting cocks were set against each other for sport. During the construction of the car park to the south of Sainsbury's supermarket, the builders broke through into a large cavern of unknown date, the walls of which were painted with trompe-l'œil pillars. Unfortunately, in order to complete the car park, it was necessary to fill in the cave with concrete.^[18] Guided tours of the caves in South Street are held on a regular basis and are organised by Dorking Museum.

By the start of the 19th century, increasing mechanisation of agriculture was leading to a local surplus of labour. The wages for unskilled farm workers were decreasing, exacerbated by a fall in produce prices following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Like many towns in the south of England, Dorking was affected by civil unrest among its poorest residents. In November 1830 a riot broke out and a mob of 80 attacked the Red Lion Inn in the High Street. A troop of soldiers from the Life Guards regiment was called in to restore order. In 1831 it was noted that the town (population 4711) had one of the highest rates of poor relief in Surrey.^[19]

In early 1832, the vestry devised a supported scheme to enable young unemployed, unskilled labourers to leave the town to settle in Upper Canada. The cost of the voyage from Portsmouth to Montreal for 61 recipients of poor relief was paid by private donations, however the emigrants also received an allowance for food and clothing from parish funds. Although many were young, single men aged 14–20, a few families also joined the group. Most appear to have settled in the Toronto area, but a few are recorded as living in Kingston, Ontario.^[19]

In 1911, the town was described in the Victoria County History as "almost entirely residential and agricultural, with some lime works on the chalk, though not so extensive as those in neighbouring parishes, a little brick-making, watermills (corn) at Pixham Mill, and timber and saw-mills."^[9]

Residential development

Although the turnpike road through Dorking had been constructed in the 1750s,^[11] the built-up part of the town had changed little by the start of the 19th century. Most of the local professional class and wealthier tradesmen lived along the three main streets (the High Street, West Street and South Street), whilst the often crowded houses of artisans and labourers tended to be in the narrower lanes and alleys. Poor sanitation was still a major problem for the poorer residents and, in 1832, a cholera outbreak was recorded in Ebenezer Place (north of the High Street), where 46 people were crammed into nine cottages.^[20]

Nevertheless, Dorking was beginning to attract more affluent residents, many of whom had accumulated their wealth as businessmen in London. Charles Barclay (a Southwark brewery owner) and the bankers Joseph Denison and Thomas Hope (none of whom had any previous connection with the area) purchased the estates at Bury Hill, Denbies and Deepdene respectively. Higher-status individuals living closer to the town centre included William Crawford, the City of London MP, and Jane Leslie, the Dowager Countess of Rothes.^[20] Although the incoming landowners played little part in local commerce, they appear to have been the driving force behind schemes to pave streets and to provide gas lighting (both paid for by public subscription).

Rose Hill, the first planned residential estate in Dorking, was developed by William Newland, a wealthy Guildford surgeon, who also had interests in the Wey and Arun Canal. Newland purchased the "Great House" on Butter Hill and the surrounding of land in 1831, which he divided into plots for 24 houses, arranged around a central paddock, known as "The Oval". The Great House was divided into two separate dwellings (Butter Hill House and Rose Hill House), adjacent to which a mock-Tudor arch was erected over the main carriageway entrance from South Street. Initially sales were slow, but the proposals for the building of the railway line from Redhill stimulated interest in the development in the late 1840s. Although most of the purchasers were private individuals (the majority of whom had been born outside of the local area), the Dorking Society of Friends bought one of the plots in 1845 for the construction of a meeting house.^[20] By 1861 the estate was complete.^[20]

The arrival of the railway in 1849 catalysed the expansion of the town to the south and west. Between 1850 and 1870, the National Freehold Land Society was responsible for housing developments in Arundel and Howard Roads, as well as around Tower Hill. Poorer quality houses were built along Falkland and Hampstead Roads (many of which were replaced in the 1960s and 1970s). Holloway Farm was sold in 1870 and the first houses in Knoll, Roman and Ridgeway Roads were constructed before 1880. Houses in Cliftonville (named after its promoter, Joseph Clift, a local chemist) were also built around the same time. To the north of the High Street, smaller semi-detached and terraced houses were constructed in the 1890s for artisans in Rothes Road, Ansell Road, Wathen Road, Hart Road and Jubilee Terrace.^[21]

