Claygate

Post to the east Claygate


Beaconsfield Road
20 this appears to have been built by Joseph Ellis, an industrialist and ‘ironmaster’ with an interest in many coal companies in the 19th   and early 20th.  From 1908 it was the offices of the Associated British Machine Tool Makers. It is now residential.

Blakeden Road
Named for Cuthbert Blakeden, Henry VIII’s Serjeant-of-the-Confectionary and owner of the manor.
Built since the 1960s on the site of Elm Gardens Nurseries.  It had earlier been 'Capel Field’ and used by the Leveret Cricket Club, and later Elm Nurseries.

Church Road
Claygate Recreation Ground. The land was taken over by Esher Council in the 1920s. It is now managed by the Claygate Recreation Ground Trust. It is used by the Claygate Cricket Club, Claygate Royals Football Club & The Pavilion Cafe
Holy Trinity Church. This was built in 1840 on former common land and was from the first a parish church. It has been enlarged and in 1999 a new church hall and vicarage were built. Inside is a memorial to men who died in the Second World War.
Churchyard. The wrought-iron gates to the churchyard date from 1959 as a memorial to members of the Rossiter family including a son killed in action in 1944. The gates were made locally at The Forge in Common Road.
War Memorial. This is in the churchyard and was unveiled in 1921 to commemorate Claygate men who died in the Great War. It is a stone cross with a tapering shaft on a stone plinth with four tablets bearing names.
National School. Until 1838 children attended a school in a shed. In 1838 Claygate's elementary school was opened and managed by the Church of England and the National Society. The school room was rebuilt in 1866 but was still too small. It closed in 1881 but the premises continued to be used as a church hall.  It was demolished in 1964 and replaced
Claygate Village Hall. This was built in 1958 on land bought in 1954 following local fund raising. There have been additions since. It is managed by the Village Hall Association which is made up of users.
Arbrook Hall. Hall owned by the Catholic church in its own grounds.  It was designed by J McCormack in 1965 and used by a nursery school and a youth club

Claremont Road
Railway Bridge. Built by the estate developers in the early 20th

Claygate Common
This was enclosed in 1838 and acquired by Esher Council in 1922. A local nature reserve with a wooded area, Birds seen include kestrel, sparrowhawk and green woodpecker.
Golf Course. This was a nine hole course built in the late 19th. It closed in 1914.

Coverts Road
Housing built from 1885 to the outbreak of World War I was located here. It was originally Covers Road.
Ebenezer Baptist Chapel. From around 1850 residents gathered in a private house, and then a barn as Strict and Particular Baptists. In 1860 they built a chapel here named Ebenezer Strict Baptist Chapel. by 1976 it was in disrepair and unsafe and the congregation joined with another.

Elm Road
Elm Road School. This built by the Thames Ditton and Claygate School Board to replace the National School and opened in 1886. From 1903 the school was managed by Surrey County Council and from 1940 took only children under 11 becoming Claygate County Primary School and later Claygate County Junior Mixed School. It was bombed in 1941 and damaged by a rocket bomb in 1944. The buildings were also used as a British Restaurant. It closed in 1987 and Claygate Youth Club has leased the building since.
Claygate Centre for the Community. Buildings with facilities for the old and/or disabled.

Fee Farm Road
Fee Farm lay between Causeway and Coverts Road. In 1920 it was sold to builders who created the road and built houses
Fee Farm Farmhouse. This is a 17th house with late 18th additions. It is timber framed and clad in brick.

Fitzalan Road
Upper School of Rowan Hill opened here in 1944.

Foley Road
Claygate Primary School. This is on the site of a The Firs, a house fronting onto Hare Lane purchased in 1971. The school had a hall and four classrooms when it opened in 1973. In 1976 it became a County Middle School for children between 8 and 12 and is now a Primary School.

