Dorking () is a market town in Surrey in South East England about south-west 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 bordered on three sides by the Surrey Hills National Landscape and is close to Box Hill and Leith Hill.
The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity is from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, and there are several Bronze Age bowl barrows in the local area. The town may have been the site of a staging post on Stane Street during Roman times, however the name 'Dorking' suggests an Anglo-Saxon origin for the modern settlement. A market is thought to have been held at least weekly since early medieval times and was highly regarded for the poultry traded there. The Dorking breed of domestic chicken is named after the town.
The local economy thrived during Tudor times, but declined in the 17th century due to poor infrastructure and competition from neighbouring towns. During the early modern period many inhabitants were nonconformists, including the author, Daniel Defoe, who lived in Dorking as a child. Six of the Mayflower Pilgrims, including William Mullins and his daughter Priscilla, lived in the town before setting sail for the New World.
Dorking started to expand during the 18th and 19th centuries as transport links improved and farmland to the south of the centre was released for housebuilding. The new turnpike, and later the railways, facilitated the sale of lime produced in the town, but also attracted wealthier residents, who had had no previous connection to the area. Residential expansion continued in the first half of the 20th century, as the Deepdene and Denbies estates began to be broken up. Further development is now constrained by the Metropolitan Green Belt, which encircles the town.
Toponymy The origins and meaning of the name Dorking are uncertain. Early spellings include Dorchinges (1086), Doreking (1138–47), Dorkinges (1180), and Dorkingg (1219). Both principal elements in the name are disputed. The first element may be from a personal name, Deorc, or some variant, of either Brittonic or Old English origin. Alternatively it may derive from the Brittonic words Dorce, a river name meaning "clear, bright stream", or duro, meaning a "fort", "walled town" or "gated place". The second element, if originally plural (ingas), might mean "(settlement belonging to the) followers of ...", but if singular (ing) might mean "place", "stream", "wood" or "clump".
Geography Location and topography
Dorking is in central Surrey, about south of London and east of Guildford. It is close to the intersection of two valleys – the north-south Mole Gap (where the River Mole cuts through the North Downs) and the west–east Vale of Holmesdale (a narrow strip of low-lying land between the North Downs and the Greensand Ridge). The highest point in the town is the Glory Wood, south east of the centre, where the summit () is marked by a Bronze Age bowl barrow.
The basic plan of the town centre has not changed since medieval times (and may be Anglo-Saxon in origin). The main streets (the High Street, West Street and South Street) meet at Pump Corner, forming a " Y " shape. Together, West Street and the High Street run approximately west–east, paralleling the Pipp Brook, a tributary of the Mole, which runs to the north of the centre.
The town is surrounded by the Metropolitan Green Belt (which also covers the Glory Wood) and is bordered on three sides by the Surrey Hills National Landscape. Several Sites of Special Scientific Interest are close by, including the Mole Gap to Reigate Escarpment, immediately to the north. The National Trust owns several properties in the area, including Box Hill, Leith Hill Tower and Polesden Lacey..
Geology
The rock strata on which Dorking sits, belong primarily to the Lower Greensand Group. This group is multilayered and includes the sandy Hythe Beds, the clayey Sandgate Beds and the quartz-rich Folkestone Beds. The lower greensand was deposited in the early Cretaceous, most likely in a shallow sea with low oxygen levels. Over the subsequent 50 million years, other strata were deposited on top of the Lower Greensand, including Gault clay, Upper Greensand and the chalk of the North and South Downs.
Following the Cretaceous, the sea covering the south of England began to retreat and the land was pushed higher. The Weald (the area covering modern-day south Surrey, south Kent, north Sussex and east Hampshire) was lifted by the same geological processes that created the Alps, resulting in an anticline which stretched across the English Channel to the Artois region of northern France. Initially an island, this dome-like structure was drained by the ancestors of the rivers which today cut through the North and South Downs, including the Mole. The dome was eroded away over the course of the Cenozoic, exposing the strata beneath and resulting in the escarpments of the Downs and the Greensand Ridge.
In Dorking, the dividing line between the Lower Greensand and Gault clay is marked by the course of the Pipp Brook. In the south of the town, the Hythe Beds take the form of iron-rich, soft, fine-grained sandstone, whereas the Sandgate Beds have a more loamy composition. The quartz-rich Folkestone Beds have a lower iron content, and contain veins of silver sand and rose-coloured ferruginous sand. Running along the north bank of the Pipp Brook (with a width of around ) is the outcrop of Gault, a blue-black shaly clay, beyond which is a narrow band of Upper Greensand, a hard, grey mica-rich sandstone. In the extreme north west of the town, the marly Lower Chalk was quarried for lime production until the early 20th century.
