1 – Railway Station
2 – Aviator Park
3 – Victory Park
4 – The George
5 – Hatch Farm
6 – The Crouch Oak
7 – Crouch Oak Green Estate
8 – Baptist Church and Churchill House
9 – Churchill House
10 – Dukes Court
11 – Bank House
12 – The High Street
13 – Simplemarsh Road – Chapel Fields
14 – Simplemarsh Road – South Side
15 – St. Augustine’s Home/Convent
16 – Simplemarsh Farm
17 – St Paul’s First School
18 – St Paul’s Church
19 – Addlestone Park
20 – Sayes Court Lodge
21 – Crockford Bridge
22 – Crockford Bridge Farm
23 – Coxes Lock Mill
24 – Wey Navigation
25 – Aircraft factories
26 – St George’s College and Mormon Church
27 – Albert Road and St Augustine’s School and Church
28 – Alexandra Road
29 – The Broadway
30 – The Old Fire Station
31 – The Crouch Oak Pub
32 – Gleeson mews
33 – Tesco Store
34 – The Methodist Church
1 –
Railway Station
The station was built in 1848 when the L&SWR completed the Weybridge-Chertsey Railway. Note the fine cast-iron pillars on the present platforms. The journey to London at first took 50 minutes. The adjacent Woburn Park Hotel, now demolished and replaced by flats, was built in 1884 on the site of the Hope Brewery, about the same time as the shops to the west of the crossing, then known as the Broadway (see 29 and the plaque above a shop).
2 –
Aviator Park
Originally the site of the Bleriot Aeroplane Factory. After World War I the factory made the Bleriot-Whippet Cycle-Car, Eric Longden small car and various light aircraft. Weymanns Motor Bodies from 1925 built buses, ambulances and, later on, military vehicles. In the late 1960s, after Caddy (coachbuilders of Chertsey), Plessey Radar leased the site and developed it until 1990 when Marconi took over. The buildings were demolished in 2001 and Aviator Park developed. See “Air-Road-Sea Addlestone” by J.H. Rowe (1992) for a fuller story.
3 –
Victory Park
This land was once part of Captain’s Farm, owned by Lt. Col. de Visme (who fought in the Peninsula War). The floral gardens and football field opened in 1919 by General Sir James Brunker of Fairoaks, Liberty Lane. The gates and entire park are a dedicated war memorial thus making it the largest in the UK and unique, all thanks to the generosity of Councillor Constantine Doresa. There is a stone fountain a short distance from the main gates dedicated to the wife of Constantine Doresa. In the 1930s the cricket field and the bowling green areas were added to the Park, while tennis courts were purchased from Addlestone Hard Courts Club.
4 –
The George
The George is the oldest inn in Addlestone. The building is probably of 16th century date with 18th century additions and has been an inn with the same name since at least 1775. Addlestone at that time consisted mainly of a cluster of cottages around The George and more between the Crouch Oak and Simplemarsh Road. Some, dating from around 1800, still survive and, like 114/116 Chertsey Road and The George, are Listed Buildings. This area formed the centre of the hamlet until Marlheath or Addlestone Common, to the south of “The Prairie”, was enclosed in the early 19th century.
5 –
Hatch Farm
This farm, north of the railway bridge, has parts that date from the 17th century, including a four-bay barn with some original queen post trusses and tie beams. For many years it was the home of the Roake family of yeoman farmers and brickmakers. Nearby is Woburn Hill House, an amber coloured brick house c1815 in Regency style.
6 –
The Crouch Oak
Traditionally said to be one of Britain’s oldest trees and erroneously said to be a boundary marker of Windsor Forest, its name derived from either its low, crouching form or from a crutch holding up a main branch or from a cross placed on it as a marker. For long known as Wycliffe’s Oak – after the medieval scholar reputed to have preached here, it was definitely the scene of a sermon by the Reverend Spurgeon in 1872 after laying the foundaton stone of the Baptist Chapel (see 8.). It was fenced c1810 by Lt. Col. de Visme to prevent village maidens stripping the bark to make a love potion! A section from the main branch has been dated by dendrochronology for the Addlestone Historical Society. This revealed that the central ring of this branch was formed in 1670 and so the main (but hollow) trunk is very much older. A new oak was planted a short distance from the Crouch Oak to celebrate the start of the new millennium.
7 –
Crouch Oak Green Estate
Once the site of the Princess Marys Village Homes, only its iron gates indicate this once extensive “refuge for daughters of convict mothers, girls from destitute families or otherwise in need of protection”. It was set up in 1871, pioneering the family type of residential home. It later became an Approved School, named after Queen Mary’s mother, the Duchess of Teck. The turret clock and iron arch from the gateway are preserved at Chertsey Museum. Note the fine gates, the posts of which were made by the Herring & Son foundry of Chertsey.
