Village
The village of Fetcham is quite large; extending from the River Mole at the village's east side, it is bounded by the neighbouring villages of Great Bookham and Little Bookham on its west.
Although at the eastern extreme, the historic B2122 Guildford Road/Waterlow Road has mixed use splits north and east with two bridges to Leatherhead, Fetcham is centred around its own road The Street, with good local shops, community halls, public houses as well as nearby churches.
The Fetcham Conservation Area includes the impressive 18th century mansion of Fetcham Park House. The Well House, The Dower House and Ballands Hall are three of a cluster of old buildings in that area. Others are sparingly strewn throughout Fetcham including at Grade II*: Le Pelerin and Thorncroft Manor.
The Mill Pond springs are a large number of chalk springs, still used to supply potable tap water . These springs even continued to supply water during the droughts of 1976 and 2006.
The centre of the village has a number of shops, various in nature, with roadside free car parking. These are sufficient for the day-to-day demands of the local population. Food and drink is catered for by restaurants and food outlets supplying Indian, Chinese, and Italian cuisine, as well as a friendly fish and chips shop and a pleasant bakery coffee shop. A Harringtons' Sandwich bistro is currently being built.
There are four Christian congregations in the village:
- Cannon Court Evangelical Church, in Cannonside
- Church of the Holy Spirit (RC), in Bell Lane
- Christ Church Fetcham, which meets in Oakfield Junior School
- St Mary's Church Grade II* listed medieval, off The Ridgeway
To its south are the Fetcham and Leatherhead Downs, which are a part of the North Downs.
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Famous quotes containing the word village:
“To fair Fidele’s grassy tomb
Soft maids and village hinds shall bring
Each opening sweet of earliest bloom,
And rifle all the breathing spring.”
—William Collins (1721–1759)
“Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A village seems thus, where its able-bodied men are all plowing the ocean together, as a common field. In North Truro the women and girls may sit at their doors, and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their mackerel fifteen or twenty miles off, on the sea, with hundreds of white harvest wagons, just as in the country the farmers’ wives sometimes see their husbands working in a distant hillside field. But the sound of no dinner-horn can reach the fisher’s ear.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)