Thames Tributary River Mole - Leatherhead

Thames Tributary River Mole
The Mole flows to the north east


Post to the west Fetcham
Post to the south Thorncroft
Post to the east Leatherhead Fortyfoot
Post to the north Leatherhead industrial railsie


Bridge Street
Bridge over Mole. Public road bridge late medieval. In the 17th and 18th there were so many complaints about the bridge that from 1760 it was kept locked and keys were only issued to those who paid. When the bridge came under the county authorities in 1782, it was rebuilt by the County Surveyor, George Gwilt. He reconstructed and widened it using the medieval stone piers and old bricks from Ashtead Park., It is a long low red brick structure of 14 arches on low piers and a high brick parapet rebuilt in 1988 with 4 semicircular refuges; and a central stone plaque saying "Built 1784". Surrey County Council refurbished it in 1989 leaving its appearance unchanged.
Ford alongside the bridge used by most people before 1782. The electricity works destroyed the western approach.
Running Horse, Dates from 1520 and built on the church glebe. It is a small timber-built house near the River Mole and appears to be a posh private house rather than an inn. In the Second World War it was used by the Youth Hostel's Association.
2 Built as a bank with the date 1928 on a rainwater head. Timber frame brick and plaster infilling.
5 Shop from the early 19th white-painted
28-34 and 43 stock brick 19th buildings
31–33 early 19th house, now office. There is an iron bracket for a hanging sign.
39 and 41 house converted into a shop. 17th timber framed,
Clare House and James House on the site of the Electricity Generating Station. In 1925 a new electricity works was built up river of the bridge but the generator control remained in the old engine room on the opposite side of the main road. In 1928, because of increased demand the first 1000kW Fullager set in Britain was installed. The station became part of the London and Home Counties Joint Electricity Authority in 1930 and a bulk supply came from Croydon. The last DC consumer one was disconnected by the Chairman of the UDC in 1961.
Ventham Coach Builders. Charles Ventham established a coach building business here in 1835 for quality carriages. His sons, Edward and Charles, made coaches and later bodywork for Daimler, Siddeley and Dennis. One of the last two stage coaches was bought by Bertram Mills Circus in 1929.
Lloyd’s saddle and harness makers with a rope walk at the side. It was owned by the Ragges and then by the Lloyds. It was closed in 1905 and the family continued with a leather shop. The timber framed building was demolished by Civil Defence in 1939

Bull Hill
Bradmere pond at the bottom of the hill was filled in in 1905. A horse trough was provided in its place
Fairmount House. Office block on the site of Belmont Lodge in 1873 bought by Henry Courage of the brewers who renamed it Red House. Sold in 1892 to another brewer, Noakes. In the First World War it was a military hospital.
Wesley House. Built on the site of Kingston House. This Grade II listed Art Deco building was offices of Leatherhead Urban District Council, with approach steps and walls to front. Designed in 1935 by C H Rose and H R Gardner in red brick on a prominent hillside site. It has offices and a semi-circular council chamber at the back. The entrance hall leads to an imperial staircase, with art deco style metal decorative features. There is a memorial to the past chairmen of the Council also art deco figures and plaques to the War Savings Campaign of 1943 and 1944, presented by the War Office. The Council chamber has curved leather- benches with ink wells and decorated grilles, lights with reeded glass and original hanging light fixture. There are simple benches behind a fixed timber barrier for the public and press. A 1930's town hall of this scale is rare. A plaque records Wesley last sermon, here in 1791. There were also here two cannon reputed to have been made in Seville in 1747 and captured at the Battle of Havana in 1762
Kingston House where John Wesley preached his last sermon. The cedar he spoke under remained in front. Demolished in 1936
Memorial Gardens to George V opened in 1935 with a tree to mark the coronation.

