Haslemere

Wikipedia contributors · CC BY-SA · EN · 04/10/2026

The town of Haslemere and the villages of Shottermill and Grayswood are in south-west Surrey, England, around 61.77 km south-west of London. Together with the settlements of Hindhead and Beacon Hill, they comprise the civil parish of Haslemere in the Borough of Waverley. The tripoint between the counties of Surrey, Hampshire and West Sussex is at the west end of Shottermill.

Much of the civil parish is in the catchment area of the south branch of the River Wey, which rises on Blackdown in West Sussex. The urban areas of Haslemere and Shottermill are concentrated along the valleys of the young river and its tributaries, and many of the local roads are narrow and steep. The National Trust is a major landowner in the civil parish and its properties include Swan Barn Farm. The Surrey Hills National Landscape is to the north of the town and the South Downs National Park is to the south.

Haslemere is thought to have originated as a planned town in the 12th century and was awarded a market charter in 1221. By the early 16th century, it had become a Parliamentary borough and was represented by two MPs in the House of Commons until 1832. The town began to grow in the second half of the 19th century, following the opening of the London to Portsmouth railway line in 1859. In late-Victorian times, it became a centre for the Arts and Crafts movement and the International Dolmetsch Early Music Festival was founded in 1925. Haslemere became an Urban District in 1913, but under the Local Government Act 1972, its status was reduced to a civil parish with a town council.

Shottermill grew up as a hamlet near to one of the watermills on the River Wey in the 16th century. The settlement began to expand in the 1880s and joined the Haslemere Urban District in 1933. Until the end of the 19th century, Grayswood was a small farming community, but became an ecclesiastical parish in 1901.

Toponymy

The first indication of a settlement at Haslemere is from 1180, when there is a record of a "Chapel of Piperham", belonging to the church at Chiddingfold. The town is recorded as Heselmere in 1221 and 1255, Haselmere in 1255 and 1441, Hasulmere in 1310, Hesselmere in 1612 and Hasselmere in 1654. The "mere" element of the name is thought to refer to a lake or pond on the west side of the High Street, which was visible until at least 1859. The "hasle" element of the name may refer to the common hazel tree or to the Heysulle family from Chiddingfold, who are known to have owned land in the area until the 14th century.

Grayswood appears as Grasewode in 1479 and 1518, Grasewood in 1537 and 1577, Grace Wood in 1568 and Greyes Wood in 1583. The "gray" element may derive from the Old French personal name "Gerard" and there may be an association with Gerardswoded, recorded in the 14th and 15th centuries near Witley, also in south west Surrey.

Shottermill is first recorded as Shottover in 1537 and Schoutouermyll in 1607. The modern spelling is first used in 1583 and references a watermill owned by the Shotter family.

Geography

Haslemere Civil Parish

The civil parish of Haslemere is in the borough of Waverley in south west Surrey, close to the borders with both Hampshire and West Sussex. The parish includes the villages of Hindhead, Beacon Hill and Grayswood, the settlements of Shottermill and Critchmere, as well as the town of Haslemere. The area is served by two principal transport routes, the London to Portsmouth railway line and the A3 trunk road, both of which run via Guildford.

Much of the civil parish is in the catchment area of the south branch of the River Wey, which rises on the northern slopes of Blackdown, to the south of Haslemere town. The area to the east of the town is drained by the River Arun. Around 48% of the civil parish is covered by woodland, 85 ha of which is classified as Ancient Woodland. Approximately 17% of the parish, 395 ha, is protected and includes parts of two Special Protection Areas, one Special Area of Conservation and four Sites of Special Scientific Interest. The main settlements are surrounded by the Surrey Hills National Landscape.

Haslemere town, Shottermill and Grayswood

Haslemere town is in the south east of the civil parish. The commercial centre is at the junction of the High Street, Petworth Road and Lower Street, which together form an inverted "T" shape. Shottermill, to the west, is on the north side of the valley of the south branch of the River Wey and is linked to Haslemere via Wey Hill. The hamlet of Critchmere is to the north west of Shottermill and the village of Grayswood is to the north of Haslemere town.

