Downside is a small
village
A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...
in the English county of
Surrey
Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...
, in the local government district of
Elmbridge, centred on Downside Common which is southwest of London and northeast of Guildford. Most of its buildings form a
cluster
may refer to:
Science and technology Astronomy
* Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft
* Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study the magnetosphere
* Asteroid cluster, a small ...
. It has 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 accomm ...
, Downside Sports and Social Club, regular village hall events and an annual sports day. It is in the Cobham and Downside ward of Elmbridge Borough Council.
History
Toponymy
The village was a
tything
A tithing or tything was a historic English legal, administrative or territorial unit, originally ten hides (and hence, one tenth of a hundred). Tithings later came to be seen as subdivisions of a manor or civil parish. The tithing's leader or s ...
(an ancient administrative division represented by an assembly of households within an area comprising ten
hides). Downe Place was the home of the Downe (or Adowne) family for many generations, from at least the 12th century.
H.E. Malden['Parishes: Cobham - Manor of Downe', in H.E. Malden (ed.), ''A History of the County of Surrey'', Vol. 3 (V.C.H., London 1911)]
at p. 444, col. b
(British History Online, accessed 18 January 2023). followed
E.W. Brayley[E.W. Brayley, with J. Britton and E.W. Brayley jun., ''A Topographical History of Surrey'', 5 vols (London 1841-1848), II]
pp. 410-11
(Google). in deriving the locality name "Downside" from the family, but T.E.C. Walker more credibly derived the family's name from the location, referring to the hill or down near the river on that side of Cobham.
["Manor of Downe", in T.E.C. Walker, 'Cobham: Manorial History', ''Surrey Archaeological Collections'' 58 (1961), pp. 47-78]
at pp. 52-56
(Internet Archive). That house was later also known as "Downe Hall".
Early history
In 1331 the
prior and convent of Newark by Guildford acquired from John Prudhomme held of Henry de Somerbury, who held of Henry atte Downe, who held of
Chertsey Abbey
Chertsey Abbey, dedicated to St Peter, was a Benedictine monastery located at Chertsey in the English county of Surrey.
It was founded in 666 AD by Saint Erkenwald who was the first abbot, and from 675 AD the Bishop of London. At the same ti ...
. The historian David Taylor shows that the old Downe Place probably stood near Downside Farm, and not on the site of the Cobham Park mansion.
Much of the village green was part of a
common
Common may refer to:
As an Irish surname, it is anglicised from Irish Gaelic surname Ó Comáin.
Places
* Common, a townland in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland
* Boston Common, a central public park in Boston, Massachusetts
* Cambridge Com ...
open to those with villager status of the Downeside Tything as opposed to the two others: Street Cobham and Church Cobham. As to the manors that were in private hands in the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
, see the parish of
Cobham, as Downside's chapel was built on land in Cobham
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 pries ...
.
Neither of the settlements is a
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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...
and the church became tied with that of
Ockham at an unknown date after its 19th-century construction.
Downside Village was designated as a
Conservation Area
Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural or cultural values. Protected areas are those areas in which human presence or the exploitation of natural resources (e.g. firewoo ...
in 1979, focussed around its developed, village green area.
Geography
A rural community, Downside (and the adjacent hamlet of
Hatchford) is situated in open countryside between
Cobham to the north and
East Horsley
East Horsley is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England, 21 miles southwest of London, on the A246 between Leatherhead and Guildford. Horsley and Effingham Junction railway stations are on the New Guildford line to London Waterloo. T ...
to the south,
Stoke D'Abernon
__NOTOC__
Stoke d'Abernon () is a village and former civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Borough of Elmbridge, Elmbridge district, in Surrey, England. It is on the bank (geography), right bank of the River Mole contiguously south of ...
to the east and two similar size settlements across the
Surrey Wildlife Trust
Surrey Wildlife Trust (SWT) was founded in 1959 as Surrey Naturalists' Trust and it is one of forty-six The Wildlife Trusts, wildlife trusts covering Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man and Alderney. ...
expanse of Wisley Heath and Ockham Common:
Ockham and
Wisley
Wisley is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England between Cobham and Woking, in the Borough of Guildford. It is the home of the Royal Horticultural Society's Wisley Garden. The River Wey runs through the village and Ockham and Wisley C ...
to the west. London is northeast, Guildford is southwest. Local administrative centre of Elmbridge,
Esher
Esher ( ) is a town in the borough of Borough of Elmbridge, Elmbridge in Surrey, England, to the east of the River Mole, Surrey, River Mole.
Esher is an outlying suburb of London, close to the London–Surrey border; with Esher Commons at its ...
, is
NNE.
[Grid reference Finder measurement tools]
/ref>
This elevated community is part of the Green Belt
A green belt or greenbelt is a policy, and land-use zone designation used in land-use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wilderness, wild, or agricultural landscape, land surrounding or neighboring urban areas. Similar concepts ...
. Immediately to the south of the village is the M25 motorway
The M25 or London Orbital Motorway is a major ring 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 th ...
, where construction of a motorway service station began, despite determined local opposition, in 2011. To the north is Cobham Park
Cobham Park is a former mansion and country estate in Cobham, Surrey, Cobham, Surrey, England. The main house was converted to apartments in the early 2000s, but the majority of the surrounding former parkland remains undeveloped. At its height ...
