Woking History Highlights

Stone Age: Implements found at Goldsworth Park

Bronze Age: Burial mounds on Horsell Common

Roman: Coins and pottery found on Horsell Common and in Old Woking

Saxon: Monastery in Old Woking, probably on the site of St Peter’s Church

Norman: Woking was listed in the Domesday Book, 1086

Medieval: Churches built in Horsell, Old Woking, Pyrford and Byfleet

 Horsell church (image courtesy of The Lightbox)

1272: Woking Palace: A royal residence by the Wey. In 1490 Henry VII signed the Treaty of Woking here. It was the home of his mother, Margaret Beaufort

 Ruins of Woking Palace

1651: The Wey Navigation was opened for water traffic from the Thames to Guildford

1790: Goldsworth Nursery, one of many commercial nursery gardens, opened in the area

1794: Basingstoke Canal completed, linking the Wey Navigation to Basingstoke

 Basingstoke Canal (image courtesy of The Lightbox)

1838: The railway came with the opening of Woking Common station on the London and Southampton Railway

 Woking railway station (image courtesy of The Lightbox)

1854: Brookwood Cemetery, the largest in Europe, with its own railway branch line, opened by the London Necropolis Company

1885: The first legal cremation in modern Britain took place at Woking Crematorium

1889: Shah Jehan Mosque, the first in Britain

Shah Jehan mosque (image courtesy of The Lightbox)

Late 19th and early 20th century: Residents included H G Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Dame Ethel Smyth

1850 to present: Woking grew to a bustling commercial centre with 100,000 residents from many varied backgrounds, while large areas of open common landremained, the legacy of medieval society. Woking's social and economic transformation in the last century and a half tells a complex and dramatic story