The Pilgrims’ Way takes its name from the medieval pilgrims who used it to travel between the great cathedral cities of Winchester and Canterbury. It is, however, much older than that. Archaeological evidence shows that it was in heavy use from about 700BC, and was probably travelled long before that. The way is more of a route than an actual road. It followed the natural causeway formed by the lower slopes of the North Downs that provide easy walking on firm chalk instead of the muddy clay of the Weald to the south or the strenuous climbs and descents of the upper slopes above.
The prehistoric route ran from the port at Folkestone to the sites of Avebury and Stonehenge in Wiltshire – the Canterbury and Winchester spurs became more heavily used in Christian times. From the west, the route enters Surrey at Farnham then heads east to pass south of Guildford, where a medieval spur ran up to the chapel on St Martha’s Hill. The Pilgrims’ Way then heads east to skirt north of Gomshall, Dorking, Reigate, Merstham, Chaldon, Godstone and Limpsfield, after which it passes out of Surrey into Kent. Parts of the original Pilgrims’ Way is now overlain by modern roads, so the long-distance footpath bypasses these sections to remain on unsurfaced tracks.
The main Roman road in Surrey is Stane Street which ran from London to Chichester (Noviomagus Reginorum to the Romans) – a distance of some 56 miles. The road was of standard Roman construction for a rural road in the provinces. It was flanked by drainage ditches 84ft apart. A strip 24ft wide was covered first with sand or gravel that was compacted down. Over this was a layer of sandstone pebbles (flint nodules from up on the downs), over which was another layer of compacted gravel. These layers added up to about 11 inches in all and there was a camber to throw rainwater off into the ditches. The road was built in about ad 60 and was maintained to a high level until about 380 when regular repair and maintenance seems to have stopped. For much of its route in Surrey, Stane Street is followed by the A24 or the A29, though some sections on the downs have been abandoned and now show up as humps in the grassy turf.
A secondary Roman road turned off Stane Street at Kempton and headed south to reach the South Coast close to where Portslade now stands. In Surrey it runs through Caterham, Godstone and Felbridge, though the precise route is not always known. The date of construction is also not known, but it seems to have been linked to the development of the iron industry in the Weald, which began in about ad 120. The route remained in use during the earliest English period, as village names such as Streatham, Stanstead and Stratton all derive from terms for a surfaced road, but by the 900s it seems to have fallen out of use along most of its length and was forgotten by later medieval times. Only in a few places do modern roads follow this route – the B2235 through Godstone and the Tilburstow Hill Road north of Blindley Heath, for instance.
The Romans built a road from London to Lewes. Near Tatsfield the course of the road forms the boundary between Surrey and Kent for some miles. The route of the road then skirts east of Limpsfield before entering Kent where the B2036 runs along its route for a while. The Roman villa, fulling workshops and possible temple at Titsey were found just to the west of this road.
In 1664 Parliament passed an act that allowed for the Mole to be made navigable from Reigate to the Thames. Although some surveying work was carried out, nothing was actually achieved. A rather more modest scheme was suggested in 1798 that was to link chalk quarries near Betchworth to works at Dorking by way of a canalised stretch of the Mole – but again nothing came of the plan. The dangers posed by French warships to merchantmen going up the Channel to reach London led to the proposal to build a canal from Portsmouth to Chatham so that the ships could dock in Portsmouth and unload their cargoes to barges to be moved to the Thames Estuary and so avoid the most perilous part of the journey. A branch of this canal was to go down the Mole, which was to be made navigable along most of its course. However, the Royal Navy proved to be so effective that the scheme never went ahead. An even more ambitious plan to build a canal wide enough to take the merchant ships themselves was proposed in 1820. It was to go up the Mole to near Reigate, then strike across country to Chichester. However, the company could not attract enough money to build the canal and the idea was shelved. The Mole was never made navigable for canal barges, with only the 500 yards or so closest to the Thames being able to handle craft this large. However, it has been used by locals in rowing boats for fishing and other purposes for centuries.
