Oxted is a town and civil parish in the Tandridge district of Surrey, England. It is at the foot of the North Downs, south-east of Croydon, west of Sevenoaks, and north of East Grinstead.
Oxted is a commuter town and Oxted railway station has direct train services to London. Its main developed area is contiguous with the village of Limpsfield. The headwaters of the River Eden unite in the town, east of Titsey Place. The Eden feeds into Kent's longest river, the Medway. Only the southern slope of the North Downs is steep and its towns and farmland form the Vale of Holmesdale, a series of headwaters across Surrey and Kent to separate rivers.
The settlements of Hurst Green and Holland within the civil parish to the south are continuous, and almost wholly residential, areas.
Toponymy
The first written mention of Oxted is from an Anglo-Saxon charter of 862 AD, in which it appears as Acustyde. In the Domesday Book of 1086, the settlement is recorded as Acstede. In later documents, it appears as Akested (12th century), Axsted, Axstude and Ocsted (13th century) and Oxsted (14th century). The name derives from the Old English āc meaning "oak" and stede meaning "place". Oxted is generally agreed to mean "place of oak trees".
Hurst Green is first recorded in the mid-15th century as le Herst in a deed of Edward IV and as Herste grene in 1577. The name is thought to mean "open space by the wood (hurst)". The town straddles the London to East Grinstead railway line, which runs roughly north–south through the Parish.
The civil parish extends from the North Downs in the north to the settlement of Holland in the south. It includes Old Oxted and Hurst Green, which are to the west and south of the town respectively. Although the urban area of Limpsfield is contiguous with that of Oxted, the village is part of a separate parish. Much of Oxted and the surrounding area is drained by the headwaters of the River Eden, a tributary of the River Medway. The highest point in the civil parish is at Botley Hill, which at above ordnance datum is the highest point on the North Downs.
Geology
The oldest outcrops in the area are of Weald Clay, which comes to the surface in the south of the civil parish. A borehole, dug in 1958, indicated that the clay beneath Hurst Green and Holland is deep. Gravels deposited by earlier courses of the River Eden and its tributaries, are found above the clay in the same area. A thin band of Atherfield Clay comes to the surface between Hurst Green and Oxted, north of which are the Sandgate Beds, which overlie the Hythe Beds.