Merstham is a town in the borough of Reigate and Banstead in Surrey, England. It lies 25 miles south of

Charing Cross Charing Cross ( ) is a junction in Westminster, London, England, where six routes meet. Clockwise from north these are: the east side of Trafalgar Square leading to St Martin's Place and then Charing Cross Road; the Strand leading to the City; ...

and 2 miles south of the

Greater London Greater may refer to: *Greatness, the state of being great *Greater than, in inequality (mathematics), inequality *Greater (film), ''Greater'' (film), a 2016 American film *Greater (flamingo), the oldest flamingo on record *Greater (song), "Greate ...

border. Part of the

North Downs Way The North Downs Way National Trail is a long-distance path in southern England, opened in 1978. It runs from Farnham to Dover, past Guildford, Dorking, Merstham, Otford and Rochester, along the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty ...

runs along the northern boundary of the town. Merstham has community associations, an early medieval church and a football club.

Neighbourhoods

Old Merstham

Old Merstham forms the north and north-west of modern Merstham and is the original village centre. There is a small day school by the railway station, a pub, a few barbershops and a small number of other shops.

The Merstham Estate/New Merstham

After World War II the

London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kno ...

built the Merstham Estate, originally entirely public housing, was built to a geometric layout in the eastern fields. This area has its own parade of shops, the Brook recreation ground, three schools, and a youth/community centre along Radstock Way. Oakley, a small country house, is listed and has Victorian

gothic architecture Gothic architecture (or pointed architecture) is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It e ...

features.

South Merstham

South Merstham is made up of mainly Victorian and Edwardian terraces. It provided a workforce for Albury Manor and nearby chalk quarrying and brickworking. Nutfield Road has a long parade of shops. South Merstham is home to Connevans Limited, who, in April 2016 became holders of the

Royal Warrant A royal warrant is a document issued by a monarch which confers rights or privileges on the recipient, or has the effect of law. Royal warrant may refer to: * Royal warrant of appointment, warrant to tradespeople who supply goods or services to a r ...

, by Appointment to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Supplier and Manufacturer of Audio Equipment.

History

The area has been settled since pre-

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

times. The village lay within the Reigate hundred, an

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

administrative division. Its name was recorded in 947 as ''Mearsætham'', which seems to be

''Mearþ-sǣt-hām'' = "

Homestead Homestead may refer to: *Homestead (buildings), a farmhouse and its adjacent outbuildings; by extension, it can mean any small cluster of houses *Homestead (unit), a unit of measurement equal to 160 acres *Homestead principle, a legal concept th ...

near a trap set for

marten A marten is a weasel-like mammal in the genus ''Martes'' within the subfamily Guloninae, in the family Mustelidae. They have bushy tails and large paws with partially retractile claws. The fur varies from yellowish to dark brown, depending on t ...

s or

weasel Weasels are mammals of the genus ''Mustela'' of the family Mustelidae. The genus ''Mustela'' includes the least weasels, polecats, stoats, ferrets and European mink. Members of this genus are small, active predators, with long and slender bo ...

s". The

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alf ...

for 851 states that a Viking army 'went south over the Thames into Surrey; and King Aethelwulf and his son Aethelbald with the West Saxon army fought against them at Aclea, and there made the greatest slaughter of a heathen raiding-army that we have heard tell of up to the present day, and there took the victory.' According to Stenton, the name Aclea nearly always appears in modern times as 'Oakley'. There is an Oakley in Merstham close to 'Old Way' prehistoric trackway. There is also a Battlebridge Lane in Merstham. The identification of the battle of Aclea with the site at Oakley in Merstham rather than Ockley in Surrey was in an article published in the Surrey Archaeological Collection for 1912. Merstham appears in

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

of 1086 as ''Merstan''. It was held by Archbishop Lanfranc of

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour, Kent, River Stour. ...

. Its domesday assets were: 5 hides; 1 church, 1 mill worth 2s 6d, 10

plough A plough or plow ( US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or ...

s, of

meadow A meadow ( ) is an open habitat, or field, vegetated by grasses, herbs, and other non-woody plants. Trees or shrubs may sparsely populate meadows, as long as these areas maintain an open character. Meadows may be naturally occurring or artifi ...

