History
The village lay within the Godley hundred, a Saxon administrative area.
Chobham appears in Domesday Book as Cebeham. It was held by Chertsey Abbey. Its Domesday assets were: 10 hides; 1 church, 1 chapel, 16 ploughs, 10 acres (40,000 m2) of meadow, woodland worth 130 hogs. It rendered £15 10s 0d.
St Lawrence Church is on the High Street. Its earliest parts date from about 1080 although there may have been an earlier church on the site. It is dedicated to St Lawrence, who was martyred in Rome in 258.
Then surrounded by Chobham Common, which was heathland of little agricultural value, the village was a poor rural isolated community. During mediaeval times, Chobham was part of the Chertsey Abbey estates. The abbots' management was conservative and restrictive.
When the railways were built in the 19th century, the main lines went north and south of the village, passing through the nearby then smaller villages of Sunningdale and Woking. Thus Chobham has remained largely undeveloped whilst Woking has grown into the large town it is today. Chobham is probably most famous for the tank factory that was once carved out of Chobham Common and created Chobham armour. However, there are also the reputed "treacle mines" (where it is said soldiers buried their treacle tins before going off to the Crimean war). Queen Victoria visited their camp.
Read more about this topic: Chobham
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)