Etymology Claygate may have its name from the clay pits in the village that provided bricks for a large surrounding area including some of
Hampton Court Palace. Claygate's lack of main thoroughfares has been attributed to the angle of the
River Thames leading the
A307 main road (from London) south-west instead through
Esher, as well as historical conditions where through roads became impassible in wet weather because of the clay; often close to the surface. Equally, mid-distance routes chose a line to avoid this land, before the advent of road surfacing, such as those through
Tolworth and Esher.
Manor Claygate appears in the
Domesday Book of 1086 as a
manor of Thames Ditton,
Claigate. This main manor of the village was held by
Westminster Abbey. Its domesday assets were:
hide; 2
ploughs, of
meadow,
woodland worth 1 hog. It rendered £2 10s 0d per year to its
overlords. The manor descended (after its purchase in 1565) from the
Vincent family to the
Evelyn family. Much land remained in the manor when it was sold between 1718 and 1721 to the
Earl of Lovelace, the King family and currently
Locke King family who had sold the vast majority of its land by 1970. It was rebuilt by the School Board of Thames Ditton in 1885. Claygate has a Baptist chapel, built in 1861. Claygate's development chiefly was in the 60 years after the construction of its railway line and station (on the
New Guildford Line);
the station opened in 1885. With commanding views over the surrounding countryside is Ruxley Towers, a
Neo-Gothic Victorian edifice constructed by
Lord Foley who owned a considerable amount of land. On the other side of the village is Telegraph Hill where a
semaphore station was built in 1822 to transmit messages between the
Admiralty and
Portsmouth.
20th century In 1911 brick and tile production works, rather than retail sites, continued to employ men near the station in the 1910s. In 1911 Claygate was under the same urban council as Thames Ditton. ==Geography==