Pewley Hill is a hill, and a street so named, near

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 ...

in England. It links to the open space at Pewley Down and was used as the site of a semaphore station and a defensive fort in the nineteenth century. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries much of the land was built upon. Pewley Hill was part of lands granted by William the Conqueror to the Testard family. It takes its name from the de-la-Puille family who acquired it from Richard Testard in 1255. The Puille family name was also reflected in the manor of Poyle and the Poyle Charity. An Admiralty

semaphore Semaphore (; ) is the use of an apparatus to create a visual signal transmitted over distance. A semaphore can be performed with devices including: fire, lights, flags, sunlight, and moving arms. Semaphores can be used for telegraphy when arra ...

station was built at Pewley Hill in 1822 forming part of the London-Portsmouth semaphore line. The building remains, with a cupola on top which was added after the semaphore went out of use. In 1866 Guildford Corporation built a new reservoir at the top of Pewley Hill. Pewley Hill Fort (or Mobilization Centre) was built in around 1890 as part of the

London Defence Positions The London Defence Positions were a late 19th century scheme of earthwork fortifications in the south-east of England, designed to protect London from foreign invasion landing on the south coast. The positions were a carefully surveyed contingen ...

scheme, running from Guildford along the

North Downs The North Downs are a ridge of chalk hills in south east England that stretch from Farnham in Surrey to the White Cliffs of Dover in Kent. Much of the North Downs comprises two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs): the Surrey Hills and ...

Fort Halstead Fort Halstead was a research site of Dstl, an executive agency of the UK Ministry of Defence. It is situated on the crest of the Kentish North Downs, overlooking the town of Sevenoaks, southeast of London. Originally constructed in 1892 as part ...

, up the Darent Valley to Dartford, and north of the Thames to North Weald. The scheme was abandoned in 1906.HER 331 - Remains of Pewley Hill Mobilisation Centre
/ref>

References

{{coord, 51.2332, -0.5658, dim:1000_region:GB, display=title Hills of Surrey Towers in Surrey