Maybury Casino History

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Most of what you see in Woking todayhas come in the last 150 years – in the middle of the town thereare very few buildings more than 40 years old. But Wokingdoes have a history. There are three burial moundson Horsell Common which are 3000 years old and there was a smallRoman settlement east of Old Woking. About 1300 years agomonks came from Chertsey and built a church, probably where OldWoking church is now, to serve the whole district. Vikingsdestroyed this but by 1066 it had been rebuilt and a small villagegrew around it.

Apart from land along the River Weywhich could be used for agriculture most of the area of the modernborough was heathland – like Horsell and Chobham Commons. Therewere isolated farms and small churches at Horsell, Pyrford, Suttonand Byfleet and by 1300 some of the richer people and servants of theking had built larger manor houses in these places (but notHorsell). The kings loved hunting and large areas formed‘forest’ which meant they were kept for the court to hunt deerand the local people had few chances to improve themselves. Themanors at Woking and Sutton grew more important and were often ownedby the king; at Woking Henry VIII rebuilt the old house as a smallpalace and often entertained his court and foreign visitors there: atSutton the Weston family were given the manor and built Sutton Place,one of the first large houses built in brick and not with any meansof defence.

Woking Palace was not used much afterthe time of Henry VIII and after James I sold it the building wasdemolished to build Hoe Place and other houses around Woking. TheWeston family built canals and locks along the River Wey so thatboats could reach from the Thames as far as Guildford and this meantthat Old Woking grew into a small town. With thisimprovement in transport some market gardens opened on the heath toprovide vegetables for London, which was growing rapidly, and by theend of the 18th century it was found that while the soil waspoor it was good for growing plants such as rhododendrons and severalplant nurseries opened, mostly lasting until the late 20th century.

In 1838 the railway reached WokingCommon, on the site of the present station, on its way from London toSouthampton and in 1845 a branch line opened to Guildford. WokingStation thus became an important junction for goods and passengertraffic, and London could now be reached within an hour. Thisdid not bring an instant growth to the town, but it was now easy toreach London and there was a lot of land around the station which hadlittle value for agriculture and was therefore cheap to buy from theEarls of Onslow, who owned the commons. Firstto realise this were those who saw that the Londongraveyards were becoming overcrowded and unhealthy: in 1852 theLondon Necropolis Company was formed to acquire land for burials outof town and came to buy 2000 acres of land based on Brookwood. Thecemetery laid out on 400 of those acres was, and is, the largestprivate cemetery in Europe, and taking advantage of the railwaypassing by they ran trains for coffins and mourners from a specialstation near Waterloo into the cemetery where there were twostations. These special trains stopped when bombed in1941.

The Necropolis Company had a lot ofland they did not need for burials and soon began to sell it toothers who saw the need for buildings on cheap land, near the railwaybut not too near anything else – so Woking by the 1870s had asplendid home for retired actors (the Royal Dramatic College, ofwhich more later), the expanded Surrey County Lunatic Asylum (laterrenamed Brookwood Hospital, and one of the first mental hospitalswhich tried to understand problems of mental health) and two prisons,one for invalid men, the other for women. Other land wassold near the station, but in small portions, with no properplanning, and some rather ordinary streets of shops and houses grewalong the roads to Chertsey, Chobham, Guildford, St John’s andMaybury. South of the station ground was sold for largerhouses, but nothing else.

Not all these grand projectssucceeded. The Royal Dramatic College ran short of moneyby 1877 and after being empty for some years was bought by DrGottlieb Leitner, who founded the Oriental Institute as a centrefor oriental studies in England, both for the English and visitorsand residents from the east. He built a mosque in thegrounds – the first purpose-built mosque built in Western Europesince the 1500s, and although it closed for some years after hisdeath it was re-opened in 1912 and was a centre for Muslims inBritain for many years, attracting many immigrants from Pakistan,Bangladesh, and Uganda, to Woking from the 1960s onwards. Aftermuch successful work the Brookwood Hospital finally closed in 1994 asmental problems began to be treated in the community rather than inlarge institutions, and the site has been redeveloped withSainsbury’s and Homebase, but some of the original buildingsbecoming flats and the chapel a Buddhist temple. Theprisons were gone by the 1890s, becoming Inkerman Barracks, whichclosed in the 1980s, to be demolished or converted to housing.

Two later large projects were theCrematorium at St John’s, the first crematorium built in Britain,opening in 1885, and the orphanage for the children of railwayworkers transferred from Clapham in 1911, and partlymaintained by donations made to dogs which patrolled main stationswith collecting boxes on their backs. The Crematoriumcontinues but the orphanage has now been demolished and houses aswell as a smaller home for retired railway workers built on the site.

Meanwhile the new town around thestation continued to grow, with the addition of churches, a hospital,public buildings, halls and cinemas, and the smaller settlements suchas Kingfield, St John’s, Knaphill and Brookwood also grew on amodest scale: Old Woking, left behind by the railway and north of thepresent A3 grew very little until industrial estates came after WorldWar 2. Byfleet and Horsell both acquired rows of shops andWest Byfleet started from a church at the corner to become thelargest of the centres outside Woking town. Plans todevelop a site for light industry and to rebuild in the centre ofWoking had to stop with the outbreak of World War 2 and until 1975the centre of Woking was a large car park. From 1950Sheerwater was built on woodland and heath to house people fromLondon which was becoming overcrowded, and also became a centre forindustry, being the first Woking home of the McLaren motor racingworks.