Unlike its ancient neighbours, Redhill is a young town and was for centuries little more than rural marshland with a few isolated hamlets. Everything changed with the arrival of the railway in the nineteenth century. The town became a significant regional transport hub and this enabled it to compete economically with its long-established neighbour, Reigate.
Redhill has a name which is much older than the town itself. The Anglo-Saxon word Redehelde, meaning "red slope" or "red hill", referred to the distinctive sandstone ridge that was a local landmark, overlooking a landscape of fields, commons and scattered farms. The land was part of Reigate Foreign, the term meaning the agricultural land outside the jurisdiction of the town borough.
Redhill’s marshy land and poor drainage made it unsuitable for roads or large-scale building, but some of the local settlements were much older than the nineteenth century railway town. There were ancient sub manors of Reigate at Linkfield, Frenches, Hooley and Redstone. The largest development was at Linkfield but there were farms at Frenches, Redstone, Wiggie and Holmsthorpe and a watermill next to the stream at Hooley.
There is very early written evidence of a settlement at Linkfield in the Anglo-Saxon Ealdorman Alfred’s will, written about AD 889. Linkfield became a relatively prosperous sub-manor and its farm rents went to the Prior of Reigate. Reigate Manor court rolls from the 16th century record legal disputes where Linkfield tenants were fined for "illegal hedging" or blocking traditional pathways, proving that farmers were dismantling the medieval open-field system to make way for private, high-value sheep and cattle pastures.
Some of the houses built in this area can still be seen today.
The Old Cottage, Ian Capper (2009)
The Old Cottage located at 5 and 7 Mill Street, is a late medieval hall house converted into two cottages and now restored to single use.
The White Lion, Ian Capper (2009)
Mill Street ran westward on the ancient track from the old Hooley watermill up toward the high ground. At the crest of the hill, it met the southern end of Linkfield Street and Whitepost Hill/Lane.
The White Lion at 40 Linkfield Street was the oldest public house in the Redhill area built in the 16th century.
Close to where Linkfield Street converged with Mill Street, it was the primary tavern for agricultural workers from Linkfield and the millers, brickmakers, and travellers using Mill Street.
Carter’s Cottages, King’s Avenue, Ian Capper, (2008)
Wiggie also had ancient origins, its name coming from the old English ‘Wicga’s enclosure.’ Archaeological excavations there have found 13th-century pottery and medieval jettons (coin-like tokens). Wiggie was an isolated farmstead centred on Wiggie Lane (off Frenches Road) and a substantial house was built there in the 16th century.
A later settlement grew up at ‘Little London’ from the 17th century. It was a cluster of informal squatter cottages on Redhill Common, named disparagingly after the slums of London. Its impoverished residents survived by digging the area's rich red clay for brickmaking, running cottage laundries, and foraging for fuel.
The settlement expanded rapidly from 1816 after a new turnpike road through Rssedhill that by-passed Reigate brought more jobs like blacksmithing and stable work.
The neighbourhood was eventually renamed St John's after its local church opened in 1843. Several original timber-framed cottages built by these early labourers still survive at 10 and 11 Pendleton Road and King’s Avenue today.
Redhill Junction station c.1853, George S. Measom
Everything changed for Redhill in the 1840s when the London and Brighton Railway Company decided the cheapest route to Britain's fastest-growing seaside resort was across the low-lying ground at Redhill. Their decision transformed an obscure rural landscape into one of the most important railway junctions in southern England.
The first station, called ‘Red Hill and Reigate Road’, opened at Hooley Lane in 1841 with horse-omnibus connections into Reigate. A larger station opened on the present site in 1844. As new railway lines spread towards Dover, Reading and the south coast, the station became an increasingly important junction. Its changing names - Redhill and Reigate, Reigate Junction, Redhill Junction and finally simply Redhill in 1929 - reflected the growing importance of the town it had created.
The railway attracted workers, tradesmen and businesses, and almost overnight new streets appeared around the station. The railway company even financed the construction of Station Road (West) in 1843, shortening the route to Reigate. Until it became a public highway in 1872, a gatehouse near the site of the later Lloyds Bank building ensured that only railway passengers could use this private road.
A new community soon developed around Warwick Road and Station Road. Initially known as Warwick Town, it quickly eclipsed the older settlements and within a decade the name Redhill had been adopted for the expanding railway town. Streams were culverted, roads improved and fields gave way to shops and workshops.
Schools, churches, public buildings and businesses soon followed. The Railway Hotel, later Lakers Hotel, became one of the earliest commercial establishments, while Warwick Road and the High Street attracted shops, inns and houses. By 1854 Redhill had a number of new public houses including the Royal Oak, the Queen's Arms, and the Home Cottage.
Yet the new town had not entirely conquered its landscape. Drainage remained poor, and a deep ditch ran beside the western side of the High Street, frequently flooding after heavy rain. Even in 1928 the lower end of Station Road lay under four feet of water following a torrential downpour and melting snow at New Year - a reminder of the marshland on which the town had been built.
