Modern Earlswood is viewed as a suburb of Redhill and there are varying views on what area it covers. So let us take you on a tour into the history of the ‘village’ of Earlswood, surrounding the station, and Earlswood Common.
The area covering the modern maze of roads and school was known as the old Manor of Hooley/ Hooleigh/ Howleigh. This area should not be mistaken for the small village of Hooley, north of Merstham.
The Manor lay in the Vale of Holmesdale. Its northern boundary was Hooley Lane. There were early settlements around the brook here and the forest and marshland would have made for good hunting grounds. Its western boundary was the Manor of Woodhatch on the Reigate/Woodhatch Border, its southern boundary was Salfords and Horley Row and its eastern boundary was bounded by the Manor of Redstone.
In the Middle Ages, all these manors were part of the ‘Reigate Foreign’, the land outside the Borough of Reigate. Legally they were sub-manors which owed their allegiance to the Manor of Reigate held by the de Warennes. They had to pay rent and other taxes to the Lord of Reigate. Small communities developed around the manor houses.
In the 14th
century Hooley Manor was owned by John De Brewes who also owned
Flanchford. However, in 1550, William, Lord Howard of Effingham, had
taken ownership having been granted it by Edward VI. William’s son,
Charles, inherited the manor in 1573, along with Reigate Manor. Hooley
Manor was described as ‘meadow ground called Howleigh Meade and
Howleigh Garden, plus Woodlands and the brook as adjoining land.’
When Charles died, the manor eventually passed to William, later Lord,
Monson who married Charles’ widow. When Charles died, the manor
eventually passed to William, later Lord, Monson who married Charles’
widow.
Brambletye Park Road Bridge built circa 1890. Reconstructed 1994 by Surrey County Council.
In 1752, a Reigate tanner, John Burt, bought the manor but it soon passed to Charles, Lord Somers and then a Mr Roberts who sold it, in 1838, to the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.
By 1801, Reigate Foreign was growing, with 221 houses and more than 1300 inhabitants. Stagecoach traffic was booming and there was potential for a fast road to Brighton that avoided the notoriously steep Reigate Hill by passing though the marshy land following the brook along the lower valley basin.
Lord Somers and The Reigate Trust opposed the road as an economic threat but it was agreed by parliament in 1816 and the Brighton Road was constructed, splitting Howleigh Park (Hooley).
As the railways progressed during the 1850s and 1860s, Hooley/ Earlswood grew. Alongside this there was also the development of the Royal Earlswood Asylum and the Royal Philanthropic Society.
Expansion was aided by the
formation of the National Freehold Land Society in 1849. The aim of this
group was to enable working class men to purchase property, and gain a
voting right they could not otherwise afford. The Society had a
subsidiary, the British Land Company, which purchased surplus land from
the London and Brighton Railway Company. This allowed the development of
several Redhill roads, including Woodlands Road and other roads on
Hooley Farm.
The Earlswood Asylum, which
opened in 1855, took opportunities to buy parcels of neighbouring land.
There was an ambition to extend the asylum but also to protect its
boundaries. Its purchases covered St John’s Road, Hooley Road (now known
as Brambletye Park Road), and Philanthropic Road. However, in 1905, the
Asylum passed much of this land on, and this led to the development of
the Great Hooley Mead Estate. The Asylum building continues to dominate
the skyline today.
Great Hooley Mead Estate
From about 1898, the Asylum authorities started discussing various plans to obtain money from their investment in Great Hooley Mead. They considered selling the estate in leasehold building plots, but this scheme was dropped when it was realised that its Charter did not entitle Earlswood to hold the freehold. Finally, it was agreed to sell the land as freehold plots. Most of the plots were acquired by Samuel Barrow, a significant local landowner, who also owned the Linkfield street tannery.
In 1904, the borough
Education Committee agreed to offer the Earlswood Asylum £700 for an
acre of land on Great Hooley Mead, to be able to build a school. Looking
at the Surrey Mirror during the first half of the 20th
century, the area continued to be known as Hooley or Hooley Mead. In
October 1905, an advert in the Surrey Mirror, described the Great Hooley
Mead Estate, Earlswood, as being “less than a minute’s walk from
Earlswood station and one mile from the important market town of
Redhill”. At this time, freehold plots of land were put up for
auction and advertised as having frontages to St John’s and Hooley
roads.
By the late 1920s, there was a Reigate Housing scheme to build more housing including adding houses to the Hooley Mead Estate. The Borough Council also had to deal with a petition from council tenants in Knighton Road about rent increases. To appease the tenants, the Council agreed to redecorate the houses and upgrade the private roads. In 1928, the Council advertised for work to upgrade the private roads of Emlyn Road, Ifold Road, Althorne Road, Knighton Road and Brambletye Park Road.
