Ashtead is a village in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England, approximately south of central London. Ashtead is on the single-carriageway A24 between Epsom and Leatherhead. The village is on the northern slopes of the North Downs and is in the catchment area of The Rye, a tributary of the River Mole.
The earliest archaeological evidence for human activity in the village is from the Stone Age. At several points in its history, including during the early Roman period, Ashtead has been a centre for brick and tile manufacture. From medieval times until the late 19th century, Ashtead was primarily an agricultural settlement. Residential development was catalysed by the opening of the railway line between and in 1859 and by the breakup of the Ashtead Park estate in the 1880s. Housebuilding continued into the 20th century, reaching a peak in the 1930s. Future expansion is now constrained by the Metropolitan Green Belt, which encircles the village.
There are two nature reserves in the village: Ashtead Common, to the north west of the centre, forms part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest and is owned by the Corporation of London; Ashtead Park, to the east of the centre is a Local Nature Reserve owned by the District Council.
Toponymy
In Domesday Book, Ashtead is recorded as Stede, which simply means "place". In later documents, the village appears as Estede, Akestede and Aschestede (13th century), Ashstede (14th century), Asshested (15th century), and Ashsted (1820). The name is generally agreed to mean "place of ash trees".|group=note
Geography
Location and topography
Ashtead is a large village in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, approximately south of central London. It lies on the southern edge of the London Basin and the highest point in the parish is above ordnance datum. Both the Epsom to Leatherhead railway line and the A24 run from northeast to southwest through the settlement, broadly parallel to The Rye, a tributary of the River Mole.
The historic core of Ashtead is known locally as "The Village" and is focused around the main shopping area along The Street (A24). The residential area to the north west, closer to the railway station, is known as "Lower Ashtead" and incorporates secondary shopping centres on Craddocks Parade and Barnett Wood Lane.
There are two protected nature reserves in Ashtead: Ashtead Common, a woodland, is owned and managed by the City of London Corporation and is to the north west of Lower Ashtead; the Ashtead Park is to the east of The Village and is owned by Mole Valley District Council.
Geology
Like many of the villages between Croydon and Guildford, Ashtead is a spring line settlement. It is positioned at the point where the chalk of the North Downs dips beneath the London Clay. The chalk is a natural aquifer and numerous wells have been bored into the ground to obtain drinking water. Springs rise at several points along the boundary between the permeable and impermeable ground, some of which feed The Rye and its tributaries, while others feed the ponds on the Common and in the Park. and tranchet axes, dating from 15,000 to 5000 BP, have been discovered in Ottways Lane and Glebe Road. During the demolition of Parsons Mead School in 2009, pottery from the Neolithic was found which contained charcoal that was radiocarbon dated to 3775-3659 BP. Bronze Age artefacts discovered in the village include a spearhead and pottery sherds.
Roman and Saxon
Ashtead was the site of a major Roman brickworks in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The site on Ashtead Common consisted of a corridor villa and kilns adjacent to a series of claypits. A bath house was also provided for the use of the workers. The complex was excavated in the 1920s and it is now protected by scheduled monument status.
Bricks and tiles produced in Ashtead were most likely transported via a short branch road to Stane Street, the Roman road that runs to the south east of the village centre. Remains of a building close to St Giles' Church, suggest that Roman occupation of Ashtead continued into the 4th century.
Although there is no archaeological evidence of Anglo-Saxon occupation in the village, Ashtead would have been administered as part of the Copthorne Hundred. In 1984, an Anglo-Saxon cemetery was discovered on the site of the former Goblin factory in Ermyn Way, Leatherhead (now the location of the offices of Esso). Excavations uncovered the remains of at least 40 individuals and the artefacts found, including knives, buckles and necklaces, suggest that they were pagan burials.
Medieval
Ashtead appears in the Domesday Book as Stede and was held by the Canons of Bayeux from the Bishop of Bayeux. Its assets were: three hides and one virgate; 16 ploughs, woodland for seven hogs and of meadow. In total, it rendered £12 per year.
The de Warenne Family, the Earls of Surrey, held the manor in the 12th century. In the second half of the 13th century, it passed to the de Montfort family. During the Second Barons' War (1264–1267), Ashtead men are known to have fought on the side of Simon de Montfort. The de Montforts and their descendants continued to own the manor until the death of Baldwin de Freville in 1419, when it passed to his brother-in-law, Sir Roger Aston. Ashtead passed through several generations of the Aston family until 1543, when Edward Aston returned the manor to the Crown in exchange for land in Stafford and Derby.
During the late 14th century, tile manufacturing was again taking place on Ashtead Common. Records from the Manor of Banstead indicate that a "Henry the Tyler of Asshstede" supplied over 10,000 roof tiles in 1372–3, and in 1384 the same individual also supplied the lord of the manor of Ashtead with tiles for "The Lord's Kitchen." It is possible that, during the 1290s, the tiles for the building of Pacchesham Manor, Leatherhead, were also manufactured on Ashtead Common. There is no mention of Henry the Tyler after 1400, and it seems likely that the medieval tileworks closed around this time.
