![Deepcut Bridge, Basingstoke Canal - geograph](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Deepcut_Bridge%2C_Basingstoke_Canal_-_geograph.org.uk_-_22171.jpg)
Deepcut is a village in the Borough of
Surrey Heath
Surrey Heath is a local government district with borough status in Surrey, England. Its council is based in Camberley. Much of the area is within the Metropolitan Green Belt.
History
The district was formed on 1 April 1974 under the Local ...
in
Surrey
Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...
, England, approximately southwest of
central London
Central London is the innermost part of London, in England, spanning several boroughs. Over time, a number of definitions have been used to define the scope of Central London for statistics, urban planning and local government. Its characteris ...
. The nearest towns are
Camberley
Camberley is a town in the Borough of Surrey Heath in Surrey, England, approximately south-west of Central London. The town is in the far west of the county, close to the borders of Hampshire and Berkshire. Once part of Windsor Forest, Cambe ...
, Surrey ( to the north) and
Farnborough Farnborough may refer to:
Australia
* Farnborough, Queensland, a locality in the Shire of Livingstone
United Kingdom
* Farnborough, Hampshire, a town in the Rushmoor district of Hampshire, England
** Farnborough (Main) railway station, a railw ...
,
Hampshire
Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English citi ...
(3 mi to the west). Deepcut is named after the excavations required for the building of the
Basingstoke Canal
The Basingstoke Canal is an English canal, completed in 1794, built to connect Basingstoke with the River Thames at Weybridge via the Wey Navigation.
From Basingstoke, the canal passes through or near Greywell, North Warnborough, Odiham, Dogm ...
during the 1790s, although the village dates primarily from the early 20th century.
Deepcut has been the location of the
Princess Royal Barracks and its predecessors since 1906.
The nearest railway stations are
Frimley
Frimley is a town in the Borough of Surrey Heath in Surrey, England, approximately southwest of central London. The town is of Saxon origin, although it is not listed in Domesday Book of 1086.
Train services to Frimley (on the line betwe ...
on the line between
Ascot and
Aldershot
Aldershot () is a town in Hampshire, England. It lies on heathland in the extreme northeast corner of the county, southwest of London. The area is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council. The town has a population of 37,131, while the Alders ...
,
Farnborough North on the
North Downs Line
The North Downs Line is a passenger-train line connecting Reading, on the Great Western Main Line, to Redhill and , along the Brighton Main Line, linking many centres of population in that part of the North Downs which it traverses en route.
...
and
Farnborough (Main) on the
South West Main Line
The South West Main Line (SWML) is a 143-mile (230 km) major railway line between Waterloo station in central London and Weymouth on the south coast of England. A predominantly passenger line, it serves many commuter areas including south we ...
.
History
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...
flints have been found in the drift gravels on the hills, and a few neolithic implements in old Frimley parish generically. On the crest on which the community sits, near the southern end of Chobham Ridges, is a very large round barrow called Round Butt; south of it Mainstone Hill probably preserves the name of the Standing Stone, which formed a boundary mark of
Chobham
Chobham is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Surrey Heath in Surrey, England.
The village has a small high street area, specialising in traditional trades and motor trades. The River Bourne and its northern tributary, the Hale, ...
in the 12th century
Chertsey charter.
William Stukeley
William Stukeley (7 November 1687 – 3 March 1765) was an English antiquarian, physician and Anglican clergyman. A significant influence on the later development of archaeology, he pioneered the scholarly investigation of the prehistoric ...
's ''Itinerarium Curiosum'' records a Roman
urn
An urn is a vase, often with a cover, with a typically narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footed pedestal. Describing a vessel as an "urn", as opposed to a vase or other terms, generally reflects its use rather than any particular shape or ...
and coins as found here.
[
Deepcut is so named as the Basingstoke Canal was constructed through the area in a deep cutting below ground level, in the 18th Century.
Deepcut was part of the parish of ]Ash
Ash or ashes are the solid remnants of fires. Specifically, ''ash'' refers to all non-aqueous, non- gaseous residues that remain after something burns. In analytical chemistry, to analyse the mineral and metal content of chemical samples, ash ...
until 1866, when Frimley
Frimley is a town in the Borough of Surrey Heath in Surrey, England, approximately southwest of central London. The town is of Saxon origin, although it is not listed in Domesday Book of 1086.
Train services to Frimley (on the line betwe ...
gained its own civil and ecclesiastical parish
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish priest ...
es. Due to non-agricultural soil and undulating landscape leading to little transport infrastructure few people lived here. The parish provided the traditional community structures of church, particularly vestry
A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquiall ...
, and the increasingly redundant rights and functions of manors. Frimley and Ash manors were among the major landholdings whose owners could acquire the common land
Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect Wood fuel, wood, or to cut turf for fuel.
A person ...
covering almost the entire area in 1801 and 1826.[
In 1537 the abbey granted Ash with its other lands to ]Henry VIII
Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...
. Edward VI of England
Edward VI (12 October 1537 – 6 July 1553) was King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death in 1553. He was crowned on 20 February 1547 at the age of nine. Edward was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour and the first En ...