Church Road
At one time called Magazine Lane
St. Mary and St. Nicholas Church. Pre-conquest Leatherhead church was a minster but that church was not this one. This church was a separate foundation attached to Thorncroft Manor. It was a Saxon building founded by Edward the Confessor with a 12th nave, a 14th chancel and a flint tower. Inside is glass from Rouen, a double squint and old books. The spire was blown down in the great storm of 1703 and never replaced. In the 1980s major restoration work was carried out but a fire damaged the organ but an older organ has been recovered and restored.
Churchyard. Anthony Hope Hawkins - Anthony Hope, author of ‘The Prisoner of Zenda' - is buried here. Yew trees form tunnels and 23 monuments are listed grade II.
Parish Church Hall
Mount Zion Chapel
Leatherhead Methodist Church
, opened in 1893. In 1900 a huge organ was installed and has had to be replaced. Plaque about Wesley’s local role on the outside.

Church Street
Until the late 18th this was Little Queen Street
1 – 3 Two houses, now one shop. 17th –18th brick and timber-framed with brick painted white
18 The White House. House and shop, now offices built in the early 18th. It is in white-painted weatherboard. At one time this was a grocer’s shop called "Jenden's Corner
31 now used as offices. 19c rebuilding of an earlier house in colour-washed stucco
33 Cameron House. Now offices in white painted stucco. 16th.It was a preparatory school in the early 20th
35 House, with 2 cottages attached at the back. 18th and 17th or earlier, altered. Brick covered with white-painted pebble-dash. The cottages are ‘Mansion Cottages’ and are timber framed with brick painted white,
55 set end on and jettied onto the main street. Was it one of the newly built shops of 1418?
55 Moss Cottage wing of a house, now used as a garage. Late medieval with a timber frame with white painted rendering. Garage doors on the ground floor
64 Hampton Cottage. 17th century cottage. Towards the end of the 19th this cottage and adjacent 66 were owned by Albert Ockenden suppliers of well equipment and pumps, who continued to use it as an office until 1909. Now Leatherhead Museum of Local History
66 Devonshire cottage 1680s house, now offices. Late 16th with rendered timber frame
68, 70, 72 Library, Registrar Office, etc. The Mansion built 1740. 68, 70, and 72. Red brick building with wings at each end. The first house on the site was built in during the reign of Henry VIII and been rebuilt in the early 18th by Alexander Akehurst. It is said to have been occupied by Judge Jeffreys. It has also been used as a school; housed Canadian troops the Second World War. In order for it to be used for weddings Surrey County Council has decorated the main rooms and provided a conservatory. The grounds have also been specially designed.
74 'By the Fire’ fireplace shop in what was a corn chandlers. It was Hutchinson’s premises from 1830. They were corn and coal merchants until 1965 and then sold fuel, fire irons, coal scuttles and decorative brass ware.
Donald Campbell’s home. In 1984 during building work part of a tunnel dug through the chalk across the site was discovered, through a basement a trap door covering a cavity. It was probably a drain
Thorndike Theatre. This was built on the site of the Manor House, which had been demolished in 1936 for the Crescent Cinema. It had over 1,000 seats and was run by a local family. It closed in the 1960s and was demolished. In the town the "Leatherhead Theatre Club" had growing reputation but did not have suitable premises. They worked with the developer on the site of the cinema to build a new theatre on site which was designed by Roderick Ham who used some of the structure of the cinema and an art gallery and café were included. It was opened in 1969 by Princess Margaret. However by the end of the century the building was dilapidated and funding scarce. It was taken over by religious group Pioneer People who refurbished it in the year 2000.

Elm Road
This is thought to be part of the old Harroway trackway. The point at which it joins Church Walk is thought to be the original centre at a crossway of tracks between the manors of Thorncroft and Pachelsham around which the town first coalesced. A market charter of 1331 may have helped.

Emlyn Road
Road called after the earlier name of the River Mole
Kingdom Hall. Jehovah’s Witnesses

Epsom Road
A prehistoric track way called The Harroway is thought to have run through the area east-west. It would have run down Epsom Road having intercepted it along Green Lane from the east.
St.John's School. public school founded in St.John’s Wood in 1851. It moved here in 1872. The main building is red brick includes the dining hall and 2 boarding houses with cloisters attached. It was gutted by fire 1913 and rebuilt. The School chapel, which is now the library is dated 1876 and is listed.
Cast-iron sewer vent pipes
Linden House flats on the site of a big house with the same name and
Christ Church United Reform Church

Fairfield Avenue
Karn 19th coach building business.

