M25 Leatherhead - industrial railside

Post to the east Lower Ashstead
Post to the south Leatherhead
Post to the west Pachesham
Post to the north Leatherhead






Aperdele Road
Apedele appears to have been the family name of early medieval landowners in this area.
Leatherhead Trinity School. This Church of England Primary School was the result of an amalgamation of three existing schools t St. Mary's, All Saints and The Woodville. This was supported by local churches – Anglican, Methodist and United Reform. Leatherhead Children's Centre was on a site here which was previously All Saints School. This includes a nursery and reception class as well as day care for younger children and an after school family project
All Saints School. This opened in 1877 using the disused railway engine shed which was also used as a mission church and a Sunday School. In 1900 it moved to new premises in a building  which later became the North Leatherhead Community Centre. From 1953 it was an infant school only.

Barnett Wood Lane
Poors Allotments.  25 acres on either side of the road were allocated to allotments following enclosure of common land in Acts of the 1860s.
Barnettwood Farm. The farm, which was on both sides of the road, was in the ownership of Merton College and was the subject of a precedent setting case between them and Leatherhead Urban District Council on compulsory purchase issues. Buildings are now in light industrial use and there is also livery and grazing on site.
Barnett Wood Farmhouse. This house is thought to be 18th and to be timber-framed
Gas Works. This was the works of the Leatherhead Gas Company built in the 1850s and remaining independent until taken over by the Wandsworth Company in the 1930s. The works was still extant post nationalisation into the 1960s

Bay Tree Avenue
This road consists of industrial and trading units on the site of the General Cable Manufacturing works.
Genite Works, The General Cable Manufacturing Company. This electrical cable manufacturer opened a works here in the 1930s and remained until about 1969 when they closed. Before the cable works the site was used as a brickworks and by a sawyer.
Ryebrook Trading Estate
2 Berkeley House. Major property developer  Berkeley Group was established in 1976 in Weybridge, Surrey building single homes and ‘executive’ developments.


Buffers Lane
All Saints School. Originally in the engine shed 1877. When the railway relinquished it had been used as a church. When the school left it was a car repair depot.


Challenge Court
Trading estate on an area of allotments and farmland north of Barnettwood Lane.


Cleeve Road
ERA Technology. This originated in 1920 as The British Electrical and Allied Industries Research Association known as the The Electrical Research Association funded by government. It undertook electrical research and technology innovation. Major new laboratories and offices were opened here in 1957 and have remained the headquarters of the organisation along with other  ever since. Development on the 15-acre campus site has continued to the present day with the addition of several large purpose-built facilities. After 1969 ERA began  to find ways of getting income from the industries it served and thus became the first privatised research association. It continued to grow and develop into new research areas, including RF technology and electronic systems. It became a leading independent consulting organisation becoming, in 2001, an entirely commercial organisation.


Copthorne road
Copthorne Brickworks This brickfield operated during the 19th until around  1897.

Dilston Road
Therfield School. This is a mixed comprehensive school educating students 11–18 .It was opened in 1953 as the Leatherhead County Secondary School taking pupils who had been part of All Saints School. It was named Therfield from 1964. It was a Specialist Sports College  2005 —2008.


Kingslea
Kendall Cars. The car hire business on the Kingslea site originated in Guildford in the late 1960s
Henry Moore & Son. Agricultural Merchants and specialists in seed corn. They had a granary on this site and had opened in 1920 being part of a family milling business. They continued here untl 1961.