, however, shortly after his accession granted it to Winchester College
Winchester College is a public school (fee-charging independent day and boarding school) in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of the ...
, which held the adjoining lands to the south, Ash Manor, in 1911.[
Deepcut from 1894 was in the administrative area ]Frimley and Camberley Urban District
Frimley and Camberley was an urban district in Surrey, England from 1894 to 1974.
Area
Frimley and Camberley consisted of the villages of Frimley, Mytchett, Frimley Green, nascent town of Camberley and the 20th century military community of Frim ...
until the establishment of Surrey Heath
Surrey Heath is a local government district with borough status in Surrey, England. Its council is based in Camberley. Much of the area is within the Metropolitan Green Belt.
History
The district was formed on 1 April 1974 under the Local ...
in 1974. Blackdown camp, which became the Deepcut barracks was established by the Royal Engineers
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...
in late 1903 to accommodate artillery and infantry, centred on Winchester House, renamed Blackdown House when it was bought from the Pain family of Frimley Green by the War Office for military use.
The Victoria County History
The Victoria History of the Counties of England, commonly known as the Victoria County History or the VCH, is an English history project which began in 1899 with the aim of creating an encyclopaedic history of each of the historic counties of En ...
(1911) provides an overview of all parts of the country and of Frimley only surrounding features of the parish gained a mention, including the prehistoric artefacts above:
Economy
Deepcut is a major training base of the British army
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
employing 441 persons at the time of the 2011 census. Its trainee-level and logistics military community accounts for 31.4% of the engaged workforce.
The only other sectors of employment in 2001 with more than 100 workers were ''Wholesale and Retail Trade; Repair of Motor Vehicles and Motor Cycles'' and ''Human Health and Social Work and Activities''.[
]
Village hall
The Deepcut Village Centre is the main community building. It hosts a number of local voluntary community groups and exercise classes.
Arts and Entertainment
The greatest amount of time at the village hall is devoted to classes and performances by the Surrey Performing Arts School for Dance, Drama and Musical Theatre for ages 2 to adult.[Surrey Performing Arts]
accessed 21 April 2013
Geography
Elevations
In common with Camberley
Camberley is a town in the Borough of Surrey Heath in Surrey, England, approximately south-west of Central London. The town is in the far west of the county, close to the borders of Hampshire and Berkshire. Once part of Windsor Forest, Cambe ...
, the village is high on the long north–south crest of the Chobham Ridges. The crest stretches from the Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...
border at Swinley Forest
Swinley Forest is a large expanse of Crown Estate woodland managed by Forestry England mainly within the civil parishes of Windlesham in Surrey and Winkfield and Crowthorne in Berkshire, England.
Coverage
Situated to the south-west of Windsor ...
in the north, to the east of Mytchett
Mytchett is a village in the Borough of Surrey Heath in Surrey, England, approximately southwest of central London. It is to the east of Farnborough (in Hampshire), the nearest town. Much of the village dates from the first half of the twen ...
in the south, at the southern end of the borough. As such the settled part of the village is at 90-115m AOD.
Watercourses
As a high watershed
Watershed is a hydrological term, which has been adopted in other fields in a more or less figurative sense. It may refer to:
Hydrology
* Drainage divide, the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins
* Drainage basin, called a "watershe ...
on mostly permeable soil, the crest drains mostly below ground into the Blackwater or the River Bourne, Addlestone
The River Bourne is the name given to a Thames tributary in northwest Surrey, England which has a longer tributary, the Windle Brook, that rises nears Bagshot Park in the south of Swinley Forest, Berkshire, merging with it while flowing throug ...
, depending if land is sloped towards the east or the west of the village. The south of the community is bisected by the Basingstoke Canal
The Basingstoke Canal is an English canal, completed in 1794, built to connect Basingstoke with the River Thames at Weybridge via the Wey Navigation.
From Basingstoke, the canal passes through or near Greywell, North Warnborough, Odiham, Dogm ...
which has a cycle and pedestrian route alongside (its towpath
A towpath is a road or trail on the bank of a river, canal, or other inland waterway. The purpose of a towpath is to allow a land vehicle, beasts of burden, or a team of human pullers to tow a boat, often a barge. This mode of transport ...
).
Soil
The soil here is naturally wet acid and sandy soil, producing heath
A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a cooler ...
vegetation such as coniferous trees, ericaceae
The Ericaceae are a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the heath or heather family, found most commonly in acidic and infertile growing conditions. The family is large, with c.4250 known species spread across 124 genera, making it th ...
and gorse
''Ulex'' (commonly known as gorse, furze, or whin) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Fabaceae. The genus comprises about 20 species of thorny evergreen shrubs in the subfamily Faboideae of the pea family Fabaceae. The species are n ...
which accounts for less than 2.5% of English soil.
Notable residents
Malacologist
Malacology is the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of the Mollusca (mollusks or molluscs), the second-largest phylum of animals in terms of described species after the arthropods. Mollusks include snails and slugs, clams, ...
