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Redhill is a town in the borough of Reigate and Banstead within the county of Surrey, England. The town, which adjoins the town of Reigate to the west, is due south of Croydon in Greater London, and is part of the London commuter belt. The town is also the post town, entertainment and commercial area of three adjoining communities : Merstham, Earlswood and Whitebushes, as well as of two small rural villages to the east in the Tandridge District, Bletchingley and Nutfield. The town is situated on the junction of the north–south A23 (London to Brighton) road, and the east–west A25 road which runs from Guildford through to Sevenoaks. It is also on the railway junction, served by Redhill railway station, of the Brighton Main Line, North-Downs line, and Redhill-Tonbridge line. [edit] History
A settlement was formed here in part of the rural parishes of Reigate Foreign and Merstham when a turnpike road was built in 1818. The London-Brighton road passed through the Merstham Gap in the North Downs, and the Redhill Gap in the Greensand Ridge. The settlement was originally known as "Warwick Town" after Warwick Road, and became known as Redhill when the post office moved from Red Hill Common in the south-west of the town in 1856.[1] A major factor in the development of the town was the coming of the railways. The gap through the Greensand Ridge at Redhill was a major advantage for routing a railway from London to Brighton. A railway station opened in Redhill on 12 July 1841, after the London and Brighton Railway created a rail line by excavating the first of two rail tunnels under the North Downs at Merstham. Another railway station at Redhill followed on 26 May 1842, located on the South Eastern Railway's London to Dover to line, which branched off the original line south of the Merstham tunnel. Then on 15 April 1844 both these two stations were closed, as a new combined station was opened at the junction that same day, serving both railways, at the site of the present station. In 1849 a branch line to Reigate was added. St John the Evangelist, built-in 1843, was the first of Redhill's three Anglican parish churches. The parish originally stretched from Gatton in the north to Sidlow in the south.
Richard Carrington, an amateur astronomer, moved to Redhill in 1852, and built a house and observatory. Dome Way, where one of Redhill's two tower block stands, is named after it. The site suited an isolated observatory, being on a spur of high ground surrounded by lower fields and marsh. Here in 1859 he made astronomical observations that first corroborated the existence of solar flares as well as their electrical influence upon the Earth and its aurorae. In 1863 he published records of sunspot observations that first demonstrated differential rotation in the Sun. In 1865 ill health prompted him to sell his house and move to Churt, Surrey. In 1855, a large psychiatric hospital complete with well-trimmed grounds, was opened in Earlswood, south of Redhill. Prince Albert had laid the first stone in 1853.[2] One inmate James Henry Pullen (1835–1916) was an autistic savant. He was a brilliant craftsman and artist whose work was accepted by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Some of Pullen's ship models, designs and artwork used to be on display at the town's Belfry Shopping Centre, but have now been moved to the Langdon Down Museum in Teddington. The asylum was renamed The Royal Earlswood Institution for Mental Defectives in June 1926, and more recently was simply named the Royal Earlswood Hospital. In 1941, the hospital became home to two of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's cousins, Katherine Bowes-Lyon and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon, both of whom had learning difficulties. The hospital closed in March 1997 following the introduction of Care in the Community. The buildings were then converted to residential apartments and the site is now known as Royal Earlswood Park.[3] In 1868 Alfred Nobel demonstrated dynamite for the first time at a Merstham quarry, two miles north of Redhill. In 1884, a large residential school for children, called St Anne's School, was opened by the St Anne's Society (a city of London charity) to accommodate 400 boys and girls. Built on a rise to the east of the town, and overlooking the railway station and the countryside around, it had a swimming bath, a gymnasium, tennis courts (asphalted and grassed), an external recreation ground as well as covered playgrounds, 21 pianos, a clock turret, a chapel and a dining room both capable of seating 600, a bakery, a steam laundry, an infirmary, an isolation hospital, and extensive gardens and orchards, all in property of 17½ acres. The school closed in 1919 after funding difficulties. In 1926 the Foundling Hospital used the site to house its own school, until moving elsewhere in 1935. Later, Surrey County Council used St Anne's as a Home for the Aged. In 1973 it became a home for the homeless, but closed in 1975 after being damaged by fire, and was demolished in 1987, to be replaced by housing. The construction, to the east of Redhill, of the M23 motorway between 1972 and 1975 reduced north–south traffic through the town. [edit] Research Tips
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