A quiet Surrey town built the world's first purpose-made motor racing circuit
Weybridge takes its name from an old crossing of the River Wey, but its fame rests on Brooklands, the first purpose-built racing track anywhere, opened in 1907. It staged the first British Grand Prix in 1926, and its sheds later produced the Sopwith Camel, the Wellington bomber and the Hurricane.
The town lies in Elmbridge, north-west Surrey, about 17 miles south-west of central London, near where the Wey joins the Thames. Records from the 7th century spell it Waigebrugge and Weibrugge, and Domesday Book of 1086 lists it as Webrige; every version simply means the bridge over the Wey. Bronze Age weapons, including a rapier and socketed axe heads, were dredged from the river in 1912, and an Iron Age fort of about 14 acres once crowned St George's Hill.
Digging Brooklands in 1907 turned up surprises: a copper-alloy bucket probably made in northern Italy, now in the British Museum, and a hoard of 68 bronze coins from the late 3rd and early 4th centuries, including issues of Diocletian. For most of the Middle Ages the land belonged to Chertsey Abbey. After the monasteries were dissolved it passed to the Crown in 1537, and that June Henry VIII began turning a manor house into Oatlands Palace, partly with stone from the demolished abbey.
Henry meant the palace for Anne of Cleves but married Catherine Howard there in July 1540. It stayed a royal home until the Civil War and was pulled down in the early 1650s. Rivers mattered throughout: a timber wharf existed by the 14th century, the Wey Navigation was authorised in 1651, and the Elizabethan wooden bridge, 240 feet long, was maintained by the queen herself. The present bridge dates from 1865.
Growth arrived in the 19th century as the Oatlands estate broke up, the heath was enclosed and a railway station opened in 1838; in the next century the developer W. G. Tarrant covered St George's Hill with houses. Malcolm Campbell developed his final land speed record car, Blue Bird, at Brooklands. In 1935 the Desborough Cut straightened a three-mile loop of the Thames to ease flooding, creating the 110-acre Desborough Island, all of it inside Weybridge.
Source: Weybridge