Kingston Road
Kingston Road straight down over the railway on a long bridge. On north and south of the bridge are slips off Kingston Road, running parallel with the main road and still called Kingston Road - the road numbering carries on down these slips rather than on the main road up on the bridge.
Fairs road - trading estates on old factory sites
265 Royal Oak, The pub dates to the 1850s but had a predecessor which served the stage coaches and appears to have once fronted on what is now Oak Road.. It was a Charrington’s house but has been Greene King since 1994.
201 Neil and Spencer.  This dry cleaning machinery company had been in the town since 1947 based in Station Road. They opened Argosy Works, in the 1960s by which time they were the biggest manufacturers of this machinery in the country. By the 1980s they had left Leatherhead
Recreation ground
All Saints School. . The school moved here from the engine shed in 1902 and moved out in 1978.
North Leatherhead Community Centre. This is the old All Saints school building.
Railway sidings.  This is now Buffers Lane. The original engine shed survived until the 1980s.  When the railway crelinquished it it was first used as a church and a school, and latterly as a car repair depot.
All Saints Church. Dates from 1888 as a district church for the north part of the parish The site was donated by Captain Richardson and the architect was Arthur Blomfield.  In 1981 the church was converted into a dual purpose centre: with a folding screen the nave becoming a church hall. There is a memorial to members of the Church Lads Brigade.   The organ has been sold. It now appears to be a coffee shop.
All Saints Hall – this is on the slip of Kingston Road parallel to the railway and now appears to be in commercial use
.  It was for a while used as a classroom by All Saints School.
Connect and Trident House. Office blocks – these are at the end of the north slip off Kingston Road.
Railway bridge. This very long road bridge over the railway divides north Leatherhead from the rest of the town. It dates from 1867 and the extension of the railway to Dorking.
Gas holder. This is shown on the west side of the street pre-1900  – across the road from the actual works.
117 Perennial. Royal Gardeners Benevolent Charity
93 Plough, The pub is a local landmark although the current building appears to date from the pre-war period, and there was an earlier pub here  There are two Friary Meux signs on the building
Roundabout. Called The Circus or the The Plough Roundabout. This was built in 1934 as part of the Leatherhead Bypass.
Cast-iron distribution cabinets, for street lighting control, stood in the centre Plough roundabout embossed ‘Siemens 1880 London’.
Leatherhead Ambulance Station
Curves. Sports club – this seems to have been built as the Co-op Hall.
Karn Brothers were coachbuilders and blacksmiths on the corner of Kingston Road and Kingslea from the early 20th.. By the 1930s the site was occupied by a garage.
73 Allard Sports Car Manufacture. From 1936 to 1959 Sydney Allard built nearly 2,000 sports cars in Putney and Clapham. In 1948 he opened an experimental workshop at Thorne's  Garage in Leatherhead and developed his 'J' series here,
Trinity School. In 1913 there were two new schools here. One was fhe County Upper Mixed Senior School and the other the County Infants' School.  In 1926 the Infants' School closed and the building taken over by the Senior School and by 1945 they were also using Horsa Huts built by Prisoners of War. The name was changed to Leatherhead County Secondary School. In the early 1950s Therfield School was opened and secondary pupils were transferred to it. All Saints Junior school then moved into some of the Kingston Road premises and it became the County Primary Junior Mixed School. The site was eventually renamed the Woodville County Middle School and in 1993 became The Woodville School, a Surrey County Junior School. It is now called the Trinity School including Stagecoach Performing Arts School.

Leatherhead Common
This is the area north of the railway, also called North Leatherhead.

Leatherhead Bypass
The A245 starts at Junction 9 of the M25 and heads towards central leagtherehead. It is called By-Pass Road because it was originally part of the A243 Leatherhead bypass. .

M25

Oak Road
Many works and trading units

Railway
The railway in this square runs north from Leatherhead Station. On  both sides of the line there remain the sites of sidings replaced with industrial and trading units. The history of almost all of these sites is unknown to Edith.
Plough Industrial Estate. A siding to the east went to works at the back of the Plough Pub. This is now the Plough Industrial Estate
Factory site. A spur of Kingston Road goes alongside the railway on the eastside and then passes under the Kingston Road Bridge it to access a large factory site on the east
Sidings north and west of the station site accessed a large works to the west of the line


Randalls Park Avenue
Transforming Station. The 132kV grid system for South Eastern England was completed in 1933. In 1935 a feed to the 33kV Epsom Ring was enabled with a a 132kV transforming station in Randalls Farm Lane, adjacent to the railway line, and was connected into the existing 132 kV line between Woking and Wimbledon.  Although this site address is given as Randalls Park Avenue it appears now to be accessed only from the northern cul de sac slip of Kingston Road and to be behind Connect and Trident House, where there is what appears to be a switching station.

Randalls Way
Trading and industrial Estate
Leatherhead Enterprise Centre
Randalls Research Park
Imperial Park. Trading area

Sources
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Disused Stations. Web site
ERA. Web site
Knowles. Surrey and the Motor
Leatherhead Local History Society. Web site
Leatherhead Parish Church. Web site
Leatherhead Trinity School. Web site
Leatherhead Web. Web site
Mole Valley District Council. Web site
Pevsner. Surrey
Surrey County Council. Web site
Tarplee. Industrial History of the Mole Valley District
Vardey. Leatherhead. A History.