Weybridge area

Weybridge is a town situated in the Borough of Elmbridge in Surrey. Today it is a fairly prosperous town with about 18,000 inhabitants.

“Walton is one of three closely related villages, the others being Hersham and Weybridge. When I was born, they were little more than stops on the railway line leading out of London into the county of Surrey. Hersham was the poor relative and had once been merely a strip of woodland beside another river, the Mole. Walton, slightly better off, was a larger village; Weybridge was altogether "upmarket."” – Julie Andrews – “Home – A memoir of my early years” – 2008.

In Saxon times Weybridge was within the “Elmbridge hundred” the term “hundred” possibly referring to an area which had one hundred men under arms.

Weybridge appears in the Domesday Book as “Webrige” and “Webruge”.

Weybridge was of small importance during the Middle Ages and, even as late as the 16th century, the inhabitants asked to be excused from conveying the royal baggage as they only had one cart!

Until 1537 Weybridge was basically a river crossing, but then Henry VIII built Oatlands Palace, where he married his fifth wife, Katherine Howard. However Oatlands Palace was demolished in 1650; part of its site is now occupied by the Oatlands Park Hotel. Many of the bricks were used to build the lock walls on the Wey Navigation Canal. This was one of the earliest canalised rivers in England. It was opened in 1653 and Weybridge was at the end of the longest man-made section of navigation.

Sign at Weybridge Lock

In 1649 St. George's Hill, Weybridge, was occupied by a group known as the "Diggers". They believed in small egalitarian rural communities. Their intention was to pull down all enclosures, and plant vegetables, food prices having reached an all-time high. The local landowners harrassed and beat up the Diggers, and called in the New Model Army. After a few months the Diggers left St. George's Hill. In 1999 a group of activists marched to St. George's Hill to try to install a memorial stone to the Diggers, commorating the 350th anniversary of their occupation; with shades of 1649, this was not popular with the local residents either, though the activists in 1999 were not actually beaten up.

During the eighteenth century, Weybridge had many famous residents: The Earl of Torrington at Oatlands Park, Admiral Sir Thomas Hopson (the hero of Vigo Bay), the Hon. George Clinton at Clinton House (now part of St. Maur), Sir Thomas Riggs Popham, the inventor of the Naval semaphore, John Austin, author, Fanny Kemble, actress and Mrs. Gwyn and Mrs. Bunbury (Goldsmith's 'Jessamy Bridge' and 'Little Comedy'). 

In 1800 Enclosure Acts were passed for Walton & Weybridge. The main beneficiary in Weybridge being the Duke of York who greatly enlarged his Oatlands estate. In 1838, the first section of the London & Southampton Railway was opened as far as Woking and this began the transformation of Weybridge from a quiet rural backwater. Many villas belonging to wealthy city men were soon lining the slopes above Broadwater in Oatlands and those of St. George's Hill.

At the bottom of Monument Hill, close to the town centre is a monument to the Duchess of York, erected by public subscription in 1820 from the remains of the original Seven Dials Monument that stood in St.Martin's Lane London until 1773.

Monument Green, Weybridge

The world's first leisure campsite was set up near Weybridge in 1906 and was part of the early history of the camping and caravanning club. In August 1901, six people went camping in an orchard on the outskirts of Wantage and from this small acorn grew the The Camping and Caravanning Club. The prime mover was Thomas Hiram Holding, a London-based journeyman tailor, who had developed a passion for camping at the age of nine, whilst crossing the American prairies with his parents in 1853, as part of a wagon train. By 1906, the Association had several hundred members and, in June that year, the first Club Site was opened at Weybridge.

In 1907, in the fields bordering the river Wey, Hugh Locke-King, the owner of Brooklands House, built the first motor racing track in England. Here, for thirty-two years, until its destruction in the Second World War, the most famous drivers in the world competed for victory.  Part of the track is still preserved and an interesting and thriving museum of motor racing and aviation stands at the site, utilising the restored Clubhouse.  The oldest air booking office in the world still survives and the airfield, in the centre of the race track, saw some of the earliest flights in England. Vickers established an aircraft factory adjacent to the site which was later taken over by British Aerospace, formerly the British Aircraft Corporation. The factory built many legends including the 'Wellington Bomber', the 'Dambusters' bomb and Concorde (which now can be seen in Brooklands Museum).