New Haw is a village which is part of the

Borough of Runnymede The Borough of Runnymede is a local government district with borough status in the English county of Surrey. It is a very prosperous part of the London commuter belt, with some of the most expensive housing in the United Kingdom outside centra ...

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 England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It is located approximately south of

Addlestone Addlestone ( or ) is a town in Surrey, England. It is located approximately southwest of London. The town is the administrative centre of the Borough of Runnymede, of which it is the largest settlement. History The town is recorded as ''Attels ...

and southwest by west of

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Geography

New Haw borders

Byfleet Byfleet is a village in Surrey, England. It is located in the far east of the borough of Woking, around east of West Byfleet, from which it is separated by the M25 motorway and the Wey Navigation. The village is of medieval origin. Its winding ...

Weybridge Weybridge () is a town in the Borough of Elmbridge in Surrey, England, around southwest of central London. The settlement is recorded as ''Waigebrugge'' and ''Weibrugge'' in the 7th century and the name derives from a crossing point of the ...

Ottershaw Ottershaw is a village in the Borough of Runnymede in Surrey, England, approximately southwest of central London. The village developed in the mid-19th century from a number of separate hamlets and became a parish in its own right in 1871. The ...

West Byfleet West Byfleet is a village in Surrey which grew up around its relatively minor stop on the London & South Western Railway: the station, originally ''Byfleet and Woodham'', opened in 1887. More than from the medieval village of Byfleet, the i ...

and Woodham. The

Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), formerly known as the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA), is an executive agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) of the United Kingdom. It was form ...

, an executive agency of

DEFRA DEFRA may refer to: * Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, United States law * Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, United Kingdom government department {{Disambiguation ...

, has its central laboratories in a semi-rural part of New Haw. The laboratory is notable as being one of the principal test centres for the H5N1 virus. New Haw stands on an irregular south-west border close to Woking, the

River Wey The River Wey is a main tributary of the River Thames in south east England. Its two branches, one of which rises near Alton in Hampshire and the other in West Sussex to the south of Haslemere, join at Tilford in Surrey. Once combined the f ...

, the start 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 ...

, and the (River Bourne, Addlestone Branch). The

Wey Navigation The River Wey Navigation and Godalming Navigation together provide a continuous navigable route from the River Thames near Weybridge via Guildford to Godalming (commonly called the Wey Navigation). Both waterways are in Surrey and are owned b ...

rises through three steep locks in the relatively short New Haw section.

History

"Haw" is an

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

word for "lock gate", and it is possible that New Haw developed following the installation of the "new" lock gate in 1653, near The White Hart pub. The Grade II Listed New Haw lock-keeper's cottage (pictured) dates from 1782 but was heavily rebuilt with steel strengthening beams added above the ground floor windows after a gas explosion and fire in 1982. It appeared as Mr. Bedford's "Cherry Cottage" in the 1964 science-fiction film

First Men in the Moon ''The First Men in the Moon'' is a scientific romance by the English author H. G. Wells, originally serialised in ''The Strand Magazine'' from December 1900 to August 1901 and published in hardcover in 1901, who called it one of his "fantastic ...

, based loosely on the H.G. Wells novel of the same title published in 1901. There is a little evidence of New Haw's history. The original village was a

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

of Woking, around Crockford Park farm, bordering

. Several aeroplanes are believed to have crashed in New Haw during the early decades of the 20th century. On 25 May 1912, an Avro Type F cabin monoplane landed upside down on nearby Addlestone Moor. Photographic evidence of this accident is held by

Brooklands Museum Brooklands Museum is a motoring and aviation museum occupying part of the former Brooklands motor-racing track in Weybridge, Surrey, England. Formally opened in 1991, the museum is operated by the independent Brooklands Museum Trust Ltd, a pri ...

. The village centre lies around the junction of Woodham Lane and the Scotland Bridge Road roundabout and on the northwest side of the latter, until recently, a well-established motor vehicle sales business occupied an original 1930s garage, petrol station and workshop known for many years as "Woodham Motors". Although the front of the premises have been somewhat altered in recent years, the pre-war brick-built central two-story clock tower with large two-bay workshop behind survive in good condition and make an interesting local landmark. With the commuter boom of the 1950/60s, New Haw expanded further southwest down Woodham Lane towards

and Woodham and a popular shopping area for local residents is The Broadway, where a number of shops, public houses and restaurants are located.

Churches

In 1873 All Saints School was founded as a school for Poor Persons, probably with a grant from John Marshall-Paine, who had previously lived at Sayes Court, Addlestone. The school opened in 1874 and included accommodation for 92 pupils. School records show that there were frequent absences during harvesting or at other times when help was needed on the farms. Conditions at the school were far from ideal. The schoolroom was often in need of repair, and during the winter of 1906 temperatures plummeted to 1 °C (35 degrees Fahrenheit), and at one time the teacher of the infants was herself only 11 years old. In 1911 the school became All Saints' Church. It is part of the diocese of

Guildford Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, around southwest of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildf ...

. All Saints' New Haw has a thriving congregation including a range of youth activities and a full programme of events for all ages. In 2009 Bosco's and Claire's Cafe were added to the church buildings.

Amenities

The village has a number of open spaces. The largest is Heathervale Park, a green space bordering the Basingstoke canal.

Fullbrook School Fullbrook School is a secondary school and sixth form in north west Surrey, England. The school has held Specialist Science, Technology, Mathematics and Computing College status since 2002. The school gained Grant Maintained status in the mid-19 ...

offers local residents athletic facilities, including a gym, football pitches, and tennis courts. There are a number of public houses throughout the area: the Black Prince (dating from 1937 and still largely unaltered externally) on Woodham Lane and Scotland Bridge Road roundabout, the Station (was the Claremont, then the Catherine of Aragon) next to West Byfleet railway station, and The White Hart adjacent to the Wey Navigation on New Haw Road roundabout with Woodham Lane and Byfleet Road.

Education

Local schools include: New Haw Junior School,

, the Grange Community Infant School, and the Grove nursery.

Transport

The

M25 motorway The M25 or London Orbital Motorway is a major road encircling most of Greater London. The motorway is one of the most important roads in the UK and one of the busiest. Margaret Thatcher opened the final section in 1986, making the M25 the lon ...

passes, without junctions for more than 3 miles, through the west of the village. The main north-south road, the

A318 road List of A roads in zone 3 in Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island ...

in New Haw is one of few A-roads in the South East to have narrow sections for HGVs at the bridge crossing the Wey Navigation and with a sharp bend on the turn-off for Woodham. The village has two railway stations:

and Byfleet and New Haw, which was originally called West Weybridge.

Tug of War

In the 1950s/60s New Haw and Woodham Tug of War club won a number of national titles. They even appeared in the American magazine Sports Illustrated.

References

External links

All Saint's Church webpage
{{authority control Villages in Surrey Borough of Runnymede