The River Wey had been used by small boats since prehistoric times, but it was in 1635 that Sir Richard Weston had the idea of making it navigable to large barges. Weston had spent much of his youth in the Netherlands, so when he inherited the family estates near Guildford it was only natural that he should think of Dutch methods to improve his income. His original plan was to improve the Wey by deepening shallows, cutting off long bends and inserting locks to maintain water depth on the stretch from Weybridge to Guildford. He would then operate barges from Guildford down the Wey to the Thames and thus on to London. This would increase the market for goods from his own estates and those of his neighbours. Work was interrupted by the English Civil War, but was completed by 1651. In 1764 the improvements were continued upstream to reach Godalming. Unlike many canals, the Wey Navigation Canal did not suffer unduly from the building of the railways. It is still in use today, albeit mostly for pleasure craft.
In 1810 the Earl of Egremont had the idea of linking the Wey Navigation Canal in Surrey to the similar Arun Navigation Canal in Sussex, thus providing a route for barges from the English Channel to the Thames. Egremont used his contacts to get permission for the work, raised the £86,000 needed and construction was completed in 1816. The canal did well, not only transporting goods between the Thames and the Channel but also moving goods in and out of the areas through which it ran. However, in 1865 a railway opened from Guildford to Horsham, in direct competition to the canal. The railway provided transport that was faster and cheaper, so the canal could not compete. It closed in 1871 and fell into disrepair. In the early twenty-first century efforts began to reopen the canal for pleasure boat use.
Founded in 1863 to promote a branch line from Sutton to the Epsom Downs racecourse, the Banstead & Epsom Downs Railway was short lived. The company received Parliamentary permission for the line, surveyed the route and demonstrated the financial profits that could be made from the line. The company then sold out to the LB&SCR earning a tidy profit for its shareholders. The line still exists, although it was shortened slightly in the 1980s to allow the site of the original Epsom Downs station to be sold for housing development.
The nationalised railway of Britain was created in 1948. In Surrey the Southern Railway became the Southern Region of BR. Although BR rebuilt many stations and bridges in Surrey, the only major change to the rail network came in 1965 when the Guildford to Horsham line via Bramley and Cranleigh was closed. In 1997 BR was split up and privatised. Track became the property of Railtrack, while the operation of train services was divided between a number of companies.
The village of Caterham was a sleepy little place until 1856 when the CRC finished building a line from Caterham to Purley, where it linked to the LB&SCR. There was plenty of available building land and it was hoped that houses for commuters working in London would be built, providing passenger traffic for the railway. Unfortunately, Caterham lay in the area that the LB&SCR and SER had agreed belonged to the SER. With a mainline connection with the LB&SCR, the Caterham line fell between two stools. Neither the SER nor the LB&SCR wanted anything to do with the line, and their opposition dissuaded property developers from building houses. In 1859 the Caterham Railway Company went bankrupt and was bought out by the SER. It was not until the 1890s that the hoped-for housing developments began.
Formed in 1803 the Croydon, Merstham & Godstone Iron Railway was intended to run from Croydon to Reigate with a branch to Godstone Green. It was never completed, stopping at Merstham. The line served the quarries where hearthstones were made and chalk extracted to be made into lime. As a secondary business horse manure was brought from London for the use of Surrey farmers. Unlike later railways, the Croydon, Merstham & Godstone Iron Railway used horse-drawn wagons. In 1837 it was bought out by the London Brighton Railway.
Formed in 1856 the ELR built a single line from Leatherhead via Ashtead to the LB&SCR station at Epsom. The line opened in 1859, but the ELR never actually operated it. Instead the company made its money by renting the line to the LB&SCR who operated the trains. In 1865 the LB&SCR made a cash offer to buy out the ELR, which was accepted.
Built in 1968 and privately owned, the Great Cockrow Railway runs on a 7¼in gauge track through private woodland west of Chertsey. It is open on Sundays through the summer, offering passenger rides on miniature steam trains to the public.
This company was formed by a group of Guildford businessmen who wanted to bring the railway to Guildford in order to improve transport links for their town. The company surveyed a route from the LSWR station in Woking and hired William Prosser to construct the route. The LSWR, however, announced it would prefer to build the line itself and made the shareholders of the Guildford Junction an offer that they chose to accept. The new line opened on 5 May 1845.