Fairfield Road
Prince of Wales pub. demolished for the Swan Centre

Garland Road
Our Lady and St Peter. Roman Catholic Church built for Hulton the publisher. Stations of the Cross by Eric Gill.

Gimcrack Hill

Gravel Hill
2, 4, 6 Sweech House. Small farm house which was once an open hall. Now used as offices it is a late 15th timber frame building enlarged in 16th and divided into 3 cottages in the 19th. Inside are many beams and inglenooks and so on.
16 -18 cottages Dated 1799 on a first floor plaque. In flint
Clock tower built in the 1850s with a garage for the fire engine in it. It subsequently became a public toilet and was demolished in 1952.

Guildford Road
Bus depot. Built on the land of Mizen Brothers market garden, and now replaced by offices. It was originally owned by East Surrey and then London General Country Services from 1925. Buses which used it included Country Bus double deckers in 1924 and then saloon one man operated buses in 1954. It was used as a base for the first experiments with gas producer operation 1939-41.
Fire Station. 1967 attractive brown brick

High Street
Until the late 18th this was Great Queen Street
Turnpike Toll House was near the site of the institute
Leatherhead Institute was endowed and built in 1892 by Birmingham industrialist Abraham Dixon of Cherkley Court. The first film show in the town took place here in 1898. It was refurbished and re-opened in 1987.
10 -12 shops with flats over, now shops with offices over. Early 19th white-painted brick, slate roof. It is said to have been a "school for young ladies" and from 1885 a drapery shop.
30-34 Edmund Tylney Wetherspoons pub
31 terracotta flower panel which was originally in the Swan Brewery
33/35 Cradlers. A farmhouse held copyhold from Thorncroft Manor. 14th timber framed building now a shop. In the 19th into cottages and more recently restored and remodelled as shop with offices over.
37, 39, 41 Farmhouse, now divided into 3 shops with offices over. Red brick, 16th building with weatherboarding. Some signs of old timber framing.
53 – 55 shops with offices in the premises of the Blue Bird Pub. 17th timber-framed construction with roughcast,
57 Duke’s Head pub built 17th and rebuilt in the 19th. Timber
frame with brick and stucco façade with first floor pane plaster letters "Dukes Head" under a modeled head.
Plaque to Victoria Hall which records its use as a theatre. Films were shown here in 1899 but the hall was also used for gym classes and Methodist meetings. In 1940 it became the Picture House, then St George's, and in 1950 it became the Leatherhead Theatre. It was demolished for the Swan Centre.
Brewery – the Swan Brewery was on the site of the entrance to the Swan Centre. It was a steam tower brewery set up in 1874 making pale ale. There was also a 200 ft artesian well.

Kingston Road
Until the late 18th this was Bradmere Lane
Tall cast-iron sewer vent pipes. A particularly ornate series exists, each of which has a spiral embossed decoration near the base and an elaborately decorated cast section below the slotted outlet at the top.

Leatherhead
Was called Leodrinan when it was an estate in AD880. Old track from it goes straight to the lion on the Zodiac at Kingston -. In the Dark Ages Leatherhead was a minster – founded by a king and comprising of a group of priests responsible for a whole area. The name is wholly British and does this then imply that the area was a Celtic enclave in the Dark Ages. Usually translated as ‘public ford’. But an alternative has been suggested of ‘brown ford’.

Leret Way
Leret is the spelling of Leatherhead in the Domesday book
1-6 Flint Cottages. Row 1800 of flint and red brick.
The Swan, a coaching house in the 18th. Trout from the Mole was a specialty. In the later 19th there was an Assembly Rooms at what was then the Swan Hotel. The proprietress here had many posh customers. The hotel was demolished in 1936 and the swan itself is now in the town museum.