No significant residential expansion took place in Dorking in the first two decades of the 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, the breakup of the Deepdene and Pippbrook estates (and the electrification of the railway line from Leatherhead) stimulated housebuilding to the north and east of the town, including Deepdene Vale and Deepdene Park. The sale of part of Bradley Farm (part of the Denbies estate) in the 1930s, enabled the building of Ashcombe, Keppel and Calvert Roads. The Dorking UDC intended to build housing on the rest of the farm (now Denbies Wine Estate), however their plans were interrupted by the outbreak of war and were ultimately prevented by the creation of the Metropolitan Green Belt.^[22]

The first council housing was built in Dorking by the UDC in Nower Road in 1920 and similar developments took place in Marlborough and Beresford Roads later the same decade. In 1936, the council obtained a Slum Clearance Order to demolish 81 properties in Church Street, North Street, Cotmandene and the surrounding areas. In total 217 residents were displaced, many of whom were rehoused by the UDC in the Fraser Gardens estate, designed by the architect George Grey Wornum. The Chart Downs estate to the southeast of the town was built between 1948 and 1952.^[23][24]

Controversially, in the late 1950s and 1960s, Dorking UDC constructed the Goodwyns estate on land compulsorily purchased from Howard Martineau, a major local benefactor to the town. The initial designs were by Clifford Culpin and the project was subsequently developed by William Ryder, who was responsible for the erection of the Wenlock Edge and Linden Lea tower blocks.^[23] Both the design of the buildings and the layout of the estate were praised in the early 1970s by architectural historians Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner.

Religion

The first mention of a church at Dorking occurs in Domesday Book of 1086.^[25] In around 1140, Isabel de Warenne, the widow of the second Earl of Surrey, granted the church and a tithe of the rents from the manor to Lewes Priory in Sussex. In the 1190s, the tithe was converted to a pension of £6, which was paid annually to the Priory until at least 1291. The Priory also acquired the right to appoint the town's priest.

It is unclear where in the town the Domesday church was located. It appears to have been replaced at some point during the 12th century (possibly by Isabel de Warenne) by a large cruciform building with a central tower.^[26] A rededication from St Mary to St Martin may have taken place around the same time.^[27] In 1334 the church was granted to the Priory of the Holy Cross in Reigate. In the late 14th century a clerestory and two side aisles were added to the nave.

The so-called Intermediate Church was constructed in 1835–1837.^[2] It had a square tower, topped with an octagonal spire, and could seat around 1800 worshippers. Its floor level was approximately higher than that of the church it replaced, allowing the base of the medieval nave to become a crypt. In 1868–1877, the Intermediate Church was rebuilt into the present St Martin's Church, designed in the Decorated Gothic style by the architect Henry Woodyer. The spire of the current church was dedicated as a memorial to Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (who had died in 1873) and in 1905–1911 the Lady chapel was added.^[28]

In order to accommodate the growing population in the south of the town, a second Anglican church, St Paul's, was opened in 1857 on land donated by Henry Thomas Hope. Designed by the architect, Benjamin Ferrey, it was built of Bath stone in the Decorated Geometric style. A daughter church to St Martin's, designed by Edwin Lutyens and dedicated to St Mary, was opened at Pixham in 1903.

In the two centuries following the passing of the 1558 Act of Uniformity, many inhabitants of Dorking embraced more extreme forms of protestantism and by 1676, the parish (which had a total population of around 1500) contained 200 nonconformists. In 1620, six residents, including Williams Mullins (a cobbler) and his daughter Priscilla, joined the Mayflower to establish a Separatist colony in the New World. During the Civil War, the townsfolk supported the Parliamentarians, but although some of Oliver Cromwell's soldiers were billeted in Dorking, no fighting took place nearby.

