Oxted
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, Axsted, Axstude and Ocsted and Oxsted. 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 ". "Holland" appears in 1757 as Hollands and is thought to mean "land by the hill".
Geography
Location and topography
Oxted is in east Surrey, around south of central London. It is on the Greenwich Meridian, which passes through Oxted School, Station Road East and East Hill. 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. The town centre is primarily on the Folkestone Beds, which take the form of a ferruginous quartz-rich sandstone, containing seams of ironstone and mica. To the west of Oxted railway station, there is a thin wash of pebbles, thought to have been deposited by river action during the Pleistocene. To the north of the town, the Chalk of the North Downs has historically been divided into three bands: Lower Chalk, Middle Chalk and Upper Chalk. At Oxted, the middle chalk is around thick.History
Early history
The earliest evidence of human activity in the civil parish is from the Iron Age and finds include a metal brooch dating from the 3rd or 4th centuries BCE. During the Roman period, the roads from London to Lewes and London to Brighton ran either side of Oxted. The name Oxted suggests that the modern settlement was founded in the Anglo-Saxon period and it is possible that St Mary's Church is built on a pre-Christian religious site. From late Saxon times, the area was administered as part of the Tandridge Hundred.Governance
Oxted appears in the Domesday Book as Acsted and was held by Eustace II, Count of Boulogne. Its Domesday assets were: 5 hides; 1 church, 2 mills worth 12s 6d, 20 ploughs, of meadow, pannage worth 100 hogs. It rendered £14 and 2d from a house in Southwark to its feudal overlords per year.The early medieval manor of Oxted was centred on Oxted Court Farm, to the south of St Mary's Church. For much of this period, up until the end of the 13th century, it was held by the de Acstede family, who were mesne lords to the Crown. As the Middle Ages progressed, Oxted was broken up into smaller estates. In around 1246, Broadham manor, thought to have been centred on the present day Broadham Green, to the west of Hurst Green, was granted to Battle Abbey. Records from 1312 and 1408 indicate that Broadham manor covered an area greater than and that the annual rent from the abbey was 51s. Similarly, in 1283, the "Bursted" or "Birsted" estate was granted in perpetuity to Tandridge Priory, but it is unclear where in the parish this land was located.
The last male member of the de Acstede family, Roland de Acstede, was summoned to Parliament in 1290, but he died shortly afterwards. His estate was inherited by his five daughters, each of whom was given a share of the land. By 1300, one part of the manor was held by the sisters Clarica and Alina de Acstede, with the remainder by Hugh de Nevile. In 1342, John de Wellesworth, grandson of Roland, sold the de Acstede portion of the manor to Robert de Stangrave and his wife Joan.
Following the death of Robert de Stangrave in 1344, the former de Acstede portion of the manor of Oxted passed to his wife's family, the Cobhams. and in around 1350, John de Nevile, sold the remainder to them. The Cobham family lived at Starborough Castle near Lingfield and their lands in Oxted were run by a resident steward from Oxted Court Farm. In the 15th century, the manor passed to the Burgh family and, in 1587, Charles Hoskins purchased the "manor and advowson of Oxted" which covered some. By the mid-17th century, Barrow Green Court appears to have superseded Oxted Court Farm as the manor house. The Hoskins family held Oxted until the death of Susannah Hoskins in 1868, when it was inherited by her aunt, Katherine Master. She passed the manor to her descendants, the Hoskins Master family.
The civil parish of Oxted was formed in 1894. Oxted was part of the Godstone Rural District from 1894 until 1974, when it was combined with the Caterham and Warlingham Urban District to create the Tandridge District.
Transport and communications
The turnpike road from Wrotham Heath to Godstone passed through the town. The modern-day A25 road divides the original town from "New Oxted", the development that grew up to the north-east after the railway station opened in 1884. A bypass diverting the A25 to the north of Old Oxted was built in the late 1960s.The first act of Parliament to authorise the construction of a railway through Oxted was granted in July 1865. It authorised the Surrey and Sussex Junction Railway to build a line from Croydon to Groombridge, where there was to be a junction with the East Grinstead to Tunbridge Wells line. The act was controversial as the S&SJR was sponsored by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, but ran into a part of Surrey and East Sussex which was considered South Eastern Railway territory.
In three years, the S&SJR managed to build the Oxted Tunnel and two shorter tunnels at Riddlesdown and Limpsfield. However, construction became increasingly difficult as a result of the 1866 financial panic caused by failure of Overend, Gurney and Company and, in 1869, there was a riot at Edenbridge because Belgian navvies were being employed to build the line. A second act of Parliament was obtained in 1869 to formally transfer line to the LBSCR, who immediately asked for powers to suspend works. The company paid a penalty of £32,250 and construction ceased immediately. No work took place on the unfinished railway line until 1878, when a third act of Parliament authorised the Croydon, Oxted and East Grinstead railway, which would take over construction and be jointly owned by LBSCR and SER. Among the works that were completed by the new company was the iron viaduct between Oxted station and Limpsfield tunnel.
The new line finally opened to passenger traffic in March 1884. Oxted station, originally called Oxted and Limpsfield, was provided with two through platforms and a south-facing bay platform. There was also a freight yard with a south-facing connection to the line. A second station in the parish, Hurst Green Halt opened with line and was replaced by Hurst Green station, to the north, by British Rail in 1961.
The line south from Hurst Green to Eridge was opened in December 1887. A century later, in 1987, Hurst Green Junction signal box closed as part of a resignalling programme for the whole line. Electrification of the line through Oxted to East Grinstead completed July 1987, but the line to Uckfield remains unelectrified.
Residential development
Although there is thought to have been a religious building on the site of St Mary's Church since before the Norman Conquest, it is unclear whether there was a significant nucleated settlement close to the site. It is possible that much of the population was thinly dispersed throughout the parish until the 12th century.The settlement of Old Oxted was founded in the 13th and 14th centuries, to the south east of St Mary's Church, centred on a crossroads where the Guildford to Canterbury road met Beadle's Lane and Brook Hill. The street plan does not appear to have changed significantly since medieval times, although the surface of the High Street appears to have been lowered at some stage, most likely to reduce the steepness of the gradient as it approaches the stream at its east end. The oldest buildings in the village, 2–6 Godstone Road and The Old Bell pub, date from the 15th and 16th centuries. Several of the houses are thought to have originated as open hall houses, which have since been modified.
The opening of the railway line through Oxted in 1884, stimulated a rapid of phase of development in the parish. Since the line crossed the Guildford to Canterbury Road on an iron viaduct, it was not practical to build a station at this point. The site chosen for the station was to the northeast of Old Oxted and to the east of St Mary's Church.
With the arrival of the railway in 1884 Oxted boomed in line with London's trade growth around its station, north-east of Old Oxted, and new buildings created "New Oxted". These new buildings were built in the Tudor style, particularly with stucco frontages. All Saints’ Catholic Church was built in 1913–1928 designed by Arts and Crafts architect James L. Williams and The Pound House in Totteridge. The United Reformed Church's building followed in 1935, which is listed for its coloured glass and Byzantine design by architect Frederick Lawrence.
Development was supported by Charles Hoskins Master through his Barrow Green Estate selling land parcels for building on what became Chichele Road Circa 1912 and the gifting of Master Park in 1924 for recreation space. Road and place names in Oxted such as Barrow Green Road, Chichele Road, The Hoskins, Hoskins Road, Hoskins Walk, Master Close and Master Park provide a lasting legacy to the family involvement.
In 2011 The Daily Telegraph listed Oxted as the twentieth richest town in Britain.