, a large country house that has been converted to apartments.
Downside has a large village green
A village green is a commons, common open area within a village or other settlement. Historically, a village green was common pasture, grassland with a pond for watering cattle and other stock, often at the edge of a rural settlement, used for ...
, on the northern edge of which is the Cricketers' 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 accomm ...
, dating at its core to the 17th century and a Grade II listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...
. Immediately off the green in the south east corner is a listed hand-operated water pump.
Elevations, Soils and Geology
Elevations of the central part of Downside, on all sides of the Common vary from AOD in the southwest to Above Ordnance Datum
An ordnance datum (OD) is a vertical datum used by an ordnance survey as the basis for deriving altitudes on maps. A spot height may be expressed as above ordnance datum (AOD). Usually mean sea level (MSL) at a particular place is used for the ...
in the northeast, while the common itself ranges between 29-33m AOD. Immediately north of this the River Mole
The River Mole is a tributary of the River Thames in southern England. It rises in West Sussex near Gatwick Airport and flows north-west through Surrey for to the Thames at Hampton Court Palace. The river gives its name to the Surrey district ...
begins to cut a valley and in Cobham, most of which, excluding ''Fairmile'' is at 18-22m AOD.[
Not within the narrow belt of raised soils of the north Surrey belt of acidic, sandy raised ]heath
A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and is characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a coole ...
land of the Bagshot Formation
In geology, the Bagshot Beds are a series of sands and clays of shallow-water origin, some being fresh-water, some marine. They belong to the upper Eocene formation of the London and Hampshire basins, in England and derive their name from Bagsh ...
, the soil stretching from Cobham and Downside as far as Effingham and for a more considerable distance east and southwest is "slowly permeable loamy/clayey slightly acid but base-rich soil", which gives rise to flora
Flora (: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous (ecology), indigenous) native plant, native plants. The corresponding term for animals is ''fauna'', and for f ...
of trees, grasses and crops or which can be cultivated easily. As the later sandy soil mentioned above and certainly further chalk overlayers have been washed away, whereas sand may have been scant, hence why it appears further north; the geology of Downside is Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 143.1 to 66 mya (unit), million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era (geology), Era, as well as the longest. At around 77.1 million years, it is the ...
: i.e. Hastings Beds
The Wealden Group, occasionally also referred to as the Wealden Supergroup, is a group (a sequence of rock strata) in the lithostratigraphy of southern England. The Wealden group consists of paralic to continental (freshwater) facies sedimentar ...
, Weald Clay
Weald Clay or the Weald Clay Formation is a Lower Cretaceous sedimentary rock unit underlying areas of South East England, between the North and South Downs, in an area called the Weald Basin. It is the uppermost unit of the Wealden Group of ...
, then pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...
Folkestone
Folkestone ( ) is a coastal town on the English Channel, in Kent, south-east England. The town lies on the southern edge of the North Downs at a valley between two cliffs. It was an important harbour, shipping port, and fashionable coastal res ...
and then covered by a considerable remaining layer of Claygate Beds
The London Clay Formation is a marine geological formation of Ypresian (early Eocene Epoch, c. 54-50 million years ago) age which crops out in the southeast of England. The London Clay is well known for its fossil content. The fossils from the ...
, Gault Clay
The Gault Formation is a geological formation of stiff blue clay deposited in a calm, fairly deep-water marine environment during the Lower Cretaceous Period (Upper and Middle Albian). It is well exposed in the coastal cliffs at Copt Point in Fo ...
mixed in with some eroded limestone
Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...
from the north downs in the soil to the south.
Demography
In 2001, the central output area of Downside contained 306 residents in 126 households, of which 11.4% were aged over 65; 6.0% of the population were in full-time further education; 70.6% of those of working age were economically active whereas 0.0% were unemployed, 11.7%
As to ethnicity, 89.5% of the population identified themselves as being White British ethnicity, 2.0% as of White Irish ethnicity and 8.5% as White Other of the categories available.[
In terms of religion, 76.0%% of the population responded as being Christian, 1.3% as Jewish, 16.4% as atheist and 6.2% declined to answer.][
Downside's economy is predominantly a service sector economy reflected by the lowest versus the upper end of the official categorisation table of occupation given, compiled from the 2001 census:
]
Religion
St Michael's Chapel by the village green serves the village's Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...
community and those seeking its help in the Diocese of Guildford
__NOTOC__
The Diocese of Guildford is a Church of England diocese covering eight and half of the eleven districts in Surrey, much of north-east Hampshire and a parish in Greater London. The cathedral is Guildford Cathedral and the bishop is the ...
, at the end of the only fully developed street.
Culture and Community
Downside Sports & Social Club operate with a mixture of cricket, bowls, football and entertainment. Downside Village Hall hosts voluntary-run classes and meetings for local groups and organisations.
Downside village green, historically and legally ''Downside Common'', is the setting for the Downside & Hatchford Sports Day, held annually on August Bank Holiday Monday.
Education
St. Matthew's Church of England Infant School serves the wider area of Downside including Cobham.[St. Matthew's Church of England Infant School Grade II listing ]
References
External links
Parish Profile: Ockham with Hatchford & Downside
Downside Village
St. Matthew's Church of England Infant School
The Cricketers
{{authority control
Villages in Surrey
Borough of Elmbridge