Leatherhead

The earliest evidence of human activity in Leatherhead comes from the Iron Age. Flints, a probable well and two pits were discovered in 2012 during building work on Garlands Road and the finds suggested that the site was also used in the early Roman period.[10] Traces of Iron Age field systems and settlement activity have been observed at Hawks Hill, Fetcham (about 1 km (0.62 mi) southwest of the town centre)[11] and on Mickleham Downs (about 3 km (2 mi) to the south).[12][13] Also to the south, the Druid's Grove at Norbury Park may have been used for pre-Christian pagan gatherings.[14]

The route of Stane Street, the Roman road from London to Chichester, passes about 2.5 km (1.6 mi) southeast of the town.[15] Barrows beside the A246 provide evidence for a second late Romano-British road that ran from a junction with Stane Street close to Ashtead Church, crossing the Mole at Leatherhead Bridge and continuing towards Effingham.

The first known reference to Leatherhead is in the will of Alfred the Great in 880, in which land at 'Leodridan' was bequeathed to his son, Edward the Elder.[5]

The early settlement appears to have grown up on the east side of the River Mole: the site of an Anglo-Saxon burial ground is identified on the west side of the river at Hawk's Hill.[16] Leatherhead lay within the Copthorne hundred by the formation of the Kingdom of England.

The Medieval history of Leatherhead is complex, since the parish was divided into a number of manors.[5] The town appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Leret. It was held by Osbern de Ow as a mesne lord to William I. Its Domesday assets were one church, belonging to Ewell, with 40 acres (160,000 m²). It rendered £1.[6][17] To the south was the manor of Thorncroft, which was held by Richard son of Gilbert as tenant-in-chief.[18] To the north was the manor of Pachesham, subdivided into two parts each held by a mesne lord to the tenant-in-chief, Bishop Odo of Bayeux.[6][19]

For the majority of its history, Thorncroft Manor appears to have remained as a single, intact entity, with the exception of the subinfeudation of Bocketts Farm before 1300.[20][21] In 1086, it was held by Richard fitz Gilbert and it passed through his family (the Clares) to his granddaughter, Margaret de Clare, who married into the de Montfitchet family of Essex. Her great-grandson, Richard de Montfichet, sold the manor to John de Cheresbure in around 1190 and it was next purchased by Philip Basset and his second wife, Ela, Countess of Warwick, in around 1255.[20] In 1266, they granted Thorncroft (which provided an income of £20 per year) to Walter de Merton, who used it to endow the college in Oxford that he had founded in 1264.[22] Merton College remained the lords of the manor until 1904[23] and the continuity of ownership ensured that an almost complete set of manorial rolls from 1278 onwards has been preserved.[24] In 1497, Richard FitzJames, the Warden of the College, authorised the expenditure of £37 for a new manor house, which was used until the Georgian era.[23]

Work on the parish church was started some time in the 11th century. Many parts were added over the years, with a major restoration taking place in the Victorian era.[25]

In 1248, Henry III granted to Leatherhead a weekly market and annual fair.[5] The town survived an extensive fire in 1392, after which it was largely rebuilt. In common with many similar medieval towns, Leatherhead had a market house and set of stocks, probably located at the junction of Bridge Street, North Street and High Street.

Portrait of Elizabeth I (1588)

The Running Horse pub dates back to 1403 and is one of the oldest buildings in Leatherhead. It is on the bank of the River Mole, at the southern approach to the town centre.[26][27] Legend has it that Elizabeth I once spent a night at the inn when floods made the River Mole impossible to cross.

During the Elizabethan and Stuart periods, the town was associated with several notable people. Edmund Tylney, Master of the Revels, who was in effect the official censor of the time to Queen Elizabeth I and who may have lived in Leatherhead Mansion.[28] A Wetherspoons pub in High Street is now named after him.[29] Another notable local noble was Sir Thomas Bloodworth of nearby Thorncroft Manor, who was Lord Mayor of London during the Great Fire of London in 1666.[30][31]

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, preached his last sermon in Leatherhead on 23 February 1791.[32][33]

Leatherhead saw much expansion, with two major railways linked to it; see Transport.

In the 1870s, a group of clergymen built the private St John's School in the town, and it has produced a number of famous pupils. (See below).