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (see ...

and herbage worth 41 hogs. It rendered £12. The area has long been known for its quarries, with the first mines at Merstham recorded in the

of 1086, and 'Reigate stone' quarried there used to build parts of

Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...

Windsor Castle Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is strongly associated with the English and succeeding British royal family, and embodies almost a millennium of architectural history. The original cast ...

and Henry VIII's

Nonsuch Palace Nonsuch Palace was a Tudor royal palace, built by Henry VIII in Surrey, England; it stood from 1538 to 1682–83. Its site lies in what is now Nonsuch Park on the boundaries of the borough of Epsom and Ewell in Surrey and the London Borough ...

. It was to serve the quarries that the village became the terminus of the Croydon, Merstham and Godstone Railway, an extension of the horse-drawn Surrey Iron Railway of 1803, the world's first public railway, albeit only for goods. A small section of the railway is on display at the entrance to Quality Street, Old Merstham. Unfortunately, this section has now been taken. The use of

dynamite Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and Stabilizer (chemistry), stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish people, Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germa ...

was first publicly demonstrated by

Alfred Nobel Alfred Bernhard Nobel ( , ; 21 October 1833 – 10 December 1896) was a Swedes, Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and Philanthropy, philanthropist. He is best known for having bequeathed his fortune to establish the Nobel ...

in Price's Grey-lime Stone chalk quarry in July 1868. The site is now partly covered by the route of the M23 motorway just east of where it passes under the Shepherd's Hill bridge. St Katharine's church Merstham, east end - geograph

St Katharine's church Merstham, east end - geograph

The original parish church, St Katharine's, dates from around 1220; it replaced an earlier church built c. 1100, although it is believed there has been a church of some form on the site since c. 675 AD. Merstham's conservation area is centred on its High Street which winds in the village centre to the northwest, forms part of the

A23 road The A23 road is a major road in the United Kingdom between London and Brighton, East Sussex, England. It is managed by Transport for London for the section inside the Greater London boundary, Surrey County Council and West Sussex County Council ...

and includes many listed buildings; the street with the greatest number, Quality Street, arcs off at a

tangent In geometry, the tangent line (or simply tangent) to a plane curve at a given point is the straight line that "just touches" the curve at that point. Leibniz defined it as the line through a pair of infinitely close points on the curve. More ...

from this curve of the High Street. This was named after J.M. Barrie's play of the same name, in honour of two of the actors in the play, Ellaline Terriss and Seymour Hicks, who for a time lived in the ''Old Forge'' at the end of the street. 1 High Street partly dates to the 17th century. The earlier of the two Merstham railway tunnels was the scene of a murder on 24 September 1905. The mutilated body of Mary Sophia Money was found in the tunnel and was first thought to be a case of suicide. On inspection, however, a scarf was found in the victim's throat, and marks on the tunnel wall showed that she had been thrown from a moving train. The crime was never solved, but suspicion rested on her brother, Robert Money. In 1943 a petroleum pipeline was constructed from the Thames through to Dungeness (designated the T/D pipeline) to supply fuel to the

PLUTO Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of trans-Neptunian object, bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the S ...

cross-channel pipelines that were to run from Dungeness to Boulogne, code named DUMBO. A section of the T/D pipeline ran through Merstham and the T/D was part of the then secret government pipeline network later known as the Government Pipeline and Storage System (GPSS). After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the Merstham Estate was gradually built over a period spanning to the early 1970s. The old village thus became generally known as Old Merstham, and is occasionally known as Top Merstham. Rockshaw Road, on the hilltop above the conservation area of Old Merstham, was developed at the very end of the 19th century, and between the World Wars was home to many nationally notable people, among them senior Army and Navy figures, financiers and politicians. South Merstham Anglican Church - geograph

South Merstham Anglican Church - geograph

At the junction of Battlebridge Lane and Nutfield Road is All Saints' church, the original building of which was destroyed in World War II. Volunteers from the Canadian Army worked to build a temporary church for the village, which became known as Canada Hall and is used as a village hall and weekly meeting hall for some Merstham branches of the Girl Guides.