Major Matthew Connolly lived at Lock House at Deepcut where he brought up his son, writer and literary critic Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine ''Horizon'' (1940–49) and wrote '' Enemies of Promise'' (1938), which combin ...
.[Jeremy Lewis ''Cyril Connolly: A Life'' Jonathan Cape 1997]
English/American singer Graham Parker
Graham Thomas Parker (born 18 November 1950) is an English singer-songwriter, who is best known as the lead singer of the British band Graham Parker & the Rumour.
Life and career Early career (1960s–1976)
Parker was born in Hackney, East L ...
was raised in the area and named his 2001 studio album ''Deepcut To Nowhere''.
Dame Ethel Smyth
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth (; 22 April 18588 May 1944) was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas.
Smyth tended t ...
, 1858 to 1944, notable and feisty Suffragette who was imprisoned for campaigning and who wrote the Suffragette song, "March of the Women", in 1911. Also composer of operas and author.
Marie Spartali Stillman
Marie Stillman (née Spartali) (Greek language, Greek: Μαρία Σπαρτάλη; 10 March 1844 – 6 March 1927) was a British member of the second generation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Of the Pre-Raphaelites, she had one of the longe ...
, 1844–1927, Pre-Raphaelite artist and model. A pupil of Ford Madox Brown, she became a regular model for Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but was also a prolific and talented artist in her own right. Lived in Deepcut between 1898 and about 1910 at a house called Deepdene, now renamed Longwood.
William James Stillman
William James Stillman (June 1, 1828July 6, 1901) was an American journalist, diplomat, author, historian, and photographer. Educated as an artist, Stillman subsequently converted to the profession of journalism, working primarily as a war corre ...
, 1898–1901, an American with a varied career, starting as an artist and associate of John Ruskin and then becoming a diplomat for the US government as an envoy to the Balkans. Later a foreign correspondent for ''The Times''. Lived his later years and died in Deepcut at a house called Deepdene, now renamed Longwood, which was designed by notable London architects Treadwell and Martin and commissioned by Stillman's daughter, Bella Middleton in about 1986.
Deepcut barrack deaths 1995–2002 and the play ''Deep Cut''
From 1995 to 2002 a series of four deaths in seven years, each of gunshot wounds (Coroner
A coroner is a government or judicial official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into Manner of death, the manner or cause of death, and to investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within th ...
's Inquest verdict: suicide in the case of Sean Benton, open verdicts in the three other cases), at the Princess Royal Barracks made headlines in most national newspapers and television news broadcasts, when an investigation into any possible links was being launched. The unusual frequency of deaths in one British army
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
facility prompted a series of investigations and findings of breach of duty of care
In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation that is imposed on an individual, requiring adherence to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. It is the first element that must be establis ...
in training contributing to the deaths and after many reviews and investigations an Army Board of Inquiry Report, 2009 confirmed there were breaches of care that contributed towards the opportunity and motive for such deaths and, accordingly, overturned the Coroners and produced open verdicts.
''Deep Cut
''Deep Cut'' is a play to date performed by Cardiff theatre company Sherman Cymru and written by Philip Ralph. It premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2008 and won the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award in the same year as well ...
'', a 2008 play by Philip Ralph, is based on families' and fellow trainees' accounts.
Demography
The population of 2,477 lived in 803 households at the time of the United Kingdom Census 2011
A Census in the United Kingdom, census of the population of the United Kingdom is taken every ten years. The 2011 census was held in all countries of the UK on 27 March 2011. It was the first UK census which could be completed online via the Inter ...
of which 61.1% were in very good health and 3% of the population were unemployed. Reflecting a slight gender skew in the main sector of employment at the Princess Royal Barracks (as female longevity was higher than male longevity at the time of the census) 1,296 of the population were men, the remaining 1,181 were women.[
]
Main ethnic groups
Politics
In local government, the relevant ward
Ward may refer to:
Division or unit
* Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward
* Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a pris ...
is ''Mytchett
Mytchett is a village in the Borough of Surrey Heath in Surrey, England, approximately southwest of central London. It is to the east of Farnborough (in Hampshire), the nearest town. Much of the village dates from the first half of the twen ...
and Deepcut'', represented by three councillors at the Borough Council of Surrey Heath
Surrey Heath is a local government district with borough status in Surrey, England. Its council is based in Camberley. Much of the area is within the Metropolitan Green Belt.
History
The district was formed on 1 April 1974 under the Local ...
, above which tier, one councillor represents the area at Surrey County Council
Surrey County Council is the county council administering certain services in the non-metropolitan county of Surrey in England. The council is composed of 81 elected councillors, and in all but one election since 1965 the Conservative Party has ...
, who are responsible for roads, public drainage, certain schools and other major infrastructure and services. The county council division is ''Frimley Green
Frimley Green is a large village and ward of in the Borough of Surrey Heath in Surrey, England, approximately southwest of central London. It is south of the town of Frimley.
Lakeside Country Club was the national venue for the BDO int ...
and Mytchett''.
References
External links
{{authority control
Villages in Surrey