Woking Heath around the "Bunkers Hill"

The name ‘Maybury’  is a relatively recent one, the area previously being called ‘Bunkers Hill’ or ‘Frailey Hill’. The area was originally a ‘squatter settlement’ on the edge of the vast Woking Heath. Some of the small irregular plots to the north of College Road (Oak Lane and Frailey Hill) still survive from those days. Man has lived in the Maybury area for many centuries. In the 1950s two prehistoric axes, thought to date from the early Bronze-Age, were found in the area – possibly connected to the Bronze-Age burial mounds on nearby Horsell Common.

Frailey Hill in 1870, with just a few scattered cottages, the Prince of Wales public house (now The Princess), and a small chapel on the site of the petrol station in College Road.

Later occupation was found on The Hockering Estate when it was being built. These include pieces of pottery and part of a rotary quern stone dating from the 1st c AD. Another find from the Roman period includes a coin dating from 337-361 AD found on Maybury Hill. The Romans were noted for building their villas on south facing slopes, and although no Roman villas has ever been found in this area, that does not mean that there never was one. Keep looking when digging your gardens and who knows!

The Royal Dramatic College, Oriental Institute & Mosque

The Royal Dramatic College was built on ten acres of land bought from the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company (’developers’ of modern Woking) in 1860. Its patron, Prince Albert, laid the foundation stone of the building on 1st June 1860 and in 1862 the first of the schools ‘teachers’ moved in to the ten terraced houses on either side of the main central hall. The idea was that retired actors and actresses would teach the students their art, but in the end it seems that no pupils were ever admitted and the place became what ‘The Times’ newspaper called a ‘home for decaying actors and actresses’. 

The Royal Dramatic College, later the Oriental Institute and later still Martinsyde’s and James Walkers’ factory.

Two of the trustees were William Makepiece Thackeray and Charles Dickens, but after many years struggling to make ends meet the home finally ran out of money and in November 1877 the trustees decided that it had to close. The place was put up for auction in 1880 but the reserve price of £50,000 was not reached and the place was eventually sold by private contract to a property speculator. In 1884 Dr Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner bought the former Royal Dramatic College buildings to turn into his ‘Oriental Institute’ a centre where Europeans wishing to travel to the east could learn about the culture and language before they travelled, and where Orientals visiting Europe could stay in familiar surroundings. It was because of Leitner and the Institute that the Shah Jehan Mosque was built here in 1889 – the first such building in this country. Unfortunately when Dr Lietner died in 1899 the Institute and Mosque closed.

Dr Leitner’s son, Henry, was a director of the Woking Accumulator Supply Company, and early in the 20th century the business moved into the central hall of the disused Oriental Institute. This was the end of the site’s institutional history and the start of the buildings history as one of the town’s main industrial centres.

In 1914 two early aviators from Brooklands at Weybridge, Mr Helmut Paul Martin and Mr George Harris Handasyde, moved Martinsyde Aircraft Ltd into the old Institute buildings. During the First World War, with Government backing, the factory increased in size, eventually taking over most of the gardens that originally surrounded the original Royal Dramtic College. By the end of the war it was apparently the third largest aircraft works in the world. But, with peace, Martinsyde’s found that there was little demand for their aircraft and, although the company diversified into making motor cycles, the company eventually went into liquidation in 1924. In 1926 James Walker Ltd (a maker of packings, seals and gaskets) took over the site and re-named it the ‘Lion Works’ (after their company brand  name). James Walker’s remained at the site until the 1990s when the old buildings were demolished to make way for the Lion Retail Park.

The London & South Western Railway Servants' Orphanage

The Royal Dramatic College may have been the first institution in the Maybury area, but it was not the last.  

In 1902 the London & South Western Railway Servants’ Orphanage, which had started out in Clapham in 1885, were looking for less cramped accommodation ‘in the country’. It took them five years to find their ideal site, beside the railway at Maybury, where seven and a half acres were purchased from the Necropolis Company for just £2,900.

The London & South Western Railway Servants’ Orphanage soon after opening in 1909

The foundation stone for the new building was laid on the 1st October by the Duchess of Albany, who returned on the 5th July 1909 to officially open the new home. In later years the Orphanage  became the ‘Southern Railwayman’s Home’, with homes for retired railway workers as well as the orphans. The old orphanage was demolished in 1988, although the retirement home – The Grange – continues on part of the site. Almost opposite The Grange was an annex to the Orphanage – now the site of the houses called ‘Foxhanger’. The annex was originally built as a maternity home for the Woking Health Society – the home opening in 1921 with just ten beds. It was enlarged in 1936 to 24 beds but soon after a scheme was launched to build a new hospital in Heathside Road. In 1939 the  Oriental Road site (together with the Orphanage) became a military hospital.