The GKLR was a strange company born in 1881 out of the desires of a mixed bag of investors. Among these was the successful Metropolitan District Railway, running what is now the Metropolitan Line of the London Underground, which wanted to extend its line south of the Thames. The town councils of Kingston and Guildford were unhappy with being served only by small branch lines. The wealthy Earl of Onslow, Lord Lovelace and Lord Foley, meanwhile, owned extensive tracts of Surrey countryside that were not served by railways at all. Together they cooked up a scheme to extend the Metropolitan Railway from Putney through Kingston and Thames Ditton and thence south-west through Claygate, Cobham, Horsley and Clandon to Guildford. Branch lines to Ashtead and Bookham were included in the proposed railway. Not wanting the Metropolitan to become a rival in what it viewed as its own territory, the LSWR approached the GKLR with a proposal to build and operate the sections of line south of Thames Ditton. The lords and Guildford Council jumped at the offer, with the Metropolitan and Kingston being left out in the cold. The new LSWR line to Guildford via Claygate, Clandon (and stops in between) opened in 1885.
This supposedly independent railway company was little more than a front organisation for the LB&SCR. The route linked the LSWR station at Guildford to the LB&SCR station at Horsham, a distance of 16 miles. At first the LSWR welcomed the line as it thought it would bring extra traffic to its line from London to Portsmouth via Guildford. Once it realised that a major shareholder in the new company was the LB&SCR, however, the LSWR announced it would not allow the new line to use its station. The LB&SCR then went public with its involvement and announced plans for its own Guildford station. The LSWR then relented and gave the new line permission to use the existing station. The line opened in 1865.
Founded in 1862 by landowners in the area over which the railway was to run, the HDLR modelled itself on the ELR. The HDLR intended to build and own the line, but to have the LB&SCR run the actual services. In 1864 the LB&SCR announced that it would rather own the line outright, and bought out the HDLR. The investors made a profit and got the railway line that they wanted.
Founded in 1834 to link the two cities named in its title, the LSR had its London terminal beside docks on the Thames at Nine Elms – now Vauxhall station. It opened as far as Woking in May 1838 and to Shapley in September that same year. By 1839 the line had reached Basingstoke and Winchester in 1840 with the through line completed later that year. No sooner was the line completed than the company began works on lines to Salisbury, Dorchester, Weymouth, Windsor, Reading and Godalming. Clearly the name London & Southampton Railway was no longer good enough, so it was changed to the London & South Western Railway in 1840.
This company was founded in 1837 to build a line from London to Brighton, with a branch to Shoreham. The line was completed in 1841. In Surrey the railway ran south through Merstham and Horley, with a tunnel through the downs at Merstham that was one of the longest in the world when it was built. A station was put in an empty field beside a lane leading to Reigate and named Redhill, owing to the colour of the rocks. The town of Redhill grew from that station. The line proved to be popular and profitable. In 1846 the LBR merged with the London & Chichester Railway, the Brighton & Chichester Railway and the Brighton, Lewes & Hastings Railway to form the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway.
In 1860 the new LB&SCR built a bridge over the Thames and constructed a grand new terminus at London Victoria, still the London end of the network. The company also built or took over new lines in Surrey, including those to Epsom Downs, Leatherhead, Dorking, Guildford, Oxted and Cranleigh. Most of the company’s expansion was, however, in Sussex or south London.
In the wake of the First World War it was realised that the railways had been heavily overused and required massive investment. Many of the smaller companies were unable to raise the capital and faced closure. In 1923 the government decided to force a series of massive mergers on the railway companies so that the profitable lines would take over those in financial difficulties. The LB&SCR became part of the Southern Railway.
When the LSR became the LSWR one of its first acts was to move its London terminus closer to the City. In 1845 work began on a line from Vauxhall to London Bridge with an intermediate station at Waterloo Bridge. The line opened as far as Waterloo Bridge in 1848, but the rest of the route to London Bridge was never completed. The London terminus came to be at Waterloo Bridge, later renamed just Waterloo.
Meanwhile, works in Surrey continued. The LSWR came to operate trains on several lines in Surrey in addition to the main London–Southampton line through Surbiton, Woking and Farnborough. The line from Woking to Portsmouth via Guildford and Godalming, the line from Surbiton through Claygate and Clandon to Guildford and the Shepperton branch were all run by the LSWR. In the 1923 reorganisation, the LSWR became part of the Southern Railway.
