Leatherhead

Within 2 miles (3.2 km) there is evidence of pre-historic and Celtic hillfarming on the North Downs to the east and south - the Druid's Grove, Norbury Park being a possible example of a place of pre-Christian pagan gathering. To the east of the town is the line of Stane Street, an old Roman road. Most of it is now built over or is used as woodland and hillside footpaths. The road leads from London to Chichester, passing through the strategic Mole Gap.

Landscape features including barrows beside the A246 provide evidence for a second late Romano-British road that ran for some miles from Stane Street in the east, close to Ashtead Church, crossing the Mole at Leatherhead Bridge, to approximately the present road junction very close to Effingham Church. Here it veered more true west and continued in another straight line to Merrow Church, crossing the River Wey near Guildford Bridge. The road existed by late Saxon times and all the medieval churches between Leatherhead and Guildford lie within a few yards of this route.[8]

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.[9] Ashtead lay within the Copthorne hundred by the formation of the Kingdom of England. 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.

Leatherhead appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Leret. It was held by Osbern de Ow (Eu). Its Domesday assets were: 1 church, belonging to Ewell, with 40 acres (160,000 m²). It rendered £1. Pachesham within Leatherhead appears in Domesday Book as Pachesham. It was held by Hugo (Hugh) from the Bishop of Lisieux. Its domesday assets were: 3 virgates. It had part of 2 mills worth 12 shillings, 4 ploughs, 5 acres (20,000 m²) of meadow, woodland worth 3 hogs. It rendered a relatively low £3 10s 0d (£3.50) per year to its feudal system overlords.[10]

A market serving the developing agricultural economy developed at the crossroads and in 1248, Henry III granted to Leatherhead a weekly market and annual fair. 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. History 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, lived in Leatherhead's Mansion. A Wetherspoons pub in High Street is now named after him. 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.

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

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.

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 1986, the town was joined to the UK motorway system, when the M25 motorway[11] was built to the north. Leatherhead became Junction 9, which has odd non-aligned entry/exit points on each side.

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.[12]

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.

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[13] 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 villages of Fetcham and Mickleham 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[14] 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.[15][16]
• Halliburton Company has an office in Leatherhead, with its Landmark[17] based there.
• KBR has offices in Leatherhead, with its Granherne[18] subsidiary based there.[19]
• 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.

Now, the Leatherhead Theatre is once again presenting regular drama and acting as a theatrical centre for the area.[21]

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.[22]

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[26] for ages 4–7
• Oakfield Junior School[27] for ages 7–11

• Downsend School, close to Ashtead
• Downsend Lodge Leatherhead, part of Downsend School
• St John's School
• 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.

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.