| Chilworth | |
|---|---|
| Village | |
 Diamond pattern on village houses | |
  Chilworth Location within Surrey | |
| Population | 1,928 |
| OS grid reference | TQ021471 |
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Guildford |
| Postcode district | GU4 |
| Dialling code | 01483 |
| Police | Surrey |
| Fire | Surrey |
| Ambulance | South East Coast |
| UK Parliament | |
Chilworth is a village in the Guildford borough of Surrey, England. It is located in the Tillingbourne valley, southeast of Guildford.
The village is in the Surrey Hills AONB and most of its land is outside the settlement boundary within the Metropolitan Green Belt. [1] The village occupies both sides of the Tillingbourne between those areas of the Greensand Ridge to the south, such as Tangley Hill, and the steep knoll called St Martha's Hill, with St Martha's Church on the summit, to the north. The North Downs are immediately north, east and west of that knoll. Footpaths, including the North Downs Way, lead through fields and long-established hillside woodlands along the ranges of hills. [2] Chilworth is split between two civil parishes, Shalford to the west and the largely uninhabited St Martha's to the east, and is in the south-east of the borough of Guildford in the mid-west of Surrey.
Unlike most Surrey districts, the borough has no Air Quality Management Areas. [3] Flooding from the Tillingbourne (alluvial flooding) is a rare occurrence with small parts of the north and west having been identified by the Borough Council as being at risk. [4]
Chilworth, as a landholding, appears in Domesday Book as Celeorde. It was held by Odo of Bayeux the Bishop of Bayeux. Its Domesday assets were: 1 mill worth 7s, 3 ploughs. It rendered £3 10s 0d. [5]
The settlement has a rich industrial past. At various times in history it has been the location of a wire mill, paper mill and gunpowder factory. [6] The wireworks were built in 1603 [7] by Thomas Steere and others, who seduced workmen from the Tintern wireworks of the Company of Mineral and Battery Works. This infringed the latter company's patent and enabled it to have the wireworks suppressed in 1606. [8]
The Chilworth gunpowder works were established in 1625 by the East India Company and finally closed in 1920. It was worked by a number of private companies, and became an important supplier of gunpowder to the Government. A significant number of buildings belonging to the gunpowder factory can still be found. The buildings and area are now partially looked after by Guildford Borough Council and English Heritage. The gunpowder works are listed as a scheduled monument. [9]
Before the railway was built, Chilworth was a hamlet of a few cottages around the bridge over the Tillingbourne on the direct lane to Guildford via Tyting, where the main entrance to the gunpowder works was located. [10] The second nucleus of settlement was the railway station, with its pub. A third nucleus was around a post office on the A248 in Shalford CP, which was known as "Shalford Hamlet" until around the Second World War. [11]
Since 2011 Benedictine monks have inhabited a hilltop monastery in the southern extreme of the parish of St Martha's, straddling northern Wonersh. Saint Augustine's Abbey, designed by Frederick Walters, was founded as a Franciscan friary in 1892. [12]
Chilworth Manor is a large house between the 'village' (clustered centre) and St Martha's Hill to the north. It was part of the patrimony granted to Newark Priory when this monastery was founded in the late 12th century, [13] and was administered as a monastic manor until the abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII. By 1580 the property was owned by one William Morgan. William's son, John, was knighted at Cadiz in 1596. In 1725 the widowed Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, became the owner. She added the Marlborough Wing and developed a tiered garden excavated in the sloping hillside and still known as the "Duchess's Garden". Chilworth Manor is a grade II listed building [14] and has recently been extensively restored and refurbished by new owners, following the death of its previous occupant, Lady Heald.
Chilworth has three churches, St Thomas', St Martha's, both CoE, [15] and Chilworth Free Church as well as the Roman Catholic St Augustine's Abbey, south of the village. There are two schools, Chilworth Infant School and Tillingbourne Junior School; a gastro-pub, the Percy Arms and a village shop. The village has a recreation ground with a sports pavilion, used for football. [2]
Chilworth railway station is on the North Downs Line, and is served every two hours by trains to Redhill and Reading. Trains are operated by the Great Western Railway.
The main road through the village is the A248 from Shere to Peasmarsh. Bus route number 32 connects Chilworth to Guildford, and Redhill via Dorking and is a basic hourly service, with a reduced service on Sundays. It is now operated by Compass Travel, after the route was given up by Arriva in 2014. Infrequent buses also run to Godalming (503) and Cranleigh (525).
The nearest airport is Farnborough, approximately 10 miles (16 km) to the north-west.
Chilworth is covered by ADSL, VDSL, Full fibre and Mobile Broadband based high speed internet services. A Vodafone phone mast is at the playing fields, just south of the Tangley level crossing. In 2011 BT extended their Fibre to the Cabinet service to cover Chilworth. This allowed for 12 Mbit/s+ services and service at the eastern end of the village and up to 70 Mbit/s to the west.
Broadband for Surrey Hills (B4SH) installed full fibre (FTTP) to the sparsely populated north edge of the village in mid-2021 and Roseacre Gardens to the east in December 2022. BT Openreach based full fibre broadband services became available to almost all of the village in March 2023. Gigaclear have also announced plans to cover the village. [16]
Nearest Settlements | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||||||||||
Bramley is a village and civil parish about three miles (5 km) south of Guildford in the Borough of Waverley in Surrey, south east England. Most of the parish lies in the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Shalford is a village and civil parish in the Guildford district, in Surrey, England on the A281 Horsham road immediately south of Guildford. It has a railway station which is between Guildford and Dorking on the Reading to Gatwick Airport line. In 2011 the parish had a population of 4,142.
