Chertsey

For the municipality in Quebec see Chertsey, Quebec

Coordinates: 51°23′25″N 0°30′27″W / 51.3902°N 0.5074°W / 51.3902; -0.5074

Chertsey
Pyrcroft Road (Business District)
Chertsey  Chertsey shown within Surrey
Population	15.967 [1]
OS grid reference	TQ039667
District	Runnymede
Shire county	Surrey
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	CHERTSEY
Postcode district	KT16
Dialling code	01932
Police	Surrey
Fire	Surrey
Ambulance	South East Coast
EU Parliament	South East England
UK Parliament	Runnymede and Weybridge
List of places: UK • England • Surrey

Chertsey is a town in Surrey, England, on the River Thames and its tributary rivers such as the River Bourne. It can be accessed by road from junction 11 of the M25 London orbital motorway. It shares borders with Staines, Laleham, Shepperton, Addlestone, Woking, Thorpe and Egham. It lies within the Godley hundred, some 29k.m southwest of central London, close to the M3 and the M25.

The town is served by Chertsey railway station. It is located on the Chertsey Branch of the Waterloo to Reading Line which is operated by South West Trains.

The entrance and car parks to Thorpe Park are in Chertsey, although most of the theme park, including all the rides, is actually in Egham. As the entrance is in Staines Road, Chertsey, the address of the park is therefore Chertsey.

Elevation is generally low at 14m in the High Street and 11m on the river Thames where the Boat House and Kingfisher restaraunts are located, making this the lowest place in Chertsey. The highest point is St. Anne's Hill in the forest, which peaks at 76 m.

History

Chertsey is one of the oldest towns in England. It grew around Chertsey Abbey, founded in 666 A.D by Eorcenwald, Bishop of London.

In the 9th century it was sacked by the Danes and refounded from Abingdon Abbey by King Edgar of England in 964.

Chertsey appears in the Domesday Book as Certesi. It was held partly by Chertsey Abbey and partly by Richard Sturmid from the abbey. Its Domesday assets were: 5 hides, 1 mill and 1 forge at the hall, 20 ploughs, 80 hectares of meadow, woodland worth 50 hogs. It rendered £22.^[2]

The Abbey grew to become one of the largest Benedictine abbeys in England, supported by large fiefs in the northwest corner of Sussex until it was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1536. The King took stone from the Abbey to construct his palace at Oatlands; the villagers also used stone for raising the streets. By the late 17th century, only some outer walls of the Abbey remained.

Today the history of the abbey is reflected in local place names and the fishponds that still fill with water after heavy rain.

The eighteenth-century Chertsey Bridge^[3] provides an important cross-river link, and Chertsey Lock is a short distance above it on the opposite side. On the south west corner of the bridge is a bronze statue of local heroine Blanche Heriot by Sheila Mitchell, F.R.B.S.^[4]

In the 18th century Chertsey Cricket Club was one of the strongest in the country^[5] and beat the rest of England (excluding Hampshire) by more than an innings in 1778. The Duke of Dorset, (who played cricket for Chertsey), was appointed Ambassador to France in 1784. He arranged to have the Chertsey cricket team travel to France in 1789 to introduce cricket to the French nobility. However, the team, on arriving at Dover, met the Ambassador returning from France at the outset of the French Revolution and the opportunity was missed.

Chertsey Regatta has been held on the river for over 150 years.

Chertsey Bridge

The level crossing at Chertsey, as the barriers rise

Chertsey was the home of Charles James Fox, who had wished to be buried there but was not. Its population is now 15.967.

Museum

Chertsey has an admission-free museum on Windsor Street, which provides considerable information about the history of Chertsey.^[6] The Black Cherry Fair is an annual event which the Museum hosts. It includes live music and refreshments in the museum garden.

Education

Schools in Chertsey include;

• St Anne's Roman Catholic primary school
• Salesian Catholic Secondary School (split site)
• Pyrcroft Grange Primary (former split site)
• Stepgates Community School
• Sir William Perkins's School, independent girls' school

Salesian Schools

The Salesian School has been located in Chertsey since the 1920s. The school has a sixth form. The original site is in Highfield Road; it contains the former boarding school where pupils once lived during term. The newer site is located in Guildford Road. It serves around 1,200 pupils. The school successfully merged the two sites at the beginning of the year starting in September 2008; years 7 - 11 are at Guildford road and years 12 - 13 are at the former sixth-form site in Highfield Road. The school has introduced a new timetable with 5 modules a day. It is still not clear whether the school will keep the original site.^{[citation needed]}

Religion

Chertsey is mostly Catholic with three Schools, a Church and a youth club all under the Catholic banner. There is also an Anglican Church, a Community Church Hall and a Jehovah's Witnesses Hall.

Notable residents

• Justin Hawkins, former lead singer of The Darkness rock group, singer-songwriter.
• Musician Doug Walker and England cricketer Ashley Giles were born in Chertsey in the 1970s.
• Keith Moon, drummer with rock band The Who, lived in the town in that decade.^[7]
• Vivian Stanshall and his wife Ki Longfellow lived on a houseboat moored on the Thames beginning in 1977. Their daughter, Silky Cyme Longfellow-Stanshall was born in Chertsey's St Peter's Hospital in 1979.
• England and West Ham United footballer Robert Green was born in Chertsey in 1980. Chesney Hawkes also lives in Chertsey with his wife and two children.
• Steve Rushton from pop band Son of Dork with James Bourne, was born in Chertsey; he now lives in LA and works as a singer/songwriter for Disney.
• English glamour model Charmaine Sinclair is originally from Chertsey.

Chertsey in literature

• In William Shakespeare's Richard III, Act I, Scene 2, Chertsey is mentioned as the burial place of Henry VI. Lady Anne says, 'Come now towards Chertsey with your holy load'.
• Abraham Cowley, the 17th Century English poet, lived in Chertsey after his return from exile. The Abraham Cowley Mental Health Unit of St Peter's Hospital was named in his honour.
• After his father's death, the future novelist Thomas Love Peacock and his mother lived with her father Thomas Love in Gogmoor Hall, Chertsey, for about twelve years.
• Charles Dickens visited Chertsey to make notes for his novel Oliver Twist (1838), in which Oliver is forced by Bill Sikes to take part in the attempted burglary of a house in Chertsey.
• Albert Smith, born in Chertsey in 1816, wrote the play Blanche Heriot, or The Chertsey Curfew (1842) and the short story "Blanche Heriot: A Legend of Old Chertsey Church" (1843).
• The poem "Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight", written in 1867 by the American poet Rose Hartwick Thorpe, was also based on the legend of the Chertsey heroine Blanche Heriot.
• In H.G Wells's book The War of the Worlds, Chertsey was destroyed by attacking Martian fighting-machines in the early afternoon of 8 June 1902.
• Antony Trew, decorated naval officer and author of seventeen novels and a volume of short stories, resided in Surrey for many years and died in Chertsey in 1996.

Television and Film

• The final series of the TV series Public Eye was filmed in and around Chertsey.
• The TV series Moving Wallpaper is filmed and set in Chertsey.

Chertsey also made a fleeting appearance in the 1964 classic First Men In The Moon with the old town hall playing the role of Dimchurch town hall.

References

1. ^ Census data
2. ^ Surrey Domesday Book
3. ^ Chertsey Bridge
4. ^ Statue of Blanche Heriot
5. ^ History of Chertsey Cricket Club
6. ^ Chertsey Museum
7. ^ Rock's Back Pages

External links

• Chertsey Abbey
• Chertsey Local History
• Aerial photographs of Chertsey
• History of Chertsey Abbey and St. Peter's Church
• Chertsey T.V