Guildford Lightning

Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, England, around south-west of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildford" is thought to derive from a crossing of the River Wey, a tributary of the River Thames that flows through the town centre.

The earliest evidence of human activity in the area is from the Mesolithic and Guildford is mentioned in the will of Alfred the Great from . The exact location of the main Anglo-Saxon settlement is unclear and the current site of the modern town centre may not have been occupied until the early 11th century. Following the Norman Conquest, a motte-and-bailey castle was constructed; which was developed into a royal residence by Henry III. During the late Middle Ages, Guildford prospered as a result of the wool trade, and the town was granted a charter of incorporation by Henry VII in 1488.

The River Wey Navigation between Guildford and the Thames was opened in 1653, facilitating the transport of produce, building materials and manufactured items to new markets in London. The arrival of the railways in the 1840s attracted further investment and the town began to grow with the construction of its first new suburb at Charlotteville in the 1860s. The town became the centre of a new Anglican diocese in 1927 and the foundation stone of the cathedral was laid in 1936. Guildford became a university town in September 1966, when the University of Surrey was established by Royal Charter.

Guildford is surrounded on three sides by the Surrey Hills National Landscape, which severely limits its potential for expansion to the east, west and south. Recent development has been focused to the north of the town in the direction of Woking. Guildford now officially forms the southwestern tip of the Greater London Built-up Area, as defined by the Office for National Statistics.

Toponymy

The oldest surviving record of Guildford is from a copy of the will of Alfred the Great, in which the settlement appears as ''Gyldeforda''. The name is written as ''Gildeford'' in Domesday Book and later as ''Gyldeford'' (), ''Guldeford'' () and ''Guildeford'' (1226). The first part of the name is thought to derive from the Old English ''gylde'', meaning gold, possibly referring to the colour of the sand to the south of the town, or to a local concentration of yellow flowers such as the common or marsh marigold. The second part of the name (''ford'') refers to a crossing of the River Wey.

History

Early history

The earliest evidence of human activity in the Guildford area is from St Catherine's Hill, where Mesolithic flint tools have been found. There may also have been Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements on the hill. The areas now occupied by Christ's College and Manor Farm were farmed in the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman period. Traces of a 2nd-century villa were discovered at Broadstreet Common during an excavation in 1998.

Anglo-Saxon period

There is thought to have been an Anglo-Saxon settlement in the Guildford area by the early 6th century, although its precise location is unclear. Excavations in the 1930s revealed a Saxon cemetery at Guildown at the east end of the Hog's Back. Burials took place at the site up to the mid-11th century, but the oldest skeletons were buried in the late 6th century.

The first written record of Guildford is from the will of Alfred the Great, dated to around 880, in which the settlement was left to his nephew, Aethelwold. Although it does not appear in the Burghal Hidage, compiled , by the end of the 10th century the town was sufficiently important to be the location of a Royal Mint. Coins were struck at Guildford from 978 until at least 1099.

Around 220 of the skeletons excavated at Guildown are thought to be the remains of soldiers massacred during the arrest of Alfred Aetheling in 1035 or 1036. Contemporary accounts are somewhat contradictory, but the modern consensus is that Aetheling, a pretender to the throne and the brother of Edward the Confessor, was travelling through Guildford with a large bodyguard when the incident occurred. Aetheling was arrested by Godwin, Earl of Wessex and his men were killed. Many of the skeletons showed evidence of a violent death and the skulls of two were between their legs, suggesting that they had been executed by decapitation. Aetheling was taken to Ely, where he was blinded, and he is thought to have died there in February 1036.

The oldest extant building in Guildford is St Mary's Church, the tower of which was built . Its location, on Quarry Street, may indicate that, at the time of its construction, the High Street had either not been laid out or was not the principal road. There is no significant archaeological evidence of human activity in the modern town centre before the 11th century and it is possible that, for the majority of the Saxon period, Stoke next Guildford, to the north, was the primary area of settlement.

Governance

In Domesday Book of 1086, Guildford appears as ''Gildeford'' and is divided into seven parts, all of which were the property of William I. Two of the areas were held by reeves and four were held by lesser tenants, one of whom was Ranulf Flambard. The land directly controlled by the king included 175 homagers (heads of household), who lived in 75 ''hagae''. Flambard's holding included three ''hagae'' that accommodated six homagers and, in total, the town provided an annual income of £30 for the king. William I is also listed as holding Stoke-by-Guildford, which had a population of 24 villagers, ten smallholders and five slaves. The manor had sufficient land for 22 plough teams, 16 acres of meadow, woodland for 40 swine and two mills.

Guildford remained a property of the Crown throughout the Middle Ages and several kings, including Henry II and John are known to have visited regularly. Henry III granted the town its first borough charter in January 1257, which permitted it to send two representatives to parliament. In August of the same year, he designated Guildford as the location of the Surrey County Court and Assizes. In 1366, Edward III issued a fee farm grant, enabling the town to become partially self-governing in exchange for a yearly rent of £10. Henry VII was responsible for granting Guildford its coat of arms in 1485 and, three years later, he awarded the charter of incorporation, which placed the administration of the borough in the hands of a mayor and burgesses, appointed from the merchants' guild.