In 1907, there was an advertisement in the Surrey Mirror for builders to construct an Elementary school at Hooley Mead, Redhill. Just a year later, in August 1908, the Hooley Mead schools were opened in St John’s Road. The Surrey Mirror described the land on which the schools sat as previously being ‘a large field belonging to the Earlswood Asylum.’ The land needed a lot of work to make it suitable for a building.
At the schools, there was a separate entrance for boys and girls and infants. One school was built for 320 children, with classrooms set to accommodate 50-60 children in each. The other, for infants, was still incomplete, but had four classrooms ready. The following year, the first prize giving took place, hosted by the Headteacher, Mr H. Collinson.
In 1947, the school became known as Earlswood Secondary School, alongside the infant school. Then, in 1963, there was a reorganisation of the education system leading to Earlswood Secondary School closing and reopening to focus on infants and junior education.
In 1970, funding was approved for Earlswood County Middle school to be built on land on Brambletye Park Road for 320 pupils aged 8-12 years. When the school opened in 1974, it was named Brambletye County Middle school, bringing together the middle schools of Earlswood and St John’s. The former schools continued as infant schools.
In the decades since then,
the education system continued to change and led to Brambletye School
merging with Earlswood School, and St John’s opening up junior classes,
to become two primary schools for the area of Earlswood, Meadvale and St
John’s.
Earlswood had benefited greatly from the Reigate Borough Council housing programme of the first 30 years of the 20th century. However, it was to be seriously affected by the bombing campaigns of the 2nd World War.
In October 1940, there were
nightly air raids on London. Sometimes unused bombs would be dropped on
the way home. One night, bombs were dropped scarily close to the
gasometers that were in Hooley Lane. These caused damage to houses in
Victoria, Earlsbrook and Brambletye Park Road. Later the same week,
multiple bombs landed in the grounds of the Philanthropic Society.
Then, in the early hours of the 27th October 1940, tragedy struck when a single bomb crashed onto a house in Emlyn Road, destroying a further four homes and claiming six lives. On other nights, the bombs were aimed directly at local infrastructure, specifically Redhill station. Once the war had ended, the country began its recovery. At the end of 1946, Reigate Borough Council approved plans for 12 maisonettes to be built on the bombed site in Emlyn Road.
Earlswood Common was woodland and common land that was part of the Manor of Hooley and it was first documented in 1363 when the lower lake, originally a medieval fishpond, is explicitly mentioned by name. It was home to those who worked on the common as pottery makers and there were kilns covering the area from Meadvale to Kiln Brow on Three Arch Road. In the 17th century, the land was owned by Lord Monson, and he brought in fines against the inhabitants taking advantage of the fishing in the lake. He also allowed massive tree cutting to take place to accommodate the need for ship masts for the country.
Workhouse, Earlswood Common circa 1821 (Martin Brownjohn)
In 1793, Reigate, Buckland, Nutfield, Headley and Horley formed a Gilbert Union to build a new workhouse and Lord Somers, as lord of the manor, agreed to it being sited on a part of the the common land called Broad Plain. This was completed in 1794, with a woollen industry established within to provide employment for the inmates.
Two doctors, Thomas Steele and Thomas Martin provided medical care to the workhouse and the wider area. They recorded the treatment provided to the inmates of the workhouse, types of disease and numbers of deaths.
Thomas Martin wrote of his concerns about the state of accommodation on Earlswood Common. He described the Roundabout cottages on Earlswood Common as being ‘very damp and badly drained’. He reported that the flooding and insufficient drainage in the area caused diseases. Although he recognised the need to help those in poverty, he could be very critical of the people themselves, blaming the poor accommodation in part on the ‘indolent habits of the inmates.’ When there was an influx of workers to construct the London to Brighton Railway, he described them as ‘preferring drink to food and clothing.’
During the 1800s, Lord Somers continued to grant the use of some of the waste land around Earlswood and Redhill Commons for development. In 1817, he gave land on the corner of Mill Street and the Brighton Road, to James Cocks, a relative. This was to build the Somers Arms for the growing number of travellers. With the arrival of the railway, the inn lost much of its trade. Between 1842 and 1843, Earlswood Common land was also given to allow the building of St John’s Church and school.
In 1863, Reigate gained the powers of a borough council and this led to the election of councillors, a town clerk and a police force. An early action of the council was to address the drainage of Earlswood Common. Lord Somers agreed to give up part of the common land and the council also purchased parts of Redhill Common for use as a public recreation ground. This enabled the council to build a sewerage system for Redhill.
Earlswood Common was used as a golf course for many years and continues to be a place for sports and dog walking.
Dunne, N. (1994) The Redhill Story
Hooper, W. 1945 Reigate: Its story through the ages
Surrey Archives 325/1/6
Picture of Royal Earlswood Hospital, Roger W Haworth, 2010
Dorking and Leatherhead Advertiser 21 October 1905
surrounding the station, and Earlswood Common.