8 –
Baptist Chapel
The first chapel on this site was an existing building converted in 1840 after the loss of the earlier chapel built and owned by Rev. R. Bowyer in 1812. The present chapel was built in 1872 to seat 300 people. Note the foundation stone laid by the Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon.
9 –
Churchill House
Originally the site of “The Railway Arms” which opened in the 1850s but was known as “The Magnet” by 1870. For a long time the sign was a horse shoe-shaped magnet. This was replaced by a picture of Billy Bunter when “The Magnet” comic became popular. In the 1990s it changed its name to “The Station House” with a sign depicting a steam train and referring to its origins. It remained closed for many years before it was demolished in 2010. The residential development of Churchill House was built in 2011.
10 –
Dukes Court
Until 1995 the Duke’s Head pub stood on this corner of Station Road and Brighton Road. The Bus stop adjacent in Brighton Road is still known as “The Duke’s Head Coach Stop”. John Drewett, Inn-Keeper of Chertsey, built the pub in 1815 following enclosure of the manor of Chertsey Beomond. It was probably named after the Duke of York, a major local land owner then resident at Oatlands Park, whom Drewett had served as groom. A single-storey extension was formerly a billiard room opening on to a bowling green on which the establishment prided itself in the 1880s. in the latter part of the 20th century, it became the headquarters of the Chertsey and Addlestone Band; and Paul Simon (of Simon & Garfunkle fame) performed here in the 1960s. For a long time The Duke’s Head was the main residential hotel, with a clientele of “tradesmen and respectable working class” (according to the Detailed Return of Fully Licenced Houses in Surrey, February 1892).
11 –
Bank House
Originally the National Westminster Bank which opened as the London County & Westminster Bank in 1915. Note the locally listed Portland stone doorway. The former library (dating from 1954) in Church Road, now used by the Citizens Advice Bureau, was built in the garden of Kingthorpe, home of Mr. T.W. Weeding, JP, a local dignitary. Part of the original garden wall can be seen in Church Road on the far side of Burleigh Road. The Bank was converted to flats in 1999.
12 –
The High Street
The offices called “Glendinning House” on the corner of High Street and Station Road stand on the site of a shop that dated from about 1881 and was demolished in December 1995. Developed from two cottages, the original shop was first occupied by Fox, later Wyles (sometimes called “the Bentall’s of Addlestone”). From 1921 to 1950 it became Tavener’s, a large draper, and finally, in 1988, Brouder & Wilshire, a carpet and furniture shop. (for and expanded history of this site see AHS Newsletter 47)
Opposite, the building was once called Parr’s High Class Grocer and Post Office. It became a dry cleaners as shown in the photograph before being converted for residential use. The adjacent row of small shops dating to 1870 on the west side were known as Devonshire Terrace.
A pub stood on the Holly Tree site as early as 1840 and was known by that name by 1845. There was a holly tree that once grew in what is now the toad junction with Simplemarsh Road and formed an island in the rad. The Surveyor of Chertsey UDC reported in December 1905 that the dead stump of the tree had been removed. The island was still therein the 1920s and the inn sign was sited there. As the photographs show, the pub has undergone several external changes.
John Cree built No’s 24/24a, in the early 19th century for his son. John Cree was a famous Addlestone Horticulturist, who owned a nursery. He published a catalogue Hortus Addlestonensis in 1829 detailing his extensive stock of plants shrubs and tools. Part of his nursery was located on land bounded by Church Road, Brighton Road and Burleigh Road. This site later became Kingthorpe, and Bank House now stands on the corner of Brighton Road and Church Road. (see 11.) A pamphlet about John Cree is available from the AHS.
13 –
Simplemarsh Road-Chapel Fields
The name of Simplemarsh Road may come from Schimpe (small marsh) and Pul (pool) or may be the place where “Simples” (medicinal herbs) were gathered during monastic ownership. Chapelfields, No. 52, comprised part of one of the oldest houses locally, dating from 1627, when a cottage existed here. In the 1840s John Mitchell Kemble, Anglo-Saxon scholar and brother of actress Fanny Kemble, lived in Chapelfields. This name, and that of streets to the north, come from land owned by a chapel of Chertsey Abbey. Part of the land on which Chapelfield stands was sold and a residential development built in 2020.
14 –
Simplemarsh Road-South Side
No. 47 (Keighley Cottage – bottom picture) looks like a chapel and now called Chapel Cottage, and indeed was the Methodist centre from 1885-1899 when the present Methodist Church was completed in Station Road. The Waggon and Horses pub (second picture) was originally a corrugated iron shack of a beerhouse next to No.45; hence the nickname “The Tin House”. Just south of the road can be seen Tipton Cottages, a row of back-to-backs c1840. No.67 (the top picture) with its crooked eaves and Gothic style, in existence by 1870, is now locally listed.
