Template:Wp-Weybridge-History

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Early history

The earliest evidence of human occupation in Weybridge is from the Bronze Age. A number of weapons, including socketed axe heads, a rapier, and a palstave, were retrieved from the River Wey close to the Wey Bridge in 1912. At least fifty cinerary urns dating from the same period were found in the area in the 19th and early 20th centuries.^[1] Three of the urns were recovered from a barrow during building work on the Silvermere estate (south of St George's Hill) and were found to contain bones and charcoal.

A copper-alloy bucket, now held by the British Museum, was discovered during the construction of the Brooklands racetrack in 1907. It is thought to have originated in northern Italy in the late Bronze or early Iron Age and similar vessels have been found in Austria, Belgium and Germany. During the Iron Age, there was a fort on St George's Hill. It covered an area of around and was protected by a rampart and ditch. Most traces of the fort were destroyed by housebuilding in the first half of the 20th century.^[2] Remains of a roundhouse and archaeological evidence of iron workings were discovered in the triangle of land between the railway lines in 1981.

There is not thought to have been a significant Roman presence in Weybridge, but 68 bronze coins of the late 3rd and early 4th centuries were found at Brooklands in 1907. Much of the hoard, which included nummi from the reigns of Diocletian (284–305 CE), Maximian (286–305), Constantius I (305–306) and Galerius (305–311), was donated to the British Museum.

Governance

There are three separate entries for Weybridge in Domesday Book. The first area of land described was held by Bishop Odo of Bayeux as tenant-in-chief and Herfrid of Throwley as lesser tenant. It included of meadow and woodland for five swine with a value of £5 per annum. The other two entries list areas belonging to Chertsey Abbey, totalling a further 16 acres of meadow, land for four swine and ploughland for 1½ plough teams. None of the entries records a church or a mill in the settlement.^[3]

There are only sporadic surviving references to Weybridge in the following centuries. A chapel is mentioned in a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander III in 1176 and a later document shows that Chertsey Abbey had sold the advowson to Newark Priory by 1200. By 1262, the Priory had obtained a license that confirmed its rights to appoint a priest, to hold church property and to collect tithes from the local residents. In 1284 the village was held by Geoffrey de Lucy as a lesser tenant of Chertsey Abbey.

Following the dissolution of the monasteries, Weybridge was held by the Rede family for three years, before passing to the Crown in 1537. In June of the same year, Henry VIII began to construct Oatlands Palace by expanding an existing late-medieval manor house located to the north of the town centre. Some of the stone used in the construction of the foundations was taken from the demolition of Chertsey Abbey. Henry had intended that the palace would become the residence of his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, but the marriage was annulled after six months.^[4] The king married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, at Oatlands, but rarely visited thereafter. Following Henry's death the palace remained a possession of the Crown until the Commonwealth, when the contents were sold and the buildings demolished. Only a side entrance gate and adjoining sections of walls, which date from , remain.^[5]

Reforms during the Tudor period reduced the importance of manorial courts and the day-to-day administration of towns such as Weybridge became the responsibility of the vestry of the parish church. The Weybridge vestry oversaw the distribution of poor relief and the maintenance of local roads. In the 1840s, responsibility for poor relief was transferred to the Chertsey Board of Guardians of the Poor. Local drainage and highways boards were established in the 1860s and in the 1870s a burial board was created to purchase land for new cemeteries.

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 Weybridge Urban District Council (UDC). Initially the council met at the National school, but moved to Aberdeen House at the junction of High Street and Baker Street in 1908. As a result of the Local Government Act 1929, the UDCs of Weybridge and Walton were combined in 1932. The unified council was merged with the Esher UDC to form Elmbridge Borough Council in 1974.^[6]

Transport and communications

The name "Weybridge" suggests that there has been a bridge over the River Wey in the area since Anglo-Saxon times. During the Elizabethan period, the bridge was a wooden structure, long and wide and was maintained by Elizabeth I in her capacity as lord of the manor. The structure was rebuilt in 1808 on 13 wooden arches. The present bridge dates from 1865 and is constructed from brick, iron and stone.^[7] A second bridge, downstream of the first, was completed in 1945 and now carries the A317.^[7]

Both the Thames and the Wey have been used for transport since ancient times. By the 14th century, there was a wharf at Weybridge used for shipment of timber^[7] and, in 1463, Thomas Warner was given permission to build a dock on his land, which became known as the "Crown Wharf". In 1537, materials for the construction of Oatlands Palace were transported to Weybridge by river.^[7] The River Wey Navigation was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1651. Twelve locks (including two flood locks) and of new cuts were constructed between the Thames and Guildford. Thames Lock was rebuilt in concrete in the 1930s, but like all the locks on the Wey, it was originally turf sided.

