Place:Sunbury on Thames, Surrey, England

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Sunbury-on-Thames (or commonly Sunbury) is a suburban town on the north bank of the River Thames in the Borough of Spelthorne, Surrey, centred southwest of central London. Historically part of the county of Middlesex, in 1965 Sunbury and other surrounding towns were initially intended to form part of the newly created county of Greater London but were instead transferred to Surrey. Sunbury adjoins Feltham to the north, Hampton to the east, Ashford to the northwest and Shepperton to the southwest. Walton-on-Thames is to the south, on the opposite bank of the Thames.

The town has two main focal points: Lower Sunbury (known locally as Sunbury Village) is the older part, adjoining the river. Sunbury Common (known locally as Sunbury Cross) is to the north and surrounds the railway station and the London end of the M3 motorway. Lower Sunbury contains most of the town's parks, pubs and listed buildings, whereas Sunbury Common is more urban and includes offices and hotels. Lower Sunbury holds an annual fair and regatta each August.

Sunbury railway station is on the Shepperton branch line. Trains to and from London Waterloo are operated by South Western Railway.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The earliest evidence of human settlement in Sunbury has been the discovery of Bronze Age funerary urns dating from the 10th century BCE. There is an important scheduled monument by Rooksmead Road, a prehistoric bowl barrow, known as Cloven Barrow, on low-lying ground that was part of the flood plain of the Thames, now around 1 km to the south.^[1] It has a circular mound approximately 14 m in diameter and 2.5 m high, surrounded by a ditch from which material used to build it was excavated.^[1] The ditch has become infilled over the years and survives as a buried feature up to 2 m wide. The monument has been partly disturbed by modern gardening activities, and by the construction of a greenhouse on its western side.^[1] Cloven Barrow (Old English Clofenan Beorh, or the 'barrow with a cleft') was mentioned in an Anglo-Saxon document, known as the Sunbury Charter, which has been dated to around AD 962.

Many years later the arrival of Huguenot refugees gave the name to French Street.

The place-name 'Sunbury' is first attested in one of the many Anglo-Saxon charters, one of to 962, where it appears as Sunnanbyrg. Another charter of 962 lists it as Sunnanbyrig. Sunbury appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Sunneberie. The name means 'Sunna's burgh or fortification'. The same first name is found in Sonning in Berkshire.

Sunbury's Domesday assets were: seven hides. It had five ploughs, meadow for six ploughs, and cattle pasture. It had about 22 households, including one priest and included the manor of Kempton, Kynaston, Chennes[-ton]/[-tone], Kenton or Kenyngton, listed separately. The manor rendered £6 per year to its feudal system overlords. That of Kempton rendered £4.

Lower Sunbury presented for two centuries a mainly rural and quite gentrified village as still visible in many conserved buildings and structures, see Landmarks. Of particular note are the wealth and community tie of its parish church as well as many ornate and unusual houses and mansions (or mansion remains). The oldest and most extravagant homes are those from the Georgian era: throughout and for three decades after the 18th century, the time when the body of Sunbury's oldest church dates to – many of those on large plots of land have been demolished and subdivided.

Gilbert White described Sunbury, in The Natural History of Selborne, letter , 4 November 1767 as "one of those pleasant villages lying on the Thames, near Hampton Court".

In 1889 a group of music hall stars met in the Magpie Hotel in Lower Sunbury to form the Grand Order of Water Rats. The pub-restaurant it has become was named after the horse that one of the entertainers owned, whilst the Grand Order was named because Magpie – a trotting pony owned by Richard Thornton, music hall owner – had been described as a drowned water rat. The Three Fishes in Green Street is one of the oldest pubs in Surrey, an officially protected building of the late 16th century.

In the twentieth century, kennels near Sunbury Cross in the town were used for keeping greyhounds for racing at the disbanded stadiums of Wandsworth, Charlton and Park Royal.

Sunbury-on-Thames is historically in Middlesex. Under the Local Government Act 1888 county councils were established the following year, with Sunbury governed by the new Middlesex County Council. This was further refined by the creation of Sunbury-on-Thames Urban District in 1894. In 1965, all but three districts of Middlesex were absorbed into Greater London; Sunbury was one of these exceptions. The area of Sunbury's Urban District has since been in the county of Surrey as to its upper tier of local government.^[2] Royal Mail ignored the change in 1965 and the former postal county is Middlesex. Mention of any county in postal addresses is considered dated but widely practised in some areas.^[3] In 1974 the urban district was abolished and it has since formed part of the borough of Spelthorne.

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