15 –
St. Augustine’s Home/Convent
Built on the site of Firfield, a house previously owned by J.A. Tulk (afer whom the Tulk Hall in Addlestone Community Centre is named) In the 1850’s Firfield was the residence of authors Samuel Carter Hall (editor of The Art Journal) and Anna Maria Hall (author of many novels and The Book of the Thames). Both were benefactors of St. Paul’s Church and School. The lady’s portrait is in Chertsey Museum along with a copy of her popular book. Charles Dickens was part of their extensive literary circle of friends and visited their home.
16 –
Simplemarsh Farm
A small housing development was approved in 2004 saving the site from being developed for a motorway service complex. The farm is now demolished and replaced by a small residential gated community. The farm was originally part of the Chertsey Abbey estate with a long list of occupiers including Viscount Castelmaine, Thomas la Coste (banker of Chertsey) and Joseph Vincent (a member of the first Chertsey Urban District Council of 1894). These 1985 houses are now in front of the original site entrance of Simplemarsh Farm. The farm site, now housing complex, is accessible only via a gated access from Green Lane near the bridge carrying St Peter’s Way.
17 –
St. Paul’s Close/St. Paul’s First School
These houses were built in 1991/2 on the site of the original St. Paul’s School, which was started in 1841 with 67 boys and 60 girls, and enlarged in 1851. The photographs show small semi-detached cottages built in front that were for the schoolmaster and schoolmistress. All were demolished by 1990 (Read the AHS monograph on these schools for more detail).
18 –
St. Paul’s Church
The church was completed in 1838 at a cost of £3,760, and altered and enlarged several times, especially 1883 and 1903. Memorials and windows inside are well worth study, including a plaque dedicated to Anna Maria Hall and Samuel Carter Hall of Firfield. Addlestone became a separate parish from Chertsey in 1857. Substantially damaged by fire in 2003 it is now restored. To the west (towards the M25) lies the new vicarage, built in 1986 to replace the original, and now demolished, building built for £986 in 1838. The present vicarage being adjacent to the church. To the east lie the Gardens to mark the 1953 Coronation. Nearby, forming part of the RAOB Club building is the “Red Room”, a late Victorian parish reading room, later used as a workshop by the school.
19 –
Addlestone Park
Two nearly life size stone knights, now in safe storage by Runnymede Borough Council, used to stand on brick pedestals at the entrance to Addlestone Park from Church Road before 1972. Various theories regarding their origin exist; their style suggesting a mid-Victorian date.
20 –
Sayes Court Lodge
This building, variously dated to the 16th and 17th century, was probably here in 1772 and became the lodge entrance to the Jacobean-style Sayes Court, approached via an avenue of lime trees. Walter de Saye owned land south of the Thames in 1276; among later occupiers were Sir Bartholemew Reed (Lord Mayor of London), Sir Richard Weston (whose family constructed the Wey Navigation) and James Paine (architect of Chertsey Bridge). The last owners of the house, the Rastricks, allowed it to decay till its demolition in 1928.
21 –
Crockford Bridge
The Bridge connects Brighton Road and New Haw Road. In 1926 the present structure replaced a narrow, rutted bridge with wooden-railed sides. The new bridge also straightened the direction of the road, covering the watersplash (ford) previously there. Crockford may mean “crooked ford”. Some kind of bridge must have existed here since 1666 because records state that Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I and Lady of the Manor, was liable for its repair in that year.
22 –
Crockford Bridge Farm
Follow the bending footpath and some parts of the farmhouse may be seen, including 500-year-old buildings and the granary (which is listed). A bomb damaged the Dutch-style gable during World War II. The Locke-King family (of Woburn Park and Brooklands fame) owned this farm, then known as Pyle’s Farm after the farmer, around 1900.
23 –
Coxes Lock Mills
Beyond the extensive millpond that used to power the machinery with a good head of water, the footpath passes by this mill complex, possibly named after a lock-keeper called Coxe. From 1777 its water was used to power an iron mill, originally built by the Wealden ironmasters Raby and Rogers, which operated on this site until 1832 and was rebuilt as corn and silk mills by 1835. The massive mill and silo buildings were erected during the first decade of the 20th century. Flour milling ceased in 1983 and the site was redeveloped in 1989 as a residential complex. The concrete silo building erected in 1969 was demolished.
