Buckland | |
---|---|
Village and civil parish | |
A view in the village, c. 1920 | |
Location within Surrey | |
Area | 5.51 km2 (2.13 sq mi) |
Population | 562 (Civil Parish 2011) [1] |
• Density | 102/km2 (260/sq mi) |
OS grid reference | TQ2251 |
Civil parish |
|
District | |
Shire county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | Betchworth |
Postcode district | RH3 |
Dialling code | 01737 |
Police | Surrey |
Fire | Surrey |
Ambulance | South East Coast |
UK Parliament | |
Buckland is a village and civil parish in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England, between Dorking and Reigate, its nearest towns. The civil parish is bordered by the North Downs escarpment in the north. The area contains a number of sand pits.
Buckland is in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, 2 mi (3.2 km) east of Reigate and 4 mi (6.4 km) west of Dorking. The village is at the northern edge of the Weald, at the foot of the North Downs.
The south of the civil parish, which includes the village centre, is on the strata of the Lower Greensand Group. Sand is quarried from the Folkestone Beds and silver sand occurs in seams between Buckland and Reigate. [2] : 76, 179 The Gault clay forms a 0.5 mi-wide (0.80 km) band, running from east to west, to the north of the village centre. Fossils of Serpula antiquata , Neohibolites listeri and Euhoplites species have been found in this stratum. [2] : 82 Hearthstone was quarried from the Upper Greensand at the base of the North Downs until the early 20th century. [2] : 87 This layer contains fossils of bivalve species, including several from the genus Pecten . [2] : 119
The earliest surviving record of Buckland is the Domesday Book of 1086, in which it appears as Bochelant. The settlement is recorded as Boclande in 1225, Boclond in 1225, Bukelonde in 1293 and Bukkelond in 1448. [3] The name is generally agreed to mean "land held by book or charter". [4]
The earliest evidence of human activity in the village is a flint axe fragment from the Neolithic. [6] A side-looped spearhead from the Middle Bronze Age, dated to c. 1400 – c. 1200 BCE, was found by workmen in 1907. [7]
In 1086, the manor was held by John, a lesser tenant of Richard of Tonbridge. Buckland had a church, watermill and thirty-five heads of household. Of these, seventeen farmed the land owned by the feudal lord, and ten were serfs. [8] [9]
The village church of St Mary the Virgin was built in 1380. It is a Grade II listed building. [10] The church was rebuilt in 1859-60, under the supervision of the architect, Henry Woodyer. A new, wider chancel arch was constructed and a new organ chamber and vestry added on the north side. [11] Some of the timbers removed during Woodyer's work, may have been reused in the construction of Buckland Windmill, also Grade II listed, and now a tourist focal point. [12]
The barn on The Green dates from the early 17th century. The timber-framed structure, which was restored in the 20th century, has a tower at the south end, topped by a weathervane. [13] The barn was used as a temporary church during the Woodyer reconstruction work and was converted to a private house in the early 1980s. [14]
The first school in Buckland, a National school, was founded in 1822. Its replacement, designed by Woodyer, opened in 1862. It closed in 1981 and the building is now a private house. [11]
Buckland War Memorial, on the village green, was erected in 1920 and was unveiled in July of that year by Percival Marling VC. Designed by Ebbutt and Sons of Croydon, it is constructed in rough Cornish granite in the form of a wheel-head cross. [15] [16]
Buckland is also the location of the source of the Shag Brook, a tributary of the River Mole. Local legend says the brook was the home of a monstrous horse (in some versions a gorilla), called the "Buckland Shag". This beast would drag travellers from the nearby coaching road and devour them on the Shag Stone, a large boulder in the brook with a blood red vein of iron ore running through it. [17] The monster was exorcised by the local parson, Willoughby Bertie, and the stone was removed from the brook c. 1757. [18]
The legend of the Buckland Shag was revived in 1986 by a local morris side, The Buckland Shag Morris Men. [19]
Buckland has a village store and a pub, The Pheasant, on the Reigate Road.
The A25 runs east–west through the parish. The nearest railway station is Betchworth on the North Downs Line, 1 mile (1.6 km) WNW of the village centre.
Surrey County Council, elected every four years, has one representative from Buckland for Dorking Rural. Two councillors sit on the Mole Valley District Council.
Output area | Detached | Semi-detached | Terraced | Flats and apartments | Caravans/temporary/mobile homes | shared between households [1] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(Civil Parish) | 118 | 76 | 13 | 25 | 4 | 0 |
The average level of accommodation in the region composed of detached houses was 28%, the average that was apartments was 22.6%.
Output area | Population | Households | % Owned outright | % Owned with a loan | hectares [1] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
(Civil Parish) | 562 | 236 | 39.8% | 30.5% | 551 |
The proportion of households in the civil parish who owned their home outright compares to the regional average of 35.1%. The proportion who owned their home with a loan compares to the regional average of 32.5%. The remaining % is made up of rented dwellings (plus a negligible % of households living rent-free).
Dorking is a market town in Surrey in South East England about 21 mi (34 km) south of London. It is in Mole Valley District and the council headquarters are to the east of the centre. The High Street runs roughly east–west, parallel to the Pipp Brook and along the northern face of an outcrop of Lower Greensand. The town is surrounded on three sides by the Surrey Hills National Landscape and is close to Box Hill and Leith Hill.
Reigate and Banstead is a local government district with borough status in Surrey, England. Its council is based in Reigate and the borough also includes the towns of Banstead, Horley and Redhill. Parts of the borough are within the Surrey Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Northern parts of the borough, including Banstead, lie inside the M25 motorway which encircles London.
