Friday Street

Friday Street
Friday Street
Hamlet
	Hammer Pond at Friday Street
	Friday Street Location within Surrey
OS grid reference	TQ129455
District	Mole Valley ;
Shire county	Surrey ;
Region	South East ;
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Dorking
Postcode district	RH5
Dialling code	01306
Police	Surrey
Fire	Surrey
Ambulance	South East Coast
UK Parliament	Mole Valley ;
	List of places UK England Surrey 51°11′51″N0°23′08″W / 51.19757°N 0.38555°W

Last updated December 17, 2024

Friday Street is a hamlet on the gentle lower north slope of Leith Hill in Surrey, England. It is in a wooded headwater ravine, just to the south of Wotton and the A25, a single rather than dual carriageway road, running between Guildford to the west and Dorking to the east. It is part of the Surrey Hills AONB.

History and geography

Friday Street is part of the relatively sparsely populated civil parish of Wotton. Central to Friday Street on most maps is its hammer pond, fed by the Friday Street stream, a tributary of the River Tillingbourne. It is one of three in the Vale of Holmesdale in Surrey, being in a narrow band of ironstone-rich hills, the Greensand Ridge. These were in use from the medieval age until the early 19th century when wholly surpassed by metalwork production specialist centres, principally Sheffield and the West Midlands, assisted by cheap inter-regional transport, coal replacing charcoal as a fuel and by technological advances.

Fewer than 20 houses have been built and the area is surrounded by the second largest wooded common in Surrey, Wotton Common also known as Leith Hill Common, preceded by the Hurtmoor in the same range of hills.

In censuses conducted by the Office for National Statistics, Friday Street is too small to make up a census unit centred on it, without including other land, and has varied map definitions.^[1]^[2]

Landmarks

Wotton House, the largest house, is on the northern borders of the hamlet. The next largest, the Grade II listed Pond Cottage, was built, according to Historic England, "possibly for an iron master". It is a timber framed 17th century house, clad in galleted Bargate rubble to the lower storey with bricks above and its wall plate exposed under a tiled roof.^[3]

A former inn on the edge of the hamlet bore the name of Stephan Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of King John and signatory of Magna Carta . The current building replaces an earlier building that burnt down in the 1930s.^[4] It won Surrey Life’s Food and Drink Awards and Pub of the Year in 2016 but closed in 2020, was sold and converted into a house.^[5] Martin Tupper, poet and antiquarian, wrote a biography of Stephan Langton in 1858 depicting his time in this area.^[6]

Tillingbourne Waterfall

Not far from the source of the River Tillingbourne at Tilling Springs is Surrey's tallest waterfall, situated to the east of a public footpath heading north towards Wotton between the hamlets of Friday Street and Broadmoor.

In film, fiction and the media

Friday Street also features as the title of a song on the album Heavy Soul by Surrey native Paul Weller.

In 1984 Friday Street was used as a location for the BBC Television series The Tripods based on the books by John Christopher, where, for the sake of the story it became the fictional future village of "Wherton."

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abinger Hammer</span> Village in Surrey, England

Abinger Hammer is a village in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England. It lies in the Vale of Holmesdale in the Surrey Hills National Landscape and is located on the A25 about 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Guildford and 4+1⁄2 miles (7.2 km) west of Dorking. The village is named after its water-powered iron forge.

Leith Hill in southern England is the highest summit of the Greensand Ridge, approximately 6.7 km (4 mi) southwest of Dorking, Surrey and 40.5 km (30 mi) southwest of central London. It reaches 294 m (965 ft) above sea level, and is the second highest point in southeast England, after Walbury Hill in southwest Berkshire,. Leith Hill is the highest ground for 79 km (49 mi).

Chiddingfold is a village and civil parish in the Weald in the Waverley district of Surrey, England. It lies on the A283 road between Milford and Petworth. The parish includes the hamlets of Ansteadbrook, High Street Green and Combe Common.

Elstead is a civil parish in Surrey, England with shops, houses and cottages spanning the north and south sides of the River Wey; development is concentrated on two roads that meet at a central green. It includes Pot Common its southern neighbourhood. Hamlets in the parish, marginally separated from the village centre, are Charleshill and Elstead Common, both rich in woodland. Elstead lies between Farnham and Godalming on the B3001 road about 2.2 miles (3.6 km) west of the A3 Milford interchange.

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.

Godstone is a village and civil parish in the Tandridge District of Surrey, England. It is 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Reigate, 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Oxted, 22 miles (35 km) east of Guildford and 18 miles (29 km) south of London. Close to the North Downs, both the North Downs Way and the Greensand Way pass through Godstone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abinger</span> Civil parish in Mole Valley, Surrey, England

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.

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.

Chilworth is a village in the Guildford borough of Surrey, England. It is located in the Tillingbourne valley, southeast of Guildford.

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Peaslake, Hoe, and Colman's Hill are in the centre of the Surrey Hills National Landscape and mid-west of the Greensand Ridge about 5 miles (8.0 km) ESE of Guildford. Surrounded by denser pine and other coniferous forest-clad hills, the three conjoined settlements have a small core in Peaslake itself with the amenities of a village, but are otherwise lightly scattered settlements at a higher elevation than the centre of Shere, the civil parish.

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Gomshall is a village in the borough of Guildford in Surrey, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">River Tillingbourne</span> River 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capel, Surrey</span> Village and civil parish in Surrey, England

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.

Silent Pool is a spring-fed lake at the foot of the North Downs, about 4 miles (6 km) east of Guildford in Surrey. The outflow from Silent Pool runs into a second, adjacent, lake, Sherbourne Pond, created in the mid-seventeenth century. In turn the outflow from the Sherbourne Pond feeds the Sherbourne Brook, a tributary of the Tilling Bourne.

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.

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.

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.

References

↑ 2011 census interactive maps Archived January 29, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
↑ Grid square map Ordnance survey website
↑ Historic England. "Details from listed building database (1294094)". National Heritage List for England . Retrieved 15 January 2014.
↑ "Stephan Langton Inn, Friday Street". What Pub. Retrieved 21 August 2018.
↑ Cole-Lomas, Lauren (19 January 2024). "Surrey's most secluded pub never to welcome customers again". Surrey Live. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
↑ Martin Farquhar Tupper (1858). "Stephan Langton". archive.org.

External links

Media related to Friday Street, Surrey at Wikimedia Commons
Friday Street at InfoBritain.com

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Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
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[1] 2011 census interactive maps Archived January 29, 2016, at the Wayback Machine

[os-2] Grid square map Ordnance survey website

[3] Historic England. "Details from listed building database (1294094)". National Heritage List for England . Retrieved 15 January 2014.

[4] "Stephan Langton Inn, Friday Street". What Pub. Retrieved 21 August 2018.

[5] Cole-Lomas, Lauren (19 January 2024). "Surrey's most secluded pub never to welcome customers again". Surrey Live. Retrieved 20 January 2024.

[tupper-6] Martin Farquhar Tupper (1858). "Stephan Langton". archive.org.

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