The Letherhead Institute was built. The spelling was said, throughout much of Victorian times, to be the correct spelling.

Cherkley Court was a home of Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook.[34]

Once parish industries included Ronson's Lighters and Goblin Vacuum Cleaners. Both were used as ammunition plants in the Second World War. Most of the assembly plants pulled out of Leatherhead in the late 1970s or early 1980s, in favour of commerce, transport and distribution.

In the 1940s and '50s Leatherhead/Ashtead was made home to a Remploy factory, which was designed to provide work for disabled people in the local area. On 22 May 2007, Remploy announced that the Leatherhead factory along with 42 other sites would close.

In the late 1970s and early '80s, Mole Valley District Council modernised the town, with a pedestrianised high street and a large one-way system.

In October 1985, the town was joined to the UK motorway system, when the M25 motorway was opened between Wisley and Reigate.[35][36] Leatherhead became Junction 9, which has non-aligned entry/exit points on each side.

Leatherhead is in the Mole Valley parliamentary constituency, which has been represented in the House of Commons since 1997 by Sir Paul Beresford (Conservative).[37] Kenneth Baker served as the local MP from 1983 to 1997 and was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Baker of Dorking in 1997.[38]

Councillors are elected to Surrey County Council every four years. The town is part of the ‘Leatherhead and Fetcham East’ ward.

Five councillors represent the town on Mole Valley District Council (the headquarters of which are in Dorking):

Leatherhead was an urban district until 1974. It is now part of Mole Valley District, with Dorking as the administrative centre of Mole Valley District Council. On the Mole Valley coat of arms, Dorking is represented by two cocks and Leatherhead by a swan. On the shield the wavy lines are for the River Mole, the acorns are for the district's three parks, and the points are for the North Downs and Greensand Ridge.[41]

Since 2004, Leatherhead has been twinned with Triel-sur-Seine (Île-de-France, France).[42]

The symbol of Leatherhead is a swan holding a sword in its beak. This can be seen on the old Leatherhead coat of arms, and on the Mole Valley coat of arms. The insignia of Leatherhead Football Club includes a swan, as do the logos of the Swan Shopping Centre, Therfield School and the leisure centre.

Bank in Leatherhead town centre

The town is above the river, and set away from the parks. Until the 1970s, it had many shops. However accidents occurred from increased traffic close to winding bends and narrow pavements. Since then the central streets have been pedestrianised or partly blocked off, leading to a decline in the number of pedestrians and shop closures in favour of out-of-town supermarkets. The construction of the Swan Centre and its supermarket, brought some revitalisation. In 2002, the high street was voted one of the worst in the United Kingdom in a BBC poll.[43]

The theatre (see below) is also a cinema and has art exhibitions. In the late 1990s the town centre's only hotel, the Bull Hotel, closed down and was subsequently demolished. A Lidl store was built on the site and opened in February 2007. Early in the 21st century, Travelodge opened a new hotel on the site of the old Swan Hotel.

The Givons Grove estate, to the south of the town, was developed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Originally a constituent of Thorncroft Manor, it was an area of arable land, known as ‘Gibbons Farm’, named after a prominent local family. In the late 1780s, Henry Boulton, the then leaseholder of Thorncroft Manor and the owner of the Pachesham estate, built ‘Givons Grove House’, which was occupied for a short time by Sir William Altum. The house remained in the ownership of the Boulton family until 1859 and in 1865, it was bought by Thomas Grissell, the owner of Norbury Park. In 1919, the Givons Grove estate was bought by the aircraft manufacturer, Humphrey Verdon Roe, whose wife, Marie Stopes, would live at Norbury Park for 20 years from 1938.[44]

North Leatherhead or Leatherhead Common is the area north of the Kingston Road Bridge, bordered to the north by Leatherhead Golf Course, Ashtead Common and the M25 motorway and to the south by the railway which forks by the town centre. It includes the town's main secondary school, Therfield School, and part of the Trinity School, as well as the bulk of the town's social housing.

Here is the Royal Oak pub[45] and the North Leatherhead Community Association (NLCA) or social club in a former school building next to the Kingston Road Playing Fields and playground.