Many people found Redhill’s combination of accessibility and rural surroundings an attractive proposition and property values rose rapidly. Not everyone, however, was impressed by the emerging town, although the surrounding countryside was generally admired. The artist Samuel Palmer who lived at Furze Hill House in Redhill from 1862, wrote,
‘Those passing through the ghastly modern town of Redhill, partly a reclaimed swamp, can have no conception of the beauty of some of the scenery not too far distant.’
For centuries Reigate had dominated the district as its market town and coaching centre. The railway altered that balance. Businesses increasingly preferred the convenience of Redhill's railway connections, and commercial life gradually shifted in its direction.
The ambitious Market Hall project, begun in 1859, symbolised Redhill's new found confidence. Built on deep piles driven into the soft ground, it provided an indoor market as well as a public meeting hall. It was mostly used as assembly rooms after 1896.
The Market Hall as originally constructed
Opposite the Market Hall stood a thriving livestock market, while warehouses, engineering works, hotels and shops were clustered nearby.
Market seen from the railway side, (before 1907)
After a determined four-year campaign, Redhill was incorporated into the Municipal Borough of Reigate in 1863 despite opposition from influential landowners, including Lord Somers.
By the beginning of the twentieth century Redhill had become a substantial urban centre. Housing spread across former farmland, improved roads reinforced its role as a transport hub and new industries brought employment.
Large-scale industries that developed were fuller's earth extraction, sand quarrying, the brickworks and the railway transport industry. Powered by the arrival of the rail network in the 1840s, these sectors grew from small rural trades into major corporate operations. The wealthy Trower family, corn merchants and farmers at Wiggie, opened a brickworks in the 1880s on the present site of the Holmethorpe Estate. It employed local men as clay diggers, brick-moulders, and kiln stokers.
Hundreds of workers were employed in fullers earth extraction at the Copyhold Works situated just east of the Wiggie and Holmethorpe boundary. Industrial scale-sand quarrying based east of the main railway lines supplied ultra-pure, high-silica sand for glassmaking, foundry casting, and early concrete tile manufacturing. Its vast craters formed the lakes of the modern Watercolour development.
In Redhill town, shopping expanded rapidly, and in 1900 Sainsbury's selected Station Road for its first branch outside London - an indication of the town's growing commercial importance.
This photo shows the crossroads of the High Street and Station Road in the 1920s.
The two world wars again
demonstrated Redhill's strategic importance. During the First World War,
Redhill's strategic railway station handled thousands of troops, horses,
and military supplies moving between London and the south coast.
The town's industrial workforce was hard hit: Trowers’ brickworks closed when over 80% of their workforce was drafted to the front lines.
Postcards were printed for soldiers to post home from wherever they were based. The Cheshire Royal Field Artillery were billeted in Redhill in homes, public halls, and temporary camps early in 1915.
As the fighting began in earnest, local schools, private houses, and the Redhill County Hospital were quickly converted into auxiliary wards to care for influxes of wounded servicemen.
Around 700 local men lost their lives.
The unveiling of the War Memorial at Shaw’s Corner in 1923
The Second World War brought the conflict much closer. Redhill's railway junction and industries made it a target for bombing, while nearby Redhill Aerodrome played an important military role.
During the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940, thousands of exhausted soldiers passed through the station, where local volunteers greeted them with tea, sandwiches and postcards so they could reassure their families. Before the D-Day landings, enormous quantities of military equipment passed through the town as part of the elaborate deception designed to convince the Germans that the main invasion would come at the Pas-de-Calais.
Local industry also played its part. Universal Cleaners and Polishes at Holmethorpe produced millions of yards of camouflage wire wool and air filters for tanks. Monotype at Salfords manufactured Bren guns and Vickers machine guns, while Redhill Aero Supplies, staffed largely by women, produced tents, sleeping bags and other essential equipment for the armed forces.
After the war, the Market Hall resumed its role as Redhill’s main entertainment venue. Generations danced beneath its roof, while performers including The Rolling Stones, The Who and Sir Tom Jones appeared on its stage. Jazz legends such as Acker Bilk, Chris Barber and Kenny Ball attracted enthusiastic audiences, and leading political figures, including Emmeline Pankhurst, Barbara Castle and Sir Geoffrey Howe, addressed packed meetings there before the building was demolished in 1982 as part of the Warwick Quadrant redevelopment.
Warwick Quadrant, Redhill (2008) Stephen McKay
In less than two centuries Redhill has undergone an enormous transformation. From a handful of cottages scattered across marshland and common, it became a major railway junction, an industrial and commercial centre, and a thriving modern town. While many of its Victorian landmarks have disappeared, the shape of today's Redhill still reflects the decisions made by railway engineers in the 1840s. Without the railway, there would almost certainly have been no town at all.
A History of Redhill, Alan Moore, Volumes 1-3 (1999, 2003,2013)
Exploring Surrey's Past: Exploring Surrey's Past Redhill Historical Profile
A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 3, HE Malden, (1911)
The Long, Long Trail (Deployment of 4th Welsh Brigade RFA to Redhill)