The earliest locks on the upper Thames were built in the 17th century, following the establishment of the Oxford-Burcot Commission. However, efforts to improve the stretch of the river through Weybridge did not start until the following century. In 1789, a flash lock was installed at Sunbury, but was replaced by a pound lock in 1812. Shepperton Lock opened the following year. The construction of the locks regulated the flow of the river and increased its depth, facilitating navigation and maintaining an adequate head of water to power mills.

The River Thames through Weybridge was further improved when the Desborough Cut was opened in 1935. The navigable channel bypasses a meander and was primarily designed to increase the flood capacity of the river. Construction of the cut created the Desborough Island, the entirety of which is in Weybridge.^[8]

The London and Southampton Railway Company opened the station at Weybridge in May 1838. Initially the station had two platforms and was in a deep cutting between St George's Hill and Weybridge Heath. The typical journey time to London was around an hour and, by 1841, a mail train was stopping daily. A junction was created to the west of the station in 1848, when the line to was constructed.^[7] Additional tracks on the main line through the station were added in 1885 and 1902. The lines through the station were electrified in 1907, although steam locomotives continued to haul long-distance express services through Weybridge until 1967.^[7] The goods yard was closed in 1964 and signal boxes in the local area were shut in March 1970, when control of the lines was transferred to Surbiton Panel Box. An arson attack in January 1987, resulted in the destruction of the 1904 station building.

A manual telephone exchange opened in Weybridge in 1912 and was replaced in 1954 by an automated facility in Heath Road, which had sufficient capacity for 2500 lines.

Residential development

Although Weybridge was still only a small village in the early 18th century, a high proportion of the residents were members of the aristocracy. In 1724, the rector noted that it was increasingly becoming a place for "gentile retirement" and recorded eighteen upper class families living in the area. The settlement was dominated by two estates: Portmore Park, to the north west of the centre, was the seat of the Colyear family, the Earls of Portmore; Oatlands Park, to the east, had been built on the former deer park belonging to Oatlands Palace and was purchased by Prince Frederick, the Duke of York and Albany, in 1790.

Towards the end of the 18th century, Weybridge was beginning to expand beyond its medieval footprint. In 1800, Weybridge Heath, an area of common land to the south east of the village centre, was enclosed. The Act of Inclosure enabled the Duke of York to purchase almost the whole of St George's Hill and to add it to the Oatlands Estate. Four years later, Hanger Hill, one of the roads running across the heath, was laid out and plots alongside it were sold for housebuilding.

The Duke of York sold Oatlands Park in 1824, but the new owner, Edward Hughes Ball Hughes, was forced to lease the house and the surrounding to Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere, three years later. The remainder of the Oatlands estate was sold in stages between 1828 and 1846. Housebuilding began almost as soon as the land was released, stimulated in part by the opening of Weybridge railway station in 1838. The majority of the houses in Oatlands village were completed by 1859. Oatlands Park House was sold to the developer W. G. Tarrant in 1909.^[9]

The west side of Weybridge High Street was developed when the Portmore Park estate was broken up in 1880s. The estate, approximately covering the area between the High Street and the River Wey, had been established by Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk in the 1670s. It was purchased by the Locke King family in 1861, who sold the land for residential development in the final decades of the 19th century.

St George's Hill was developed by W. G. Tarrant, who bought of land from the Edgerton family in 1911. A year later he began the construction of the Tennis and Golf Clubs and published a series of promotions in the Surrey Herald to advertise the houses that he intended to build. Strict covenants were imposed on the development and the minimum size of each property was fixed as . Construction was interrupted by the First World War, but resumed shortly afterwards, continuing until the start of the Great Depression in the late 1920s.

The first council housing in the town was built by the Weybridge UDC between 1923 and 1927, when 160 houses were constructed on the Old Palace Gardens estate. Following the end of the Second World War, the Weybridge and Walton UDC built over 1000 houses in the two towns.

Brooklands

Brooklands, the first purpose-built motor-racing circuit in the world, opened in 1907. Constructed on farmland to the south of Weybridge, the concrete track was designed by Capel Lofft Holden and had a total length of . The first races for motorcars took place in July 1907 and for motorcycles in February the following year. Both attracted a large number of entrants from across Europe^[10] and by 1911, the British Automobile Racing Club had established a programme of regular race meetings.

Motor racing ceased for the duration of the First World War and did not resume until 1920. The first two British Grands Prix took place at the circuit in 1926 and 1927. The JCC 200 Mile race also took place at the circuit from 1921 to 1928, and again in 1938. In the early 1930s, Malcolm Campbell developed the Campbell-Railton Blue Bird, his final land speed record car, at Brooklands. Racing ceased for a second time at the outbreak of the Second World War.