The village of Fetcham may be considered part of Leatherhead, especially as a postal area. The border with Fetcham blends into Leatherhead. Ashtead is separated from Leatherhead by the M25. Also close by are Headley Heath, Oxshott Woods, Box Hill and Bookham Common.

In the village of Headley, a military hospital, Headley Court (formerly RAF Headley Court), provides long-term rehabilitation to injured members of the British Armed Forces. Its playing fields can be used by helicopters.

• AIRCOM International a provider of mobile telephone network management solutions has its headquarters in Randall's Research Park in Leatherhead.
• CGI (formerly Logica) has had several offices on different sites in the town[47] and is now on the Springfield Drive site.
• ERA Technology Ltd, a strategic business unit based in Leatherhead.
• ExxonMobil has several major divisions based at ExxonMobil House in Leatherhead, including its ExxonMobil Aviation and ExxonMobil Marine businesses, as well as its aviation fuels operations.[48][49]
• Halliburton Company has an office in Leatherhead, with its Landmark[50] based there.
• KBR has offices in Leatherhead, with its Granherne[51] subsidiary based there.[52]
• Robert Dyas, hardware chain is based in Leatherhead
• Unilever PLC has its UK and Ireland headquarters in Leatherhead at the purpose-built Unilever House - home to the following consumer brands: Bertolli, Cif, Colman's, Domestos, Dove, Flora, Hellmann's, Knorr, Lynx, Marmite, Persil, Radox, Sure, Surf, Toni & Guy, Tresemme, VO5 and Wall's ice cream.

Leatherhead's theatrical history dates from at least Tudor times. In 1890 the Victoria Hall opened in High Street and presented popular melodramas. In 1910, it was converted to a picture house, putting on the new "films", at first silent but later showing "talkies".

In 1939, the Crescent Cinema, with over 1,000 seats, was built in Church Street. Run by a local family, it prospered until the 1960s.

Two attempts in the late 1940s to reinvent the Victoria Hall as a theatre were unsuccessful. However the basement was converted to the "Green Room Club", and then in 1950 the theatre became home to the small "Under Thirty Theatre Group", who had good connections with the London theatre scene. Performances in the small building often featured leading actors and became increasingly popular, even as the building itself deteriorated.

Following a public fund-raising effort, September 1969 saw the opening by Princess Margaret of a replacement facility, the Thorndike Theatre, named after Dame Sybil Thorndike. Designed by Roderick Ham, the theatre was a complete 'cultural centre' whose radical open walkways and exposed concrete finish are thought to have influenced the later National Theatre in London.

For 30 years, the Thorndike Theatre maintained a reputation for high quality drama, and especially for presenting 'trial run' pre-West End shows. However, the theatre always struggled for funding, and closed in 1997. After four years of physical dereliction, it was taken over by a religious group.

Later the Leatherhead Theatre presented regular drama and acted as a theatrical centre for the area.[54]

Leatherhead Drama Festival began in 2004 and is the UK's largest drama festival of its type, in which schools and drama groups from around Surrey and beyond compete each year for the Sir Michael Caine Drama Awards, the Richard Houghton Awards and the 'Fire & Iron' New Writing Awards. Sir Michael Caine, patron of the festival, presents the awards, filming schedule permitting, at the Gala Awards Night each year.

Siouxsie Sioux

The band John's Children, which included sometime frontman Marc Bolan, was formed in the town in 1963 by Andy Ellison and Chris Townson, former pupils of nearby Box Hill School.[55]

Leatherhead secured a place in modern music history when, in 1974, producer Nigel Gray set up the Surrey Sound recording studios in a former village hall in the north of the town. Early demo pieces for, among others, the Wombles and Joan Armatrading were followed, from 1977, by the recording of much of the early repertoire of the Police. This included "Roxanne" and the band's debut album, Outlandos d'Amour; Reggatta de Blanc and its singles "Message in a Bottle" and "Walking on the Moon"; and the Grammy Award-winning Zenyatta Mondatta and its hit single "Don't Stand So Close to Me". In 1978, Godley & Creme recorded the first of five albums at Surrey Sound.

Subsequently, there were successful recordings at the studio by artists including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Rick Astley, the Lotus Eaters, Alternative TV and Bros. With Gray's brother Chris as engineer, Surrey Sound initially had a four-track capability but upgraded to 16-track in 1977 and to 24-track a year or two later. It was sold by Gray in 1987.

