Friday Street is 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 ...

on the gentle lower north slope of

Leith Hill Leith Hill in southern England is the highest summit of the Greensand Ridge, approximately southwest of Dorking, Surrey and southwest of central London. It reaches above sea level, and is the second highest point in southeast England, after ...

in Surrey, England. It is in a wooded headwater ravine, just to the south of Wotton and the A25, a single rather than dual carriageway road, running between Guildford to the west and Dorking to the east. It is part of the

Surrey Hills AONB The Surrey Hills is a Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), which principally covers parts of the North Downs and Greensand Ridge in Surrey, England (approximately one quarter of the land area of the county). The AONB was designated in 1958 ...

History and geography

Friday Street is part of the relatively sparsely populated

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

of Wotton. Central to Friday Street on most maps is its hammer pond, fed by the Friday Street stream, a tributary of the

River Tillingbourne The River Tillingbourne (also known as the Tilling Bourne) runs along the south side of the North Downs and joins the River Wey at Guildford. Its source is a mile south of Tilling Springs to the north of Leith Hill at and it runs through Friday ...

. It is one of three in the

Vale of Holmesdale Holmesdale, also known as the Vale of Holmesdale, is a valley in South-East England that falls between the hill ranges of the North Downs and the Greensand Ridge of the Weald, in the counties of Kent and Surrey. It stretches from Folkestone o ...

in Surrey, being in a narrow band of

ironstone Ironstone is a sedimentary rock, either deposited directly as a ferruginous sediment or created by chemical replacement, that contains a substantial proportion of an iron ore compound from which iron (Fe) can be smelted commercially. Not to be con ...

-rich hills, the

Greensand Ridge The Greensand Ridge, also known as the Wealden Greensand is an extensive, prominent, often wooded, mixed greensand/sandstone escarpment in south-east England. Forming part of the Weald, a former dense forest in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, it r ...

. These were in use from the medieval age until the early 19th century when wholly surpassed by metalwork production specialist centres, principally

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...

and the

West Midlands West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

, assisted by cheap inter-regional transport, coal replacing charcoal as a fuel and by technological advances. Fewer than 20 houses have been built and the area is surrounded by the second largest wooded common in Surrey, Wotton Common also known as

Common, preceded by the Hurtmoor in the same range of hills. In censuses conducted by the

Office for National Statistics The Office for National Statistics (ONS; cy, Swyddfa Ystadegau Gwladol) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the UK Parliament. Overview The ONS is responsible for t ...

, Friday Street is too small to make up a census unit centred on it, without including other land, and has varied map definitions.Grid square map

Ordnance survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...

website

Landmarks

Wotton House Wotton House, Wotton Underwood, Buckinghamshire, England, is a stately home built between 1704 and 1714, to a design very similar to that of the contemporary version of Buckingham House. The house is an example of English Baroque and a Grade I ...

, the largest house, is on the northern borders of the hamlet. The next largest, the Grade II listed Pond Cottage, was built, according to

Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked w ...

, "possibly for an iron master". It is a

timber framed Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden ...

17th century house, clad in galleted Bargate rubble to the lower storey with bricks above and its wall plate exposed under a tiled roof. An

inn Inns are generally establishments or buildings where travelers can seek lodging, and usually, food and drink. Inns are typically located in the country or along a highway; before the advent of motorized transportation they also provided accommo ...

on the edge of the hamlet bears the name of Stephan Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of King John and signatory of '' Magna Carta''. The current inn replaces an earlier building that burnt down in the 1930s. Martin Tupper, poet and antiquarian, wrote a biography of Stephan Langton in 1858 depicting his time in this area.

Tillingbourne Waterfall

Not far from the source of the River Tillingbourne at Tilling Springs is Surrey's tallest

waterfall A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in severa ...

, situated to the east of a public footpath heading north towards Wotton between the hamlets of Friday Street and Broadmoor.

In film, fiction and the media

Friday Street also features as the title of a song on the album '' Heavy Soul'' by Surrey native

Paul Weller Paul John Weller (born John William Weller; 25 May 1958) is an English singer-songwriter and musician. Weller achieved fame with the punk rock/ new wave/mod revival band the Jam (1972–1982). He had further success with the blue-eyed soul mu ...

. In 1984 Friday Street was used as a location for the BBC Television series "

The Tripods ''The Tripods'' is a series of young adult novels written by John Christopher, beginning in 1967. The first two were the basis of a science fiction TV series, produced in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Synopsis The story of ''The Tripods'' ...

" based on the books by

John Christopher Sam Youd (16 April 1922 – 3 February 2012), was a British writer, best known for science fiction written under the name of John Christopher, including the novels ''The Death of Grass'', ''The Possessors'', and the young-adult novel series ...

, where, for the sake of the story it became the fictional future village of "Wherton."

References

External links

*
Friday Street at InfoBritain.com
{{Geographic location , title = Nearest Settlements , Centre = Friday Street , North = Wotton , Northeast = Dorking , East = Holmwood , South =

Ockley Ockley is a rural village in Surrey. It lies astride the A29, the modern road using the alignment of Stane Street (Chichester). The A29 diverges from the A24 from London about 2.5 miles northeast and takes the alignment of Stane Street a mile ...

, Southeast = Coldharbour , West = Abinger , Southwest =

Holmbury St Mary Holmbury St Mary is a village in Surrey, England centered on shallow upper slopes of the Greensand Ridge. Its developed area is a clustered town southwest of Dorking and southeast of Guildford. Most of the village is in the borough of Guildfo ...