St. Peter's Convent & Oldhouse Wood

The third great institution on Maybury Hill was (or should I say is) the St. Peter’s Convent. The convent is now in new buildings on the southern slope of Maybury Hill, but the original building – now converted into apartments and part of Oldfield Wood – can still be found on the crest of the hill.

An old postcard of the St. Peter’s Convent on Maybury Hill

The original St. Peter’s Convent was set up in London where Mr Benjamin Lancaster, a wealthy London businessman and governor of St George’s Hospital,  founded the St Peter’s community in 1861. It was Mr Lancaster who provided the money for the buildings here as a ’country’ retreat for ’such of the poor sick as are members of the Church of England and require nursing.’ It was begun in 1883, with the magnificent ’Byzantine-style’ Grade I listed chapel built in 1897-1901 to the design of John Loughborough Pearson (the architect of Truro Cathedral).

The Ridge & Maybury Hill

Literary Connections

Perhaps the best known house in the Maybury area now is Maybury Knowle in The Ridge. The house was originally built in the late 1890s by William Frederick Unsworth, the architect of Christ Church, Woking. He lived here for a short time before moving to a new house that he designed in Woodham Lane called Woodhambury. In the early 20th century the house was rented by George Bernard Shaw between June 1902 and April 1904, although it is clear that he did not live here all that time. From letters addressed by him from here, however, we know that he was here in June/July 1902, November/December 1902, March-July 1903, and between December 1903 and April 1904. Coincidently his final letter, dated 5th April 1904, was to H.G.Wells, who in the mid 1890s had lived in Woking in Maybury Road. Indeed many people have (wrongfully) associated Maybury Knowle with H.G. Wells’ famous science-fiction novel ‘The War of the Worlds’, believing the house to be the home of the ‘Narrator’ in the book. It cannot be, however, as not only is it in the wrong place (the Narrator lived on Maybury Hill road), but the house wasn’t even built at the time that Wells was writing the story!

Maybury Knowle, once the home of George Bernard Shaw.

The house that was more likely to have been the Narrator’s house is now called Pookes Hill, a large house (now divided into flats) on the corner of Maybury Hill and Pembroke Road. Again, quite by coincidence, another of Wells’ and Shaw’s associates, W.E. Henley, lived a couple of doors away from Pookes Hill. Henley, a poet and writer as well as a publisher (he published some of Wells’ early works), came to Woking in 1901 and like the other two writers only stayed here for less than two years – although in Henley’s case his ‘move’ out of Woking was not so well planned! He fell from a train at Woking Station, dying from his injuries at his home on Maybury Hill on the 11th June 1903.

The Hockering Estate

The name ‘Hockering’ comes from a small village in Norfolk where the Smallpiece family (the original owners of the land) once lived. The Smallpieces were large landowners in the Woking area, with farm land in Old Woking, Kingfield and the Heathside area. By the early 20th century they lived at ‘Aldridge House’ (a house later used as a Convent School) on the site of what is now Pembroke Gardens.

In 1904/5 they started laying out the new estate on their land, but it was not long before they realised that perhaps they had ‘bitten off more than they could chew’ and reached and agreement with Mr. W.G. Tarrant, a ‘Master Builder’ from Byfleet (who had already constructed several of the large houses on the St. George’s Hill estate at Weybridge).

The estate originally had 107 plots, none covering less than an acre of ground, but in 1910 Tarrant acquired the neighbouring ‘Roundhill Estate’ from the family of the Earl and Dowager Countess of Lovelace and laid out several more plots for his fine houses. Walter George Tarrant was born in Hampshire in 1875. He worked first as an apprentice carpenter before setting up his own business in Byfleet in 1895 (first as a carpenter, but later as a builder). He quickly gained a reputation for his high quality work and with the birth of the ‘Arts and Crafts’ movement Tarrant’s style soon became popular. In 1912 he published a book entitled ‘Ideal Designs’, which included details of twenty homes he had planned for the St. George’s Hill Estate. He apparently built twenty houses in the Hockering too – many of which still stand today.

During the First World War building work on the estate ceased, but Tarrant and his firm remained busy making pre-fabricated buildings for the war effort. As well as his main machine shops, mill and yards at Byfleet, ‘W.G.’ also established his own brickworks at Chobham (and in Hampshire), with a joinery works at Weybridge and his own nurseries (for landscaping the gardens of the new houses) at Pyrford and Addlestone.

After the war work continued on The Hockering with the company careful to maintain the exclusive feel to the area, with gravel roads (only surfaced in 1924 after a special levy was imposed on the residents to cover the costs) and gates installed at each entrance between 1922 and 1924. The wide grass verges – retained by the company to restrict extra unwanted development – also helped to enhance the estate.