In 1858 a group of Portsmouth businessmen formed the Portsmouth Railway Company and built a line from Havant to the LSWR station at Godalming. The LSWR agreed to operate trains over the new line and services began in 1859. The LSWR wanted the Portsmouth Railway to extend the line into Portsmouth itself, but soon found that the necessary land was owned by the LB&SCR, which refused to sell. Complex negotiations ensued between the LSWR, LB&SCR and the SER which resulted in the Portsmouth Railway being allowed to use the SER Portsmouth terminus. In 1877 the Portsmouth Railway was bought out by the LSWR.
Founded by Guildford banker Frederick Mangles, the RGRR completed a line between the three named towns in 1849. During the course of construction, the RGRR had approached the three big railways in Surrey asking how much they would pay to operate trains over the lines. The SER made the highest offer and began running trains in 1850. Two years later the SER bought out the RGRR.
The SER was always primarily a Kent railway company. In Surrey it ran the east–west line that ran through Guildford, Dorking, Redhill and Godstone. In the 1923 reorganisation, the SER became part of the Southern Railway.
Founded in 1925 to build a light rail line from the main line station at Sanderstead over the downs to Orpington in Kent, it was hoped that this electrified line would open up the area to residential development. The company was still in the process of planning its route when the stock market crash of 1929 struck and the SHLR went bankrupt.
The Southern Railway was formed in 1923 by an amalgamation of the SER, LB&SCR, LSWR and a number of smaller companies. It operated all the railways in Surrey, introducing electrification to suburban lines while retaining steam for the long-distance trains. The only new line built by the company in Surrey was the branch line to Chessington South from Raynes Park with intermediate stations at Motspur Park, Malden Manor, Tolworth and Chessington North. It was originally planned to extend the line to Leatherhead, but the outbreak of war in 1939 halted work and it was never restarted. In 1948 the Southern Railway was nationalised to become the Southern Region of British Railways.
In 1885 this small company built a line from Staines through Colnbrook to West Drayton and leased out the right to run trains over the line to the Great Western Railway (GWR). The arrangement lasted until 1900 when the GWR bought out the smaller company.
This railway company was ambitiously named since its lines never got as far as Woking. The Staines to Wokingham section was leased in 1856 to the SER, which later bought out the smaller company.
Although an independent company, this railway was backed by the army which wanted a line linking the staff college at Cambridge Town (now Camberley) and the huge camp and practice grounds at Aldershot to the main railway network. The company began work in 1864, but in 1866 the investors decided that the anticipated army traffic would not be enough to turn a profit. The work was stopped and the company folded.
Founded in 1865 this company was a front for the LB&SCR that wanted to promote a line from Croydon to Tunbridge Wells via Oxted that would stop the SER from using the route. The work on the line was only ever half-hearted as the cuttings, viaducts and tunnels were always going to be expensive and anticipated traffic was low. In 1869 the LB&SCR took over the SSJR and stopped work on the line. It would be 20 years before the line was built.
This light railway ran from Camberley to Frimley and opened in 1938. The outbreak of war in 1939 doomed the company, which folded in 1941.
In 1860 W.S. Lindsay, Lord of the Manor at Shepperton, founded this company with the intention of linking Shepperton to the LSWR main line at Twickenham. The LSWR agreed to operate the trains, which first ran in 1864. The line proved to be a huge success and soon it was obvious that the single track could not handle the traffic. The TVR could not raise the capital to install a twin track, so the LSWR bought out the small company and did the work itself.
In 1794 the Basingstoke Canal was completed, linking that town with the Thames via the Wey. When Parliament began debating the construction of a proposed railway from London to Southampton, the Basingstoke Canal company realised that the railway would not only take custom away from their waterway, but would also cut across their route. They successfully lobbied Parliament to insert into the railway bill a clause stating that the railway must not interrupt the use of the canal. The railway company, the London & South Western Railway (LSWR), solved this problem by ingeniously working around the canal. At Frimley Green the most impressive engineering feat can be seen from the B3012 just south of the village. A four-arch aqueduct carries the canal over the railway. It is not everywhere you can see a boat going over a train!
| High Street | 86 |
| Church Road | 70 |
| Station Road | 63 |
Junction of Priest Hill and Windsor Road, north of Englefield Green
Wimble Hill, about 2 miles west of Farnham
Chase Warren Wood, off Tennyson’s Lane south of Haslemere.
Crockham Hill, off Kent Hatch Road just east of Limpsfield Chart
Summit of Leith Hill 965ft (294m) above sea level
North end of Ferry Road, Thames Ditton 31ft (9.5m) above sea level