Linden Pit Place
Sports Ground

Linden Road
Tall cast-iron sewer vent pipe a particularly ornate series exists, each of which has a spiral embossed decoration near the base and an elaborately decorated cast section below the slotted outlet at the top

Mill Lane
Fetcham Mill. This was burnt down in 1917 but had been the principal corn-mill for the area and on what was probably a Domesday site. There are records of a mill here in 1293. A 12ft diameter overshot wheel drove three pairs of stones and a pump to supply water to Fetcham Park. The mill was driven by the overflow from its pond.
Mizen Brothers, had land near the mill pond in the 1920s when there were 8 acres of watercress beds in the spring-fed ponds and 15 acres of glasshouses for salad crops. They used part of the old mill pond. In 1957 the land was taken over by the East Surrey Water Company and the Leatherhead bus garage.

Minchin Close
Leatherhead Mill was upstream of the bridge on the east bank.
Tannery in the mill owned by Bartholomew and then Thomas Chitty 1826-1870. In 1888 one of the lead-lined baths was opened as a swimming pool and in 1900 this was used by St John's School. The mill demolished after World War II but traces of the watercourse can be seen where it entered the river.

Mole
The old name for the river was Emele or later Emlyn. The name refers to the swallow holes which are a feature of it.

North Street
1, 1A, 1B Shop, now used as an office. Built mid 19th roughcast render painted white. The shop front has a canopy with a triple shop window.
5 Penny Black pub, previously was Hogshead
Stocks House stood here in the 17th near where the town stocks stood.
Brewery here owned by the Stuart family in 1854.1872 sold to Youngs of Dorking and closed 1892. Malting continued.
War Memorial. 1921. In red brick and flint, it is a long rectangular shelter above a terraced garden with stone tablets commemorating the fallen of the First World War. An added tablet lists those of the Second World War. A flight of steps leads to a paved garden, with a tall cross with an inverted sword on it.

Old Station Approach
A London and South Western Railway station was built as a terminus in 1867. When but the line was extended to Bookham and Effingham junction the layout south of Leatherhead was altered to avoid the use of two separate stations and the station was closed in 1927 and demolished in 1932. Traces of the down side staircase may be seen.
'Railway Cottages'.

Poplar Road
School opened in 1884 as the National School for Girls and later became Poplar road Church of England school.
Cottage Hospital opened early in the Second World War

Railway
Mole Bridge Each of the lines leaving Leatherhead to the south crosses the Mole on a brick bridge. The Dorking line bridge was built in 1867 For the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway Company in red brick with stone dressings. It has four semi-circular arches on rectangular piers and above that a parapet with square balusters. This level of ornamentation is down to Thomas Grissell, the local landowner and railway contractor.
Mole Bridge the bridge carrying the line to Bookham in was built in 1885.

Randall's Road
Until the late 18th this was Patsoms Lane
Leatherhead station. 1867. It is between Ashstead and main line destinations on Southern Rail and South Western Rail. The present station is one of four that have served Leatherhead over the years (although two were only ever intended to be temporary). The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and the London and South Western Railway had plans to build a railway line into Leatherhead, and each company built their own station, a few hundred yards apart: the LBSCR on their line to Dorking and Horsham, and the LSWR on their line to Guildford. The only remains of the LSWR station are part of the steps up from road level to platform level. The LBSCR station is the one that survives, although the Stationmaster's House is boarded up along with the building on Platform 2. The attractive station was built when the line was extended to Dorking in 1867 – it is in polychrome brick with carved stone details and decorative woodwork and remains almost unaltered. The goods shed and signal boxes have disappeared except for the LBSCR signal box on the down platform. The station served all lines from 1927. Sewage gas pump.
Bridge over Randall’s Road to the LSWR station remained until the 1970s,
The British Coal Utilisation Research Association was a co-operative industrial research association - a partnership between producers of coal, appliance manufacturers and users. The laboratories in Randall's Road were started in 1945. By 1970 government grant-aid ceased as well as financial support from the NCB. In 1971 part of the site was sold for development. In 1984 activities on the site came to an end. The equipment was moved to the NCB research establishment near Cheltenham in 1986.
Food Research Association. British Food Manufacturing Industries Research Association moved to Randall's Way in 1950. It was formed by the amalgamation of two earlier food research associations. Research is carried out into all types of manufactured foods and ingredients.