The modern system of local government began to emerge in the 1830s. Under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, a democratically elected council replaced the mayor and burgesses, and the borough expanded beyond the medieval town boundaries. A year later, the Guildford Poor Law Union was formed, with responsibility for a total area of stretching from Godalming to Woking. As a result of the Local Government Act 1888, several responsibilities were transferred from the borough to the newly formed Surrey County Council. The borough boundaries were extended again in both 1904 and 1933. The final enlargement took place in March 1974, when the present local authority was created from the merger of the borough with the Guildford Rural District.

Guildford Castle

Guildford Castle is to the south of the modern town centre. Although it is not explicitly mentioned in Domesday Book, it is possible that it was included in one of the areas of land held by Ranulf Flambard. The date of its original construction is uncertain, but the consensus among historians is that it was built as a motte-and-bailey castle soon after the Norman Conquest. A polygonal stone shell keep was built in chalk and flint rubblestone around the top of the motte in the early 12th Century, the remains of which are still visible.

The square keep, known as the Great Tower, was constructed in the mid-12th century from Bargate stone. Originally built with only two floors, it was a "solar keep" and functioned primarily as a private residence, rather than as an administrative centre. At an unknown later date, a third storey was built directly on top of the crenelations, to bring the structure to its present height. Part of the keep was in use as a prison by the end of the 12th century and new, royal apartments were constructed in the 13th century in the southwestern corner. Henry III commissioned the rebuilding of the castle following a fire in the mid-13th century, converting it into one of the most luxurious palaces in England. In 1245, he bought land to extend the castle grounds and Castle Arch was constructed on his orders in 1256.

The castle ceased to be a royal residence in the Tudor period and it was leased from the Crown by Francis Carter in the reign of James I. A Parliamentary survey in 1650 noted that the keep was still habitable, although the associated outbuildings are thought to have been ruinous by this time. In 1885, the borough purchased the castle grounds and opened them to the public three years later.

Guildford Friary

The Guildford Black Friary was a community of Dominicans, founded by Eleanor of Provence, wife of Henry III, around 1275. It occupied a site of around beside the River Wey, to the north of the Town Ditch (now North Street). Excavations in the 1970s revealed that the original buildings were arranged around three sides of a central cloister, with a church to the south, chapter house to the east and kitchen to the north. The community was never large; in 1336 there were only 20 friars and by the time of its dissolution in 1537, there were only seven. In the late Tudor period, the building was occasionally used as a royal residence until 1606, when it was demolished and the materials used for construction projects elsewhere in the town.

In 1630, John Annandale purchased the friary grounds and built a house there. The property passed through a series of private owners until 1794, when it was bought by the War Office. It was used as a barracks until the end of the Napoleonic Wars and then demolished in 1818. The grounds are indicated on an 1841 map of Guildford as the "Barrack Field" and shortly afterwards the area was divided into plots and sold for housebuilding. In 1858, the Chennel family set up a steam-powered flour mill on the site of the friary church and cloisters, which was subsequently purchased and converted to a brewery by Thomas Taunton in the 1870s. In 1956, the brewery merged with the Meux Brewery of Nine Elms to form Friary Meux. The combined company was taken over by Allied Breweries in 1963 Brewing ceased in December 1968 and the site was sold to the developer, MEPC plc. The brewery was demolished in 1974 and, after archaeological investigations had been concluded, construction of the Friary Centre began in 1978.

Transport and communications

The eastwest route along the North Downs has been in use since ancient times. In the late 19th century it was dubbed the Pilgrims Way, but there is no convincing evidence of its use by pilgrims. The route consists of multiple parallel tracks and hollow ways running along the top of and beneath the North Downs escarpment and is typical of other ridgeway routes in the UK and Europe. Similarly, the path alongside the River Wey, running broadly northsouth, is also likely to have been used since antiquity. By the Tudor period, this route had become an important military supply line, linking London and Chatham to Portsmouth. A turnpike road through Guildford, between London and Portsmouth, was created in 1749 and nine years later the roads across the Hog's Back and towards Leatherhead were also turnpiked. The present Farnham Road was built . The most recent major change to the local road network was the opening of the A3 Guildford Bypass in 1934.

The River Wey has been used for navigation since ancient times and during the Medieval period, there is thought to have been a wharf at Millmead. The River Wey Navigation was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1651. Twelve locks (including two flood locks), and of new cuts were constructed between the River Thames and Guildford, and the waterway opened in 1653. The navigation had a positive impact on the economy of west Surrey. By the end of the 17th century, timber was being transported via the river from the county boundary with West Sussex and in 1724, Daniel Defoe wrote that corn from Farnham was being sent by barge to London. The Act also allowed passengers to be transported via the Wey and the maximum one-way fare was capped at 1s, which was raised in 1671 to 1s 4d.

The Godalming Navigation was authorised in 1760 and was completed four years later. Four locks were built as part of the works and the Town Bridge was altered to allow barges to pass beneath it. The period of the American War of Independence (17751783) was particularly profitable for the two waterways, and a total of 17,000 tonnes of cargo was transported in 1776. Traffic on the Wey and Godalming Navigations declined following the opening of the railway lines in the late 1840s. The National Trust acquired the two waterways in the 1960s and have owned them ever since.

The first railway to be constructed in Surrey was the London to Southampton line, which opened in stages from May 1838. Woking railway station, was built on the south side of the tracks for the convenience of those travelling by stagecoach from Guildford and quickly became the railhead

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