WOKING THROUGH THE AGES
Early Victorian Development
An old postcard of St Johns ChurchThe development of the Wey Navigation and the Basingstoke Canal in the 17th and 18th centuries did not have a major effect on the development of the area. Some goods from SUTTON GREEN, OLD WOKING, PYRFORD and BYFLEET were carried on the Wey, while HORSELL saw some limited development as a result of the canal, but the main change in the landscape was the developing nurseries and brick-works at KNAPHILL, GOLDSWORTH and around the ‘Kiln Bridge’ area.
It was here in the 1840s that a new Chapel of Ease to St. Peter’s was built. The dedication of the chapel soon lent its name to the new ‘village’ that built up around the canal at ‘ST JOHNS’.
Drawing of original Woking Station in 1838One major event in the early Victorian period was the coming of the railway in the late 1830s. The London & Southampton Railway was first proposed in 1830, but it was not until 1838 that the line was opened to Woking Common and 1840 before the line was complete to Southampton.
The Railway Hotel (now called The Sovereigns) was built in 1840, but apart from a few old cottages (such as Ramwick Cottage in Park Road), farms (Crosslanes Farm in Guildford Road) and squatters huts around MAYBURY Hill, there was little near the station at that time.
Drawing of Original Necropolis Plan showing the area around Woking Station (bottom right) in 1832In 1845 a branch line was built to Guildford and in the late 1850s this was extended by a series of branch lines to form a new direct line to Portsmouth. Woking became an important railway junction, but it was not the railway company that brought about the next significant event in the area’s history: it was another company - the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company.
In the 1850s the Necropolis Company bought the whole of Woking Common upon which to build a massive cemetery, but in the event only part of the land at Brookwood was used. Nevertheless, Brookwood is still the largest cemetery in Western Europe!
It was the sale of ‘surplus’ land by the Necropolis Company from the late 1850s onwards that brought about the development of modern WOKING TOWN CENTRE.
An old postcard of Royal Dramatic CollegeSome of the early land sales were in the KNAPHILL, BROOKWOOD and ST JOHNS areas, where land was sold for various institutions (including the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum and the Woking Invalid Convict Prison), with the Royal Dramatic College being one of the first developments in the MAYBURY area of town.
About the station, the first development was the building of the Albion Hotel in 1859-60, with the Red House Hotel following shortly after. In 1870 a row of newly constructed houses in the High Street was converted into shops and soon after, more shops were built in Chobham Road, Chertsey Road and Goldsworth Road.
The 1870s and ‘80s also saw the development of houses in the MAYBURY, HEATHSIDE, MOUNT HERMON and HOOK HEATH districts.
Linked Pages.
More information on the Early Victorian period may be found under the pages of the relevant places mentioned in the text above. The page on The Basingstoke Canal contains some more information about the waterway, with the page on The Railway dealing in more detail with that feature. Brookwood Cemetery & The Necropolis and Victorian and Edwardian Institutions are dealt with on the pages of that name.
Booklets.
Booklets on ‘The Industrial History of the Borough of Woking’ and ‘The Coming of the Railway’ together with the booklet on ‘The Mad, the Bad and the Sad - a Brief Guide to the Institutions of West Woking’ are also available - please see the list of publication on the HERITAGE WALKS page. Publications by the Brookwood Cemetery Society may also be available - please send a SAE for details.