By then the ‘Hockering Residents’ Committee had been formed (initially as a way of collecting contributions for road maintenance), but later acting as a Residents Association, with trustees appointed to look after the roads (the title of which was finally transferred to them in 1987).

From the twenty original houses built by Tarrant in the early 20th century, the number of houses has now reached over ninety – several of the larger houses now having part of their land built on by smaller properties – but any future development should be restricted as in 1990 the entire estate was designated a ‘Conservation Area’ by Woking Council with at least seventeen houses now ‘locally listed’ building (and one, ‘Greenways’ in Daneshill, being nationally lited at ‘Grade II).

Victorian & Edwardian Development

Although the Maybury Hill area had been partially developed as a ‘squatter settlement’ before the mid 19th century, there are no buildings older than the 1860s now surviving. Near the top of the hill in College Road can be found Azalia Cottage (built in 1863), and Poplar Cottage and Almond Cottage, both dated 1885). Later properties in Frailey Hill and Oak Lane still survive, whilst in Princess Road can be found Windsor Terrace’ which is dated 1895.

Most of these houses on the ‘east side’ of Maybury Hill are small artisan’s villas rather than the larger, more expensive properties around The Ridge, Shaftesbury Road and Pembroke Road. Here the Necropolis Company used the high ground and the existing pine woodland to promote Woking as a healthy area – an ‘inland Bournemouth’. Places such as Woodclose, The Firs and Shaftesbury House (all in Shaftesbury Road) are good examples, as is Couthope (now flats – on the corner of Pembroke Road and Park Road), Downside (opposite Couthope) and Hurst Cottage also in Pembroke Road. The latter two are locally listed buildings along with Bellgawn and No. 63 Park Road, and Maybury Knowle and the magnificent Maybury House (again divided into flats) in The Ridge. Very few of these large houses have escaped conversion, either into flats or more often being divided into two or sometimes three properties. The original ‘coach house‘ has often been enlarged too, with sometimes more new houses built on part of the garden.

The Shah Jehan Mosque

Often it is difficult to identify who the architect of these houses was, but occasionally it is possible as man-hole covers sometimes bear the name of the builder – firms such as G Harris (who operated from a yard in the High Street, Woking), James Whitburn (from Old Woking) and W. Drowley & Co (whose yard was between Church Street and Boundary Lane – where the Holiday Inn is now). Woodclose was one built by Drowley’s, whose catalogue in 1907 described the house as a ‘residence and stabling in red brick, with tiled roof, steel casements and lead glazing’ being designed by Messrs C.B. Tubbs and A.A. Messer, with ‘all external woodwork – in plain oak’.

Later 20th Century Development

As has already been said, many of the fine old houses in this area have been divided with their gardens built upon, but others have not been so lucky. New estates have sprung up on the site of some, such as ‘Verralls’ on Maybury Hill – built on the site of a house of the same name – and ‘Abbotsford Close’ (on the site of Abbotsford) in Onslow Crescent.

Redevelopment began in the 1960s and 70s – with places such as Dorset Drive and Blandford Drive off Shaftesbury Road and Sylvan Close off Park Road – but it continued into the 1980s and 90s with small developments such as Greenways and The Furlough in Pembroke Road.

On a larger scale at that time was ‘Foxhanger Gardens’ in Oriental Road, with Dorchester Court, Tintagel Way and Templecombe Mews being built across the road in the late 1980s (on the site of the old orphanage).

This end of Oriental Road also saw quite a lot of development in the 1990s as James Walker’s factory closed down and its land was sold for the Lion Retail Park.

On the site of the factory’s car parks, however, Pembroke Court and ‘Little Riding’ were built (along with a couple of houses in Pembroke Road). Like many developments the ‘marketing name’ for Little Riding was much more ‘picturesque’ - ‘Glebelands’ - presumably a reference to St. Paul’s church next door (which never owned the site and never had any glebe land in the first place)!

James Walker’s car parks had, in fact, been built on the site of several old houses that were demolished in the 1950s and 60s to accommodate the growing number of cars of the employees.

No doubt there will be more small scale developments to come. When Maybury Knowle was being restored recently a new block of apartments was built in the grounds – thankfully designed to blend in with its neighbours, whilst between Maybury Hill and Park road a couple of houses have now made way for four!

Even more recently a number of large houses have been demolished in Pembroke Road and by the time you read this they will almost certainly have been replaced by at least twice as many new homes.

Woking is a popular place to live and with many of the old trees retained or replanted, the healthy properties of the ‘Surrey pines’ means that Woking could still be described as the ‘inland Bournemouth’ (or perhaps it should be that Bournemouth is described as the coastal Woking)!