Geology

The oldest outcrops in the civil parish are of Weald Clay, which comes to the surface to the east of Grayswood, where the young tributaries of the River Arun have eroded the overlying strata. A Weald Clay sandstone is also exposed in the same area. The Atherfield Clay lies above the Weald Clay and is exposed as an outcrop north of Grayswood and also in the railway cutting, west of the station. The majority of Haslemere and Shottermill lie on the Hythe Beds of the Lower Greensand and the spring line, where the tributaries of the Wey and Arun rise, is on the junction between this permeable layer and the impermeable Atherfield Clay below. The gravel found in the river valleys is thought to have been deposited during the penultimate ice age and is composed of rock fragments of local origin. Much of the soil in the civil parish is free-draining, very acidic, sandy, loamy and of low fertility. To the east of Haslemere town and Graywsood, the soil is loamy and clayey, and is of low permeability.

History

Early history

The earliest evidence for human activity in the Haslemere area is from the Neolithic. Flints dating from 4000 to 2400 BCE were discovered during archaeological surveys conducted prior to the construction of the Hindhead Tunnel. There may have been a settlement in the area in the mid-late Bronze Age and a Romano-British cemetery was discovered on the site of Beech Road, to the north of the town centre, at the start of the 20th century.

Governance

Neither Shottermill nor Haslemere are directly mentioned in Domesday Book, but the land on which the two settlements are now located was divided between the Farnham and Godalming Hundreds respectively. The south western corner of Surrey is thought to have been sparsely populated in the 11th century, but it is possible that some of the mills listed under the entry for Farnham, were located on the Wey in the Shottermill area.

The first indication of a settlement at Haslemere is from 1180, when there is a record of a "Chapel of Piperham". The chapel belonged to the Parish of Chiddingfold, part of the manor of Godalming and is thought to have been either on or close to the site of the current St Bartholomew's Church. There may also have been a settlement on Haste Hill, to the south east of the town centre, and there are references to "Churchliten field" and the "Old church-yard" in records of the area.

The first use of the modern name Haslemere is from 1221, when permission for a market was given to Richard Poore, Bishop of Salisbury, indicating that the settlement was sufficiently large to be considered a town. In 1397, Richard II granted a charter to the settlement, confirming the order from 1221 and permitting an annual fair to be held in the town. The town remained in the possession of the Bishops of Salisbury until 1540, when it was purchased by the Crown.

The first indication of a settlement at Shottermill is from 1285, when reference is made to a Manor of Pitfold, covering the extreme southern portion of Farnham Hundred. From 1344, the manor was held by Edward III, but was granted to the Convent of Dartford in 1362. The land remained in the convent's possession until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, when it reverted to the Crown. A new charter was issued to Haslemere town by Elizabeth I in 1596. Today, this special status is celebrated with the Charter fair, held once every two years in the High Street.

Reforms during the Tudor period replaced the day-to-day administration of towns such as Haslemere in the hands of the vestry of the parish church. The vestry was charged with appointing a parish constable, running a lock-up, maintaining local roads and administering poor relief. In 1839, many administrative responsibilities were transferred to the Hambledon Rural District Council and in 1863, the civil parish of Haslemere was created, although local elections did not take place until the following year. In 1896, the Surrey Times praised the town's authorities, writing: "No parish council in the country has done better work than the Haslemere council. Sanitation, allotments, charities, lighting, roads, footpaths and waste lands have all been thoroughly and prudently looked after." A further change took place in 1913, when town was removed from the Hambledon Rural District and the Parish Council was promoted to the status of an Urban District Council (UDC). Initially the UDC was based at the Town Hall, but moved in 1926 to a building on Museum Hill, which had been vacated by the Haslemere Educational Museum.

Until 1896, Shottermill was part of the Frensham civil parish. It became independent in 1896, following the passing of the Local Government Act 1894. In 1900, the new council set up a District Sanitary Association to improve drainage and to install a sewerage system in the village. The Shottermill civil parish was disbanded in 1933, when the area became part of the Haslemere Urban District.