Brooklands also played a key role in the development of the British aeronautical industry. In 1907, the aviation pioneer, A. V. Roe, performed the first flight by a British-built aeroplane at the circuit shortly after it opened in 1907. By 1912, several flying schools had been established at Brooklands and the Vickers company began manufacturing aircraft in 1915. The Sopwith Camel was among several aircraft developed at Brooklands during the First World War.

Aircraft manufacture continued during the 1920s and 1930s. Among those working at the Vickers factory was Barnes Wallis, who was involved in designing the Wellesley and the Wellington bombers. The Hawker Aircraft company opened a factory at Brooklands in 1935 and began building prototypes of the Hurricane fighter. Aircraft manufacture intensified during the Second World War and new factories, warehouses and hangars were rapidly built, encroaching onto the racing circuit. The track was breached near Byfleet to improve access for deliveries to the site and a large workshop was cut into the concrete at the north end. Following the end of hostilities in 1945, the track was considered to be in such poor condition that a resumption of motor racing was ruled impossible.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, the manufacturers based at Brooklands started to transition towards the production of civilian airliners. Vickers began producing the VC series of aircraft with the VC1 Viking in 1945. The VC10 was launched in 1964, by which point the company had been nationalised as the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Increasingly BAC began to refocus manufacturing at Brooklands to the production of aircraft parts, with final assembly elsewhere. Components of the British-built Concordes were manufactured at the site in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1977, BAC merged with Hawker-Siddeley to form British Aerospace^[11] and the combined entity began to run down the Brooklands site. Aerospace manufacturing finally ceased in Weybridge in 1988.

Commerce and industry

Although no mill is mentioned in the Weybridge entries in the Domesday book, watermills appear to have played an important role in the economy of the area since at least the early modern period. The earliest record of a mill in the town is from 1693, when a paper mill was built at the confluence of the Wey and Thames.

Ironstone was quarried from Weybridge Heath and St George's Hill, although the dates of these workings are uncertain.^[12][13] In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, iron was smelted at a mill on Whittet's Ait and there is reference to iron and steel manufacture taking place at two mills in Byfleet in 1760. The Whittet's Ait mill appears to have been used as a "Brass Wire Mill" in the 1760s and the machinery required for iron smelting had been fitted by 1769.^[14]

A mill for grinding malt was built on the Wey upstream of Thames Lock in around 1819, but had fallen into disrepair by 1830. In 1842 a new mill for extracting vegetable oil from seeds was built on the same site^[14] and the Whittet's Ait mill was also being used for the same purpose by the 1930s. In the 1970s, Whittet's Ait was the site of a solvent refinery.

For much of the 20th century, Weybridge was a centre for the aerospace industry. The Lang Propeller Works was established on Whittet's Ait in 1913^[15] and, in 1915, the Vickers company took over the Itala motor works at Brooklands. The circuit was also the base for several other aircraft manufacturers including Avro, Sopwith and Blériot.

As of 2021, the European headquarters of Sony and the UK headquarters of Procter & Gamble are at Brooklands.

Weybridge in the world wars

At the start of the First World War, Weybridge became a training base for the 244 Motorised Transport Company, an army unit of mechanics and drivers operating as part of the 19th Divisional Supply Column. The company served throughout the war in the Gallipoli and Balkans campaigns. There were two military hospitals in Oatlands. Barnham Lodge opened as a 35-bed hospital in 1915 and, by 1917, a small operating theatre was in use and the facility was being run by the British Red Cross. Oatlands Park Hotel was requisitioned in 1916 as a hospital for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and was primarily used to treat "medical & tuberculosis cases and limbless men".

Ethel Locke King, the chair of the Chertsey branch of the Red Cross, was instrumental in establishing 15 hospitals in the local area during the First World War. She also organised a rest station for troops at Weybridge railway station.^[16] In January 1918, Locke King became a Dame Commander of the British Empire.^[17]

The presence of the Vickers aircraft factory made Weybridge an obvious target for enemy bombing during the Second World War. The defence of the town was coordinated by the 3rd Surrey Battalion of the Home Guard and five platoons of the C company were stationed at Brooklands. The local civil defence headquarters were established at the UDC offices in Aberdeen House and the council built a large air raid shelter at the Churchfields Recreation Ground. Serious bombing began in the local area in August 1940 and by December of that year 97 residents had lost their lives and 1300 houses had been damaged.^[18]

A devastating air raid took place on the Vickers plant in September 1940, when 83 people were killed. A bomb landed on the floor of the factory, but failed to explode. Five men of the Royal Canadian Engineers successfully removed the bomb from the building before it exploded. Lieutenant John Patton was subsequently awarded the George Cross for his role in the incident. Later in the war, 19 V-1 flying bombs landed in the Weybridge and Walton area.^[18]