Reigate is a town in Surrey, England, around 19 miles (30 km) south of central London. The settlement is recorded in Domesday Book in 1086 as Cherchefelle and first appears with its modern name in the 1190s. The earliest archaeological evidence for human activity is from the Paleolithic and Neolithic, and during the Roman period, tile-making took place to the north east of the modern centre.
Redhill is a town in the borough of Reigate and Banstead within the county of Surrey, England. The town, which adjoins the town of Reigate to the west, is due south of Croydon in Greater London, and is part of the London commuter belt. The town is also the post town, entertainment and commercial area of three adjoining communities : Merstham, Earlswood and Whitebushes, as well as of two small rural villages to the east in the Tandridge District, Bletchingley and Nutfield.
Mole Valley is a local government district in Surrey, England. Its council is based in Dorking, and the district's other town is Leatherhead. The largest villages are Ashtead, Fetcham and Great Bookham, in the northern third of the district.
Brockham is a village and civil parish in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England. It is approximately 1.5 miles (2.4 km) east of Dorking and 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Reigate. The village lies south of Box Hill, with the River Mole flowing west through the village. At the time of the 2021 census, it had a population of 2,198.
Westcott is a village in central Surrey, England, about 1.5 miles (2.5 km) west of the centre of Dorking. It is in the Mole Valley district and the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The Pipp Brook, a tributary of the River Mole, runs to the north of the centre and the settlement is between Ranmore Common on the North Downs and Leith Hill on the Greensand Ridge.
Abinger is a large, well-wooded and mostly rural civil parish that lies between the settlements of Dorking, Shere and Ewhurst in the district of Mole Valley, Surrey, England.
Betchworth is a village and civil parish in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England. The village centre is on the north bank of the River Mole and south of the A25 road, almost 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Dorking and 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Reigate. London is 19.5 miles (31.4 km) north of the village.
Albury is a village and civil parish in central Surrey, England, around 3.5 miles (5.6 km) east of Guildford. It is in the Surrey Hills National Landscape and the Borough of Guildford.
Leigh is a village and civil parish in Surrey, between Reigate, Dorking and Charlwood in the east of Mole Valley district. The village centre is suburban and its remainder is agricultural, interspersed by four satellite clustered localities: Dawesgreen, Bunce Common, Shellwood Cross and Nalderswood which benefit from the amenities of the village and a minority of the remainder is woodland.
Capel is a village and civil parish in southern Surrey, England. It is equidistant between Dorking and Horsham – about 5 miles (8.0 km) away. Around Capel, to the west, skirts the A24 road. Capel is approximately 2.5 miles (4.0 km) north of the West Sussex border, 26 miles (42 km) south of London and 12 miles (19 km) southeast of Guildford and is in the Mole Valley district. The village is in the north of a landscape called the Weald, meaning forest, which forms a significant minority of the land today, particularly towards the Greensand Ridge.
Wotton is a well-wooded parish with one main settlement, a small village mostly south of the A25 between Guildford in the west and Dorking in the east. The nearest village with a small number of shops is Westcott. Wotton lies in a narrow valley, collecting the headwaters of the Tilling Bourne which then has its first combined flow in the Vale of Holmesdale. The parish is long north to south, reaching to the North Downs escarpment in the north to the escarpment of the Greensand Ridge at Leith Hill in the south.
Reigate was a hundred in the historic county of Surrey, England. It was geographically consonant with the southern two thirds of the current Borough of Reigate and Banstead together with two parishes in Tandridge and fractions of former parishes in the London Borough of Croydon and Borough of Crawley, West Sussex. Accordingly, it included the medieval-established town of Reigate with its motte castle and land which became the towns of Redhill and Horley.
Holmesdale, also known as the Vale of Holmesdale, is a valley in South-East England that falls between the hill ranges of the North Downs and the Greensand Ridge of the Weald, in the counties of Kent and Surrey. It stretches from Folkestone on the Kent coast, through Ashford, Harrietsham, Maidstone, Riverhead/Sevenoaks, Westerham, Oxted, Godstone, Redhill, Reigate, Dorking, Gomshall, and Guildford – west of which it is also called by the local name of "Puttenham Vale" – as it continues through the village of Puttenham, to the market town of Farnham.
Gatton is a former village in the Borough of Reigate and Banstead, Surrey, England. It survives as a sparsely populated, predominantly rural locality, which includes Gatton Park, no more than 12 houses, and two farms on the slopes of the North Downs near Reigate.
Pixham is a chapelry within the parish of Dorking, Surrey on the near side of the confluence of the River Mole and the Pipp Brook to its town, Dorking, which is centred 1 km (0.6 mi) southwest. The town as a whole, uniquely in Surrey, has three railway stations; Pixham adjoins or is the location of two of the three; and is near the junction of the A24 and A25 main roads.
The Pipp Brook is a left-bank tributary of the River Mole, Surrey, England. It rises at two main springs north of Leith Hill on the Greensand Ridge, then descends steeply in a northward direction, before flowing eastwards along the Vale of Holmesdale. It runs to the north of Dorking High Street, before discharging into the Mole at Pixham.
St Martin's Church is an Anglican parish church in Dorking, Surrey. It is a Grade II* listed building and surviving parts of the structure date back to the Middle Ages. It in the archdeaconry of Dorking, in the Diocese of Guildford. The church is the main Anglican parish church in Dorking and was refurbished to the designs of Henry Woodyer.