The most recent change in local government took place in 1974, when the urban districts of Farnham, Godalming and Haslemere were merged with Hambledon Rural District to form Waverley District. The Haslemere UDC was reduced to a town council and the reformed body readopted the town hall as its main meeting place.

Parliamentary borough

Haslemere may have become a parliamentary borough as early as 1230, when there is a record of the grant of a burgage plot in the settlement. It is referred to as a burgus in a document of 1377, but the first known MPs for the town were not elected until 1584. Elizabeth I confirmed the borough status in the charter of 1596. Until the Reform Act 1832, two MPs were elected to represent the town in the House of Commons. The electorate was confined to those holding property either as freeholders or as tenants of burgage properties, who paid rent to the lord of the manor. Electoral records show that for the elections of 1664 and 1735, there were only 82 and 85 eligible properties respectively. By the early 17th century, Haslemere had acquired a reputation as a pocket borough.

The More family, who owned Loseley Park, effectively controlled the borough for much of the 17th century. However, in 1722, More Molyneux and his favoured co-candidate, Montague Blundell, 1st Viscount Blundell, lost the election to James Oglethorpe and Peter Burrell. In 1754, James More Molyneux, son of More Molyneux, was determined to reclaim the seat for his family. He and his favoured co-candidate, Philip Carteret Webb, purchased 34 freeholds and tenements, and installed their own representative as Bailiff to oversee the election. The freehold of the Red Cow Inn was split into shares, to further increase the number likely to vote for More Molyneux and Webb, who were duly elected.

The final elections in Haslemere Borough took place in 1830 and two years later the constituency was combined with that of Farnham.

Transport and communications

Before the start of the 18th century, the local roads were the responsibility of the parishes through which they passed. The main road between London and Portsmouth ran over Gibbet Hill to the west of Hindhead, and stagecoaches are known to have travelled along this section from 1732. It became the responsibility of a turnpike trust in 1749 and was rerouted around the edge of the Devil's Punch Bowl in 1826, to reduce the gradient to a maximum of 5%. This road is now known as the A3 and was further improved in 2011, with the opening of the Hindhead Tunnel.

The road through Grayswood and Haslemere became a turnpike in 1764. A mail coach started running along this road, now the A286, in 1769. In the early 19th century, there were as many as 24 stagecoaches a day passing through the town, however the number reduced following the opening of the in 1841.

The railway line through Haslemere was authorised by parliament in July 1853 and was built by the civil engineer, Thomas Brassey. Construction work started in August 1853, but was not completed until May 1858, in part because of the magnitude of the excavation work required for the deep cutting through Haslemere. The line opened on 1 January 1859, with trains running as far as . Although the earthworks were built to accommodate two tracks, initially only a single line was installed. The line was doubled in 1876–77 and the station platforms at Haslemere were extended to allow express services to call from January 1894.

The Grade II-listed station signal box was constructed in 1894. It is built in red brick with a hipped Welsh Slate roof and is one of only two surviving examples of a platform-mounted LSWR Type 4 design. The semaphore signals in the station were replaced by colour lights in 1937, the same year that the line was electrified.

Industry and commerce

The market charter for Haslemere was granted in 1221 and a license to hold an annual fair followed in 1397. By the end of the Middle Ages, it would appear that the market was no longer being held regularly, necessitating the regrant of the charter by Elizabeth I in 1596. The market was held at the south end of the High Street, the widest part, and a market house was built at that location in 1626. The original building would have been constructed of wood, but it was replaced by a brick structure, the present Town Hall, in 1814.

Source and attribution

Adapted from “Haslemere” by English Wikipedia contributors. Main paragraphs and sections are retained; tables, reference markers and technical markup are omitted. This is an encyclopedic adaptation, not a personal review. Original revision and contributor history ↗. Text is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗. Check current visitor access, tickets and transport with the relevant operator.