Ewell - History

History

The name Ewell derives from Old English æwell, which means river source or spring. The old Roman road Stane Street deviates from a straight line slightly at Ewell in order to pass by the spring. Ewell is one of a number of settlements founded along the geological line between the chalk of the North Downs to the south, and the clay of the London Basin to the north. The A24 London Road runs from Merton to Ewell along the course of the Roman road, and Stane Street leaves Ewell connecting it towards Leatherhead and Dorking to the south-west. Bronze Age remains have also been found in Ewell and the Romans are likely to have encountered an existing religious site when they first arrived.

Ewell lay within the Copthorne hundred, an administrative division devised by the Saxons.

Ewell appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Etwelle. It was held by William the Conqueror. Its domesday assets were: 13½ hides; 2 mills worth 10s, 16 ploughs, 14 acres (57,000 m2) of meadow, woodland and herbage worth 111 hogs. It rendered £25; also £1 from the church in Leatherhead, which was held by Osbert de Ow and was attached to his manor.

King Henry VIII established the 1538 Nonsuch Palace, considered one of his greatest building projects, to the north-east of the town. The estate, which remains a public park, was one of his favourite hunting grounds, although no trace of the palace remains having been destroyed during the 17th century.

Tunnels dating from the English Civil War exist underneath Ewell but are poorly documented and inaccessible to the public. One such secret passage is reported to emerge under the shop on the corner of West Street and High Street.

In the 1980s, an elderly lifelong resident of Ewell (Digance) recalled the pasture land and orchards that stretched north and west right across to Berrylands (located between Tolworth and Surbiton). This radical transformation is documented in the photography collected in the book Archive Photos - Epsom and Ewell. The suburban residential development now present across that area is comprised mainly of 1930s/40s semi-detached houses, and the Hogsmill Open Space is the last remaining indication of Ewell's very rural pre-war history.