Compton is a village and civil parish in the Guildford district of Surrey, England. It is between Godalming and Guildford. It has a medieval church and a close connection to fine art and pottery, being the later life home of artist George Frederic Watts. The parish has considerable woodland and agricultural land, and the undeveloped portions are in the Metropolitan Green Belt. The village is traversed by the North Downs Way and has a large western conservation area. Central to the village are the Watts Gallery, the cemetery chapel commissioned by his wife for him, two inns and the parish church.
Shere is a village in the Guildford district of Surrey, England 4.8 miles (7.7 km) east south-east of Guildford and 5.4 miles (8.7 km) west of Dorking, centrally bypassed by the A25. Located on the River Tillingbourne it is a small still partly agricultural village chiefly set in the wooded Vale of Holmesdale between the North Downs and Greensand Ridge. As of 2011 the village had a population of 1,032.
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.
Guildford Borough Council in Surrey, England is elected every four years.
Artington is a village and civil parish in the borough of Guildford, Surrey, England. It covers the area from the southern edge of the built-up centre of Guildford and steep Guildown, the start of the Hog's Back and part of the North Downs AONB, to New Pond Farm by Godalming and the edge of Peasmarsh. It contains Loseley Park, a country estate with dairy, and the hamlet of Littleton.
Ash is a village and civil parish in the far west of the borough of Guildford, Surrey. Ash is on the eastern side of the River Blackwater, with a station on the Reading-Guildford-Gatwick line, and direct roads to Aldershot, Farnham and Guildford. The 2011 census counted the residents of the main ward of Ash, which excludes Ash Vale, as 6,120. Ash has a small museum in the local cemetery chapel, a large secondary school and a library.
St Martha's Hill is a landmark in St Martha in Surrey, England between the town of Guildford and village of Chilworth. It is the 18th highest hill in the county and on the Greensand Ridge, in this case at the closest point to the North Downs, commencing to the immediate north at the Guildown-Merrow Down in the parishes of Guildford and Merrow. The top of the hill provides a semi-panorama of Newland's Corner also in the Surrey Hills AONB. Its church is the main amenity of the small parish extending to the south into the streets of Chilworth, with some medieval stone incorporations from a 12th-century predecessor and is a wedding venue mainly to outside the sparsely populated parish.
Wonersh is a village and civil parish in the Waverley district of Surrey, England and Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Wonersh contains three Conservation Areas and spans an area three to six miles SSE of Guildford.
Normandy is a village and civil parish of 16.37 square kilometres in the borough of Guildford in Surrey, England. Almost surrounded by its hill ranges, Normandy is in the plain west of Guildford, straddles the A323 'Aldershot Road' and is north of the narrowest part the North Downs known as the Hog's Back which carries a dual carriageway. The parish in 2011 had a population of 2,981 living in 1,310 households, has woods, a public common and four government-operated commons to the north that are an SSSI heath. Normandy has been home to a number of notable residents, including William Cobbett.
Gomshall is a village in the borough of Guildford in Surrey, England.
The River Tillingbourne runs along the south side of the North Downs and joins the River Wey at Guildford. Its source is a mile south of Tilling Springs to the north of Leith Hill at grid reference TQ143437 and it runs through Friday Street, Abinger Hammer, Gomshall, Shere, Albury, Chilworth and Shalford. The source is a semi-natural uninhabited area. The catchment is situated on sandstone which has a low rate of weathering. The Tillingbourne is 24 km (15 mi) in length.
St Martha is a hillside, largely wooded, small civil parish in the Guildford borough of Surrey towards the narrower part of the west half of the North Downs. It includes three homes north of St Martha's Hill, a southern knoll of the range of hills but almost all its population is south of this, in much of the village of Chilworth which is divided between St Martha's and Shalford parishes. Chilworth gunpowder works mark the southern border of the entity, and are a well-preserved, publicly accessible area of riverside former industry.
The River Wey is a main tributary of the River Thames in south east England. Its two branches, one of which rises near Alton in Hampshire and the other in West Sussex to the south of Haslemere, join at Tilford in Surrey. Once combined, the flow is eastwards then northwards via Godalming and Guildford to meet the Thames at Weybridge. Downstream the river forms the backdrop to Newark Priory and Brooklands. The Wey and Godalming Navigations were built in the 17th and 18th centuries, to create a navigable route from Godalming to the Thames.
The fifth full elections for Guildford Borough Council took place on 1 May 1987. The Conservatives retained control of the council winning 30 of the 45 seats on the council. This represented one net loss for the Conservatives, relative to the 1983 council elections. Labour retained its 6 councillors. The SDP-Liberal Alliance won 9 seats, a net gain of two seats on the 1983 council elections. No independents were elected to the council, one had been elected in 1983.
The Law Brook or Postford Brook is a stream in the Surrey Hills AONB which feeds the Tillingbourne which in turn feeds the River Wey. It is notable in its own right chiefly for its industrial vestiges and records.
Chilworth Manor is a historic country house located midway between Chilworth, Surrey and St Martha's Hill to the north. The manor is grade II listed by Historic England.
Many watermills lined the banks of the River Wey, England, from the 17th century, due to the river's ability to provide a reliable, year-round flow of water. These mills chiefly ground wheat, often referred to as corn, for flour and oats for animal feed though many were used in the production of other goods such as paper, cloth, leather, wire and gunpowder. The river was home to more mills per mile than anywhere else in Great Britain. The mill situated at Coxes Lock near Addlestone, Surrey, is the largest. There are many mills on the river's principal tributaries, such as the Tillingbourne, the Ock and some mills on the Whitmore Vale stream, Cranleigh Waters and Hodge Brook. The last commercial mill on the Tillingbourne, Botting's Mill at Albury, closed in 1991. Headley Water Mill, on the Wey South branch is still in business. Town Mill, Guildford still has a water turbine driven generator producing electricity for the town.