Wey Navigation
Beyond the former level crossing, now a footbridge, is the first true canal in England since Roman times, today lined with small craft. An Act of Parliament in 1651 approved the canal’s course from Weybridge to Guildford (later extended to Godalming) and it opened to traffic in 1653, bypassing the River Wey’s meander to the south. The Pelican public house, beside the canal, appears to be middle 19th century and was rebuilt in 1922. It may have originally been built to serve the bargees.
25 –
Weybridge Business Park
The Park was redeveloped in 1998 and was the site of Airscrew Howden, where some 80% of propellers used by British World War II aircraft (up to 2,000 blades a week) were produced. Nearby, the World War I Lang Propeller Factory, now demolished, was also a large-scale enterprise. Aero engines were tested in this area during World War 1, some by Gordon Watney, who also tuned cars here.
26 –
St. George’s College
The College was opened here in 1884 by Roman Catholic Brothers of the Josephite order from a core of school buildings previously owned by Baron Petre about Woburn Park House. Some 61 boys moved over in 1869 from the St. George’s College, Croydon. Woburn, meaning “crooked stream”, gave its name to the medieval family living on the estate and to the Bourne crossing Chertsey Meads. In 1735 Philip Southcote purchased the land and created an “ornamental farm” with grotto and follies, arches and gateways – some of them designed by William Kent, including the rusticated entrance seen from the main road (not used as the present main entrance is off the roundabout). The adjacent Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is on the site of the second St. Augustine’s Church in Addlestone, known as the “Tin Church”, built in 1891.
27 –
Albert Road
The footpath crosses the Bourne into the 1880s-period Albert Road. St. Augustine’s, the second school in Addlestone, built here in 1882, closed in 1983 and demolished in 1987. The school building also served as a church until the “Tin Church” was built across the Weybridge Road near St. George’s College entrance in 1891 (see 26.). The present building, now the Surrey Muslim Centre, dates from 1939 and has a foundation stone on its north side. (Read AHS monograph on St. Augustine’s School). The Albert Dairy used to stand on the corner with Station Road and became Steadman’s builders. It is now demolished and replaced by flats. The school, demolished in 1987, was replaced by Regency Court. The allotments by the footpath are now St. Augustine’s Green, a small public open space.
28 –
Alexandra Road
The building at 202 Station Road, on the corner of Alexandra Road, is the former Rose Coffee Tavern, built in 1881 to replace an earlier building known as the British Workmen Coffee Rooms. The owner was Mrs Susanna Meredith, founder of Princess Mary Village Homes (see 7.) as well as other philanthropic institutions in Addlestone and London. Behind it in Alexandra Road was a Mission Hall which was also used for Temperance meetings. It continued trading until at least 1918.
Note the late-Victorian terrace cottages with glazed tiles over the windows *. The new business park buildings at the far end are on the site of a linoleum works built in the late 1870s (with associated cottages opposite). By 1904 the property was taken over by Sunbury Leather Co. and from 1946 was occupied by Taylor & Penton, part of the John Lewis Group.
29 –
The Broadway
Beyond the railway crossing, look across to the sign above No. 155 Station Road, which became a cycle shop in 1913 and was known from 1950 to 1988 as Berry Dicker’s. These shops were built around 1884.
30 –
The Old Fire Station
This building in Corrie Road was built in 1890 to house the Volunteer Fire Brigade’s horse drawn engine. There was a serious fire here in 1903 after a member of the brigade, it was alleged, carelessly threw a lighted cigarette into a sawdust-filled spittoon!
31 –
The Crouch Oak Pub
This public house was built in the 1860s and was known until 1959 as the Railway Inn. The garden originally extended as far as Corrie Road.
32 –
Gleeson Mews
A London Transport bus station and garage stood here from early 1933 until demolition in 1999. (There was an earlier bus garage on or near Weymann’s site (see 2) from 1930). Named after Gerry Gleeson, once landlord of the Duke’s Head and later Mayor of Runnymede.
33 –
Tesco Store
A new store was built for Tesco and opened here in 2001 on the former site of the Co-op store built in 1902 and enlarged in 1904. This store was originally the Addlestone and District Industrial Co-op. It was redeveloped during the 1980s and 1990s until it was finally closed and demolished immediately prior to the building of Tesco and roundabout at the entrance to the Tesco store.
34 –
The Methodist Church
The church was built in 1898/9 at a cost of £2,454 to replace the outgrown chapel in Simplemarsh Road (see 14). It was located next to the Village Hall, (built 1887), which was converted into a cinema, later the Plaza, in 1924; it closed in 1953 and was demolished in 1972. Osprey House now stands on this site. The church pinacles projecting above the gable end roof of the church, and shown in the photograph of the Plaza Cinema, were taken down leaving their stone pedastle bases after the demolition of the Plaza.