Less influentially, in 1980, local band the Head released the punk rock single "Nothing to Do in a Town Like Leatherhead".

There is a local football team Leatherhead F.C. ("The Tanners") who play at Fetcham Park Grove. In the 1974–75 season the Tanners were drawn against First Division Leicester City at home in the FA Cup Fourth Round Proper. With the game switched to Filbert Street, the BBC's Match of the Day cameras and over 32,000 people saw a dramatic match: Leicester won 3–2. Leicester City went on to play Arsenal in the next round. In the 2017–18 FA Cup they reached the second round proper where they were tied away to Wycombe Wanderers.

• Therfield School
• St. Andrew's Catholic School
• St Peter's RC Primary School
• Leatherhead Trinity School and Leatherhead Children's Centre.[n 2]
• Fetcham Infants School[60] for ages 4–7
• Oakfield Junior School[61] for ages 7–11

• Downsend School, close to Ashtead
• Downsend Lodge Leatherhead, part of Downsend School
• St John's School[62]
• West Hill School

• A taxi rank is located at Leatherhead railway station and is accessible from the southbound platform. There is also a taxi company called Mole Valley Premier which is situated on North Street.

The entrance to Leatherhead railway station.

Leatherhead is served by Leatherhead railway station. Over the years, however, Leatherhead has had four railway stations, two of which were only temporary and survived for about eight years from the railway's first opening in 1859. The current and only surviving station was designed by C. H. Driver in fine gothic revival style. It opened in 1867 to serve the London Brighton and South Coast Railway line to Dorking. The remains of the second London and South Western Railway railway station can still be seen on the Leatherhead one way system. It was built as a separate terminus, but became a through station when the line to Effingham Junction and Guildford was opened in 1885. It was closed in July 1927. The lines were electrified by the Southern Railway in 1925.[63]

Services included trains northwards to London Waterloo, London Victoria, Epsom, Sutton and Wimbledon where it connects with the London Underground and Tramlink, and south to Dorking, Horsham, Guildford.

• The main London to Worthing road, the A24, runs through the edge of town being part of its bypass, to the east.
• The M25 motorway lies to the north of the town, with Leatherhead being accessed via Junction 9.

The town gasworks were built in 1850, close to the junction of Kingston Road and Barnett Wood Lane by the Leatherhead Gas Company. The first gas was produced in February 1851 and was primarily used for street lighting, but also supplied some private houses.[64] Until the railway was opened in 1859, coal was delivered by road from Epsom.[65] In 1911, the Leatherhead company acquired that of Cobham and from 1929 supplied gas to Woking via a connection at Effingham Junction.[64] In 1936, the company was acquired by the Wandsworth Gas Company and the Leatherhead gasworks closed two years later.[64]

The Leatherhead pumping station was constructed in 1935 by the East Surrey Water Company.

The first public water supply in Leatherhead was created in 1884, when a stream-driven pumping station, capable of lifting 90,000 litres (20,000 imp gal) per hour, was constructed in Waterways Road.[66] A second diesel-powered station was constructed alongside the first in 1935 and was later converted to electric power.[66] The steam-powered works were demolished in 1992.[66]

An electricity generating station was opened in Bridge Street in 1902. Initially it was capable of generating 75 kW of power, but by the time of its closure in 1941, its installed capacity was 2.2 MW.[65] Under the Electricity (Supply) Act 1926, Leatherhead was connected to the National Grid, initially to a 33 kV supply ring, which linked the town to Croydon, Epsom, Dorking and Reigate. In 1939, the ring was connected to the Wimbledon-Woking main via a 132 kV substation at Leatherhead.[65][67]

Leatherhead is served by these emergency services:

• Surrey Police. Dorking Police Station.
• South East Coast Ambulance Service as of 1 July 2006, is the local NHS Ambulance Services Trust.
• Surrey Fire & Rescue Service, station just inside Fetcham, but called Leatherhead Fire Station manned by a full-time crew.

The nearest hospital with an A&E is Epsom Hospital, 5.3 km (3.3 mi) away.[68] As of 2021, the town has two GP practices (on Kingston Road and Upper Fairfield Road),[69] two dental practices[70] and one optician.[71]