Gordon Road
Newlands College was a ‘preparatory’ school for boys and girls was founded in 1927. It moved to 'Elmside' in 1938. In 1973 the lease expired and the school was closed. Elmside was then demolished and housing built on n the site.
Rowan ‘Preparatory’ School for Girls was founded in 1936 with seven pupils at Rowan Brae. The Lower and Middle Schools remain here.

Hare Lane
Swedenborgian Church .This was built on a field belonging to Titts Farm. This was the New Jerusalem Church built in 1909 and owned by Charles Higby, a builder. In the Second World War it was used as an ARP Wardens’ Centre, and then until 1949, as a Surrey County Library,
45 First Church of Christ, Scientist, Claygate and Esher. The site was originally a Swedenborgian church which was purchased in 1951 by the Christian Scientists and dedicated as a church in 1957. In 1959 a new church was built with a reading room. The architect was Gilbert Williams.
Telephone exchange
106 Foley Hotel. This is named for the local Foley family and has been a Young’s pub since the 1880s. It claims to date from the 1780s
The Orchard. This was originally a farmhouse from the 18th -1723 is inscribed on a barn in its grounds. Fire Mark J74J issued in 1825 by the Protectors' Insurance Company was also on the house. It is timber framed with whitewashed brick cladding
Barn in the grounds of The Orchard. This was dismantled and now is in Wallis Wood, near Ockley
164 Carpark. In 1919 this was the site of a garage for Claygate Motors managed by R.J. Bevington until the Second World War. The premises were then used for war work, and by the Claygate Auxiliary Fire Service.
Hubbard Combustion Ltd. This firm was on the site from the end of the Second World War and made industrial furnaces. In 1969 the site was sold to Esher Urban District Council for a car park

Oaken Lane
Road which led to clay pits and brickworks, to the north of this square.

Sims Cottages
Pathway between the High Street and The Green, Sims family owned clay pits to the north of the village and associated brickworks.

St. Leonard’s Road
This was once called Red Lane. It was renamed when houses were built here in the early 20th. It was named after Lord St Leonards; he became Lord Chancellor of England in 1852 and in Thames Ditton.
12 Rose Cottage. one of the oldest houses in Claygate built around 1695, as a gamekeeper's cottage on the Couchmore Estate. There is a Royal Exchange fire mark on the front.

Telegraph Lane
This leads uphill to the telegraph tower – in the square to the north,

The Green
This was Claygate Hurst
The Hare and Hounds. This was a pub before 1843, but had originally been a farmhouse.  In 1866 it had a bar as well as stables for six horses, a coach house, barn, skittle alley, sheds and a yard. It was then bought by the Twickenham Brewery from Messrs. Norton. In 1896 the pub was purchased by Brandon’s Putney Brewery and was extensively altered in 1931, In 1959 it was sold to Mann, Crossman and Pauline who have come, following takeovers, Grand Metropolitan
Horse trough outside the Hare and Hounds. Erected in 1911 for the Coronation of King George V.

The Parade
This was originally Station Road.
Claygate Station. Built in 1885 and opened as Claygate and Claremont Station this now lies between Hinchley Wood and Oxshott stations on South Western Rail.  It appears to have kept the original station buildings with little alteration.
Car park. This was the goods yard mainly used for feed stuffs and manure for local farms. The farms also dispatched produce. Coal was handled for the local brickworks as well as for domestic use. The yard closed in 1963.
Platform Three. This is a pub in an old taxi office and is the Brightwater Brewery Tap. It hopes to be the smallest in Great Britain with only room for one or two customers inside. Seating is on the station forecourt under an awning and with a heater.
Brightwater Brewery. Founded in 2012.

Sources
Baker. Industrial Archaeology of Elmbridge
Brightwater Brewery. Web site
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Claygate Parish Council. Web site
Claygate Primary School. Web site
Elmbridge Council. Web site
Foley Hotel. Web site
Hare and Hounds. Web site
Imperial War Museum. Web site
Pevsner. Surrey
Surrey County Council. Web site
The Claygater. Web site
What Pub. Web site
Woodland Trust. Web site