The area now bordered by Barnett Wood Lane, Agates Lane, Ottways Lane and Harriots Lane, was formerly a separate manor called Little Ashtead, which was held by Merton Priory in the Middle Ages. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century, the area was known as Prior's Farm.
Early modern
Documents surviving from the mid-17th century, detail the organisation of the manor during the reign of Charles II: Two common fields, together totalling and representing around 30% of the cultivatable land in the village, were divided into strips of around 1 acre each. The strips were distributed between 52 families and the planting would have been regulated by the manor court. In 1656, 17 of these strips were held by the rector and provided an income for the parish priest. The remainder of the cultivatable land had already been enclosed and was either held by the Lords of the Manor or by other prominent individuals, including the Stydolf family of Norbury Park.
Ashtead is mentioned twice in Samuel Pepys' diaries. Part of his entry for 25 July 1663 reads:
:"I went towards Ashted, my old place of pleasure... and there we got a lodging in a little hole we could not stand upright in, but rather than go further to look we staid there, and while supper was getting ready I took him to walk up and down behind my cozen [cousin] Pepys's house... and so up and down in the closes, which I know so well methinks, and account it good fortune that I lie here that I may have opportunity to renew my old walks."
For much of the early modern period, Ashtead was owned by the Howard family. Sir Robert Howard purchased the manor from his cousin Henry Howard, the 6th Duke of Norfolk, in 1680 and is credited with transforming the land into a Gentleman's country seat. Celia Fiennes described the brick-built mansion as having "an abundance of pictures" and "very good tapestry hangings". Sir Robert's guests also included Charles II, James II and William III.
The turnpike road between Epsom and Horsham, which ran through Ashtead, was authorised by Parliament in 1755. By the end of the century, stagecoaches were passing through the village several times a day, although it is unlikely that many stopped to pick up passengers and local residents probably walked or rode to Epsom if they wished to use them.
19th century
For the first seven decades of the 19th century, Ashtead remained a predominantly farming community. The manor continued to be owned by members of the Howard family and was inherited by Mary Howard in 1818. Mary Howard was a major benefactor to the village and was responsible for founding St Giles' School. She endowed the almshouses and, together with her husband, Fulk Greville Howard, initiated a major redevelopment of the parish church.
The two common fields were enclosed in 1838, bringing to an end the open-field system in the manor. The land was divided into forty rectangular fields, each of around , which were leased to local farmers. In around 1850, the comprising the remaining core of Little Ashtead manor was sold for development, marking the start of a long period of housebuilding in the village.
The railway line through Ashtead was built by the Epsom and Leatherhead Railway Company and opened on 1 February 1859. It was constructed as a single-track line and, on opening, Ashtead railway station had only one platform and trains only stopped by request. Initially all services were operated by the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) and, for the first two months, only ran as far as . The completion of the line through enabled these trains to be extended to from April of the same year. In August 1859, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) began to run trains from Leatherhead to , but did not begin stopping at Ashtead until the following year.
After the death of Mary Howard in 1877, much of the village was offered for sale. Ashtead Common was purchased by Thomas Lucas, who sold it four years later, in 1889, to the banker Pantia Ralli. The rest of the land, much of it farmland, was split into eight separate lots. Since the sale coincided with a period of depression in British agriculture, the land sold cheaply. The lot containing Ashtead Park and Home Farm was withdrawn from sale when it failed to meet its reserve price
By 1887, the majority of the farms in Ashtead had been broken up and the land was in the hands of eight major owners and many smaller ones. Many of the new homes were in the west of the parish and housebuilding took place along Skinners Lane, Ottways Lane and Oakfield Road. By 1914, new houses had also appeared along Leatherhead Road, Woodfield Road and The Marld. George V visited the village by train in October 1914 to inspect the troops. By January 1915, there were around 1500 soldiers based in Ashtead. The war memorial at St George's Church was dedicated in 1920. The electrification of the railway line in 1925 also made the village more attractive to potential homeowners. The population increased from 3,226 in 1921 to 9,336 in 1939.
thumb|upright|Recruitment poster for the Ashtead Home Guard
In September 1939, children were evacuated to Ashtead from Streatham and Dulwich. A unit of the Royal Norfolk Regiment was stationed in the village at the start of the war and, from 1941, Canadian soldiers were billeted locally. Land bordering Craddocks Avenue was taken over for war allotments and pigs were reared on vacant building plots on the Overdale estate. In 1940 a company of the Home Guard was formed.
In 1940 and 1941, several buildings in Ashtead suffered damage as a result of enemy bombing during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, including St Andrew's School, which was almost completely destroyed.
The 1944 Greater London Plan placed much of the land surrounding Ashtead in the protected Metropolitan Green Belt, which severely limited the scope for urban expansion. The northern half of Ashtead Park was threatened with development from the late 1940s and so it was purchased by Surrey County Council in 1957, before being passed to the ownership of the Leatherhead Urban District Council. In 1988, three conservation areas were designated in the village.