Historic estates

The parish of Merstham contains various historic estates including: * Withyshaw, in 1937 the seat of a junior branch of the Passmore family, which originated before the 15th century at Passmore Hayes near Tiverton in Devon.

Transport

London Buses London Buses is the subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL) that manages most bus services in London, England. It was formed following the Greater London Authority Act 1999 that transferred control of London Regional Transport (LRT) bus se ...

run to

Croydon Croydon is a large town in south London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a local government district of Greater London. It is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater London, with an extensi ...

, Coulsdon, Purley and Redhill town centre. Metrobus operates buses to Reigate, Caterham and Woldingham. The village is served by

Merstham railway station Merstham railway station is in Merstham, Surrey, England. It is on the Brighton Main Line, measured from , and train services are currently provided by Southern, who manage the station, and Thameslink. History Merstham was on a stretch o ...

on the Brighton Main Line, with services to

London Bridge Several bridges named London Bridge have spanned the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark, in central London. The current crossing, which opened to traffic in 1973, is a box girder bridge built from concrete and steel. It r ...

, London Victoria and

Gatwick Airport Gatwick Airport (), also known as London Gatwick , is a major international airport near Crawley, West Sussex, England, south of Central London. In 2021, Gatwick was the third-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the UK, after H ...

Demography and housing

The average level of accommodation in the region composed of detached houses was 28%, the average that was apartments was 22.6%. The proportion of households who owned their home outright compares to the regional average of 35.1%. The proportion who owned their home with a loan compares to the regional average of 32.5%. The remaining % is made up of rented dwellings (plus a negligible % of households living rent-free).

Sport and leisure

Merstham has a

non-League football Non-League football describes football leagues played outside the top leagues of a country. Usually, it describes leagues which are not fully professional. The term is primarily used for football in England, where it is specifically used to de ...

club,

Merstham F.C. Merstham Football Club is a football club based in Merstham, Surrey, England. Affiliated to the Surrey FA, they are currently members of the and play at Moatside. History The club was established in 1892. In 1897 they were founder members of t ...

, which plays at the Moatside. It also has a cricket club which plays in Fullers league division two. Merstham Mines, an abandoned mine, is a popular caving destination.

Notable residents

* John Anderson, Viscount Waverley (1882–1958), civil servant and politician, owned a house in Rockshaw Road 1938–1945, although he mainly lived in central London. * Henry, Lord Benson (1909–1995), accountant, partner of

Coopers & Lybrand PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting ...

and president of Institute of Chartered Accountants lived here from circa 1950 to the 1970s. * General Sir Walter Campbell (1864–1936),

Quartermaster-General to the Forces The Quartermaster-General to the Forces (QMG) is a senior general in the British Army. The post has become symbolic: the Ministry of Defence organisation charts since 2011 have not used the term "Quartermaster-General to the Forces"; they simply ...

, lived in Rockshaw Road from 1925 until his death in 1936. *

Seymour Hicks Sir Edward Seymour Hicks (30 January 1871 – 6 April 1949), better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, actor-manager and producer. He became known, early in his career, for writing, starring in and p ...

(1871–1949) and his wife Ellaline Terriss (1871–1971), stage actors, lived in the ''Old Forge'' in Quality Street prior to the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. *

Keble Howard Keble Howard was the pen name of John Keble Bell (8 June 1875 – 29 March 1928). He was an English writer and journalist, who wrote a large number of novels, short stories, sketches and plays, mainly light comic pieces, often depicting subur ...

, pen name of John Keble Bell, (1875–1928), writer and journalist, lived in Rockshaw Road from 1912 to 1920. * Sir Geoffrey Howe (1926–2015), Conservative politician and MP for Reigate, then

East Surrey East Surrey is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2019 by Claire Coutinho, a Conservative. The seat covers an affluent area in the English county of Surrey. Since its creation in 1918, East Surrey has e ...

, lived here from 1973–74. * Sir

Harold Webbe Sir William Harold Webbe, Order of the British Empire, CBE Deputy Lieutenant, DL (30 September 1885 – 22 April 1965) was a British politician. He was a Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Par ...

(1885–1965), member of the

, then MP for

, lived here from 1928 until his death in 1965.

References

External links

Reigate & Banstead Council
{{authority control Villages in Surrey Reigate and Banstead