Ronsons Way
Ronsons In 1918 Louis V Aronson patented the action for a cigarette lighter in the USA and by 1927 he had made the first single-action pocket lighter with the trade name 'Ronson'. J Liddiatt imported and serviced Ronson lighters from premises in Grays Inn Road. They had occupied Dorincourt to the north east of the town. During the war they bought an 8-acre site in Randalls Road. Production continued at Dorincourt until Ronsons opened their new factory in Randalls Road in 1952, selling Dorincourt. They developed here butane and battery lighters but failed through Japanese competition. Factory closed and demolished 1981.

Station Road
A new bridge was large erected over Station Road for the Effingham line in 1867,
Neil and Spencer. This company started making dry cleaning machinery in Clapham in 1937 but were bombed and moved to Effingham where they made aircraft components for the Ministry of Supply. They moved to Leatherhead in 1947 and made dry cleaning machinery at a new factory in Station Road. By the 1960s they needed to expand and a second factory, Argosy Works, was therefore acquired in Kingston Road. In 1963 the company moved to Horsham.

Upper Fairfield Road
British Legion Hall
Infants school built 1865

Waterway Road
The Leatherhead and District Waterworks Company opened its works between here and Bridge Street in 1884. A borehole was sunk and the yellow brick pump house and chimney built to supply a reservoir in Reigate Road. It had two 30hp steam-driven pumps to lift the water the 210 feet and supplied throughout the area. Replacement and additional pumps were installed over the next 40 years and additional boreholes were sunk. They were taken over in 1927 by the East Surrey Water Company which had begun as the Caterham Spring Water Company. The original pump house was demolished in 1992 and the site has been developed for housing.
Leatherhead Pumping Station. New works were built in 1938 for the East Surrey Water Co. which had amalgamated with the East Surrey Co. in 1927. The concrete pumping station was built with Allen diesel pumps and it was extended in 1940. In 1984 electric pumps were installed. Filtered water comes from the Elmer Works and is chlorinated being pumped to supply.
Leatherhead power station built in 1902 by the Leatherhead and District Electricity Company Ltd. It was downstream of the town bridge. It had a 75kW diesel-driven generator with lead-acid batteries for peak loads. This supply was DC to Leatherhead only but it was soon extended to AC and a wider area. By 1920 the works had 5 diesel-driven generators but this T original plant was scrapped in 1934 and the building demolished.
Substation. The initial transformer installations at Leatherhead were two 3kVA, 33/6,6Kv. Substations still exist in the original positions adjacent to the sites of the power stations

Worple Road
Worple means ‘track way’.

Sources
Stidder. Watermills of Surrey
Tarplee. Industrial Archaeology of the Mole Valley.
Vardley. Leatherhead
London Transport Country walks
Penguin Book of Surrey,
Pevsner Surrey
Country walks-3,
Chelsea Speleological Society Newsletter 15
Surrey Industrial Archaeology

The Kingston Zodiac


Comments

Alan Pooley said…
Under Bridge Street, it was the Rising Sun over the other side of the river Mole in Guildford road that was for a period a Youth Hostal. This ceased to be a pub when a new "Rising Sun" was built close by in the late 1930s It also dates from the 1500s and is still there currently as an oriental restaurant.
The running horse is associated rightly or wrongly as the supposed dwelling of Elinor Rumming of the poem by John Skelton, "The Tunning of Elinor Rumming"
Alan Pooley
Leatherhead & District Local History Society
Regarding:
"Church Street
18 The White House. House and shop, now offices built in the early 18th. It is in white-painted weatherboard. At one time this was a grocer’s shop called "Jenden's Corner"

In the archive at Dorking Museum are a couple of bills made out to T.W. Jenden, Leatherhead from the wholesale grocer in Dorking, Thomas Wood, from 1884, and another bill from 1813, unfortunately without the name of the seller or purchaser but possibly related. Ref R60/1-3.




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