Christopher Feake, the Fifth Monarchist and independent minister, lived in the town (allegedly under a false identity) following The Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. He may have incited some of the more radical residents to violence.^[29] Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe and a committed Presbyterian throughout his life, was educated in Dorking for five years, . He attended a school in Pixham Lane run by Revd James Fisher a non-conformist who had been ejected as Rector of Fetcham.^[30] In 1662 Fisher was involved in establishing Dorking Congregational Church, which by the 1690s was meeting in a barn on Butter Hill in South Street. The present United Reformed Church in West Street, designed by the architect William Hopperton, was built for the group by William Shearburn in 1834.

John Wesley visited Dorking a total of nineteen times between 1764 and 1789. He opened a Methodist chapel in the town in 1777. A new church with a spire was built in South Street in 1900, however this building was sold and demolished in 1974. Since 1973, Dorking Methodists have held services at St Martin's.

Although England had become a predominantly Protestant country during the Reformation, the families of the Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk remained Catholic.^[31] The first Catholic church in Dorking was built in the early 1870s on land owned by the fifteenth Duke of Norfolk, Henry Fitzalan-Howard and was rebuilt into the present St Joseph's Church in the mid-1890s, by the architect Frederick Walters.

A mosque was established in Hart Road in 2006. From 1984 the building had been used as a meeting room for the Plymouth Brethren and was a synagogue for a time, before being acquired by the Dorking Muslim Community Association.

Dorking in the World Wars

In late 1914, Dorking became a garrison town. Empty houses were requisitioned and from January 1915 around 4000 troops were accommodated including those from the London Scottish regiment, the Civil Service Rifles and the Queen's Westminster Rifles.^[32] Training took place in the fields to the west and north west of the town. Many local residents were recruited to the Surrey Yeomanry, which (until mid-1915) was stationed at Deepdene House and at the Public Hall in West Street. Although he was aged over 40 at the start of the war, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps, one unit of which was based in the town.^[33]

Of the many soldiers from Dorking who died during World War I, the youngest was Valentine Joe Strudwick. He was born in Falkland Road on 14 February 1900 and was educated at St Paul's School. He enlisted in 1915 after concealing his true age and joined the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort's Own). A year later, in January 1916 at the age of 15 years 11 months, he was killed in action at Boezinge, near Ypres. He is buried at Essex Farm Cemetery in Belgium.

Empty houses in the town also provided billets for soldiers during World War II and over 3000 school children were evacuated to the Dorking area in September 1939. A local refugee committee (led by Vaughan Williams and the novelist E. M. Forster) was established to find accommodation for refugees fleeing Nazi persecution and also to support long-resident German and Czech nationals in applications to Home Office tribunals to remain at liberty in the UK.

At the start of the war, the fortified GHQ Line B was constructed directly to the north of Dorking. This defensive line ran along the North Downs from Farnham via Guildford, before following the River Mole to Horley. The banks of the Mole were fortified with anti-tank obstacles, pillboxes and gun emplacements and an anti-tank ditch was dug from west to east across Bradley Farm (now Denbies Wine Estate). The town itself was a Class "A" nodal point and from August 1940 the 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade (part of the VII Corps) was assigned to its defence. Pippbrook House (the then offices of the Dorking UDC) became a mobilisation centre and housed an ARP post as well as the local branch of the Women's Voluntary Service.^[34]

Over the course of the war, 77 high-explosive bombs and 60 incendiaries were dropped by the Luftwaffe, however only one incident (in October 1940) resulted in fatalities in the town.^[35]

After the war, at least two Covenanter tanks were buried at Bradley Farm. The first was excavated and restored in 1977 and is now on display at The Tank Museum at Bovington in Dorset. A second was excavated in 2017 for the archaeology programme WW2 Treasure Hunters, presented by the musician Suggs on the TV channel HISTORY. The tank was displayed at the vineyard for six months, before being removed for restoration.