Ammonite fossils are found in the north of the town, including Stoliczkia, Callihoplites, Acanthoceras and Euomphaloceras species in the Lower Chalk and Puzosia species in the Upper Greensand. Foraminifera fossils have been found in the Hythe Beds adjacent to the Horsham road, to the west of Tower Hill.
History and development
Pre-history The earliest evidence of human activity in Dorking comes from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods and includes flint tools and flakes found during construction development in South Street. During the rebuilding of the Waitrose supermarket in South Street in 2013, charred hazelnut shells, radiocarbon dated to between 8625 and 8465 BCE, were discovered. A ring ditch containing two ceramic urns, was also found. Other ditches identified during the same excavation may indicate the presence of a Bronze Age field system, although the date of these later earthworks is less certain. Bowl barrows from the same period have been found at the Glory Wood (to the south of the town centre), on Milton Heath (to the west) and on Box Hill (to the northeast).
Roman and Saxon There is thought to have been a settlement at Dorking in Roman times, although its size and extent are unclear. Coins from the reigns of Hadrian (117–138 AD), Commodus (180–192) and Claudius Gothicus (214–270), as well as tiles and pottery fragments, have been found in the town. Stane Street, the Roman road linking London to Chichester, was constructed during the first century AD and is thought to have run through Dorking. The exact course through the town is not known and no definitive archaeological evidence has been discovered for the route in the gap between the crossing of the River Mole at the Burford Bridge and North Holmwood. A posting station is thought to have been located in the area and sites have been proposed in the town centre, at Pixham and at the Burford Bridge, where the road crossed the River Mole.
Although the name Dorking implies a settlement that was well established by the time of the Norman Conquest, archaeological evidence of Saxon activity in the town centre is limited to pottery sherds. Probable Saxon cemeteries have been found close to Yew Tree Road (to the north of the centre) and at Vincent Lane (to the west). In 1817, the so-called "Dorking Hoard" of around 700 silver pennies, dating from the mid-8th to the late-9th centuries, was found near the source of the Pipp Brook on the northern slopes of Leith Hill. In the late Saxon period, the manor and parish were administered as part of the Wotton Hundred and may have been part of a large royal estate centred on Leatherhead.
Governance Dorking appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as the Manor of Dorchinges. It was held by William the Conqueror, who had assumed the lordship in 1075 on the death of Edith of Wessex, widow of Edward the Confessor. The settlement included one church, three mills worth 15s 4d, 16 ploughs, woodland and herbage for 88 hogs and of meadow. It rendered £18 per year in 1086. The residents included 38 villagers, 14 smallholders and 4 villeins, which placed it in the top 20% of settlements in England by population.
In around 1087, William II granted the manor of Dorking to Willam de Warenne, the first Earl of Surrey, whose descendants have held the lordship almost continuously until the present day. By the early 14th century, the manor had been divided for administrative purposes into four tithings: Eastburgh and Chippingburgh (corresponding respectively to the eastern and western halves of the modern town); Foreignburgh (the area covered by the Holmwoods) and Waldburgh (which would later be renamed Capel). On the death of the seventh Earl, John de Warenne, in 1347, the manor passed to his brother-in-law, Richard Fitzalan, the third Earl of Arundel. In 1580 both Earldoms passed through the female line to Phillip Howard, whose father, Thomas Howard, had forfeited the title of Duke of Norfolk and had been executed for his involvement in the Ridolfi plot to assassinate Elizabeth I. The dukedom was restored to the family in 1660, following the accession of Charles II.
As the status of the de Warennes and their descendants increased, they became less interested in the town. In the 14th and 15th centuries, prominent local families (including the Sondes and the Goodwyns) were able to buy the leases on some of the lordship lands. One such area was the Deepdene, first mentioned in a court roll of 1399. This woodland was held by several tenants, before being inherited in 1652 by Charles Howard, the fourth son of the 15th Earl of Arundel, in whose family it remained until 1790. The estate was expanded by successive owners, including the Anglo-Dutch banker Thomas Hope and his eldest son Henry Thomas Hope, who commissioned William Atkinson to remodel the main house as a "sumptuous High Renaissance palazzo".
Unlike the neighbouring towns of Guildford and Reigate, Dorking was never granted a Borough Charter and remained under the control of the Lord of the Manor throughout the Middle Ages. Reforms during the Tudor period reduced the importance of manorial courts and the day-to-day administration of towns such as Dorking became the responsibility of the vestry of the parish church. There was little change in local government structure over the subsequent three centuries, until the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 transferred responsibility for poor relief to the Poor Law Commission, whose local powers were delegated to the newly formed Poor Law union in 1836. In 1841, the Dorking Union constructed a new workhouse, south of the town centre, designed by William Shearburn. The entrance block still stands and is now part of Dorking Hospital.