	100 years in the Life - Ashtead Village history
	"Ashtead can hardly any longer be called a village, for it has responded, like most other places within its distance from London, to that compulsion to expand which seems to be irresistible".
	Whether you agree or disagree with this statement, what may surprise you is that it was written by Joseph Morris in 1906! Back then Ashtead was a village of about 500 houses and just 2,500 people! But the consternation came from its doubling in size during the previous 15 years. When the railway came in 1859 the village started to grow slowly with upper-middle class people moving in. Then land prices started to drop as farmers couldn't compete with imported wheat from the US and frozen meat from South America. In came property developers. It's 1906; you're living in London's East End and decide on a new life. What will you find when you move to the exciting village of Ashtead… Apart from work on the farms and railway you'll find that a variety of new factories have grown up over the previous decade or two that will pay you about a sovereign (£1) a week. Eastman Kodak, who have recently bought Cadett and Neall Ltd, make photographic papers & plates; Peto & Radford make electrical accumulators; Swabey & Saunders are leather manufacturers and there is also Sparrows' brick and tile works.
	Of course many of the older houses are large and expensive and so you're likely to move into a small new house, one of many especially built for new residents in Skinners Lane, Maple Road, Grove Road, Hatfield Road and Park Walk. Or you could live in Gladstone Road named after the four times prime minister and "Grand Old Man" for the working classes; of whom the builder was a great admirer. At the end of a long day you can go for a drink at The Brewery, the Leg of Mutton & Cauliflower, the Working Men's Club (now the Village Club), or the small Woodman beer house - not yet a 'licensed' public house. Beer is 2d (1p) a pint and the average male drinker consumes 11 pints a week. But since clean water is now piped direct to houses rather than from wells beer consumption is falling. Sewerage, rather than cess pits, is still a recent novelty only being in the village for 6 years. The local fire brigade allow you to sleep well at night. After nearly 25 years in a small iron building an exciting new church is being built with lots of space and facilities and across the road they're building the Ashtead Council School (now Barnett Wood Infants' School).

Photo of cover of Ashtead Parish Magazine May 1906

For the athletic there's football, cricket, golf and lawn tennis; for the less energetic there's Ashtead Horticultural Society (now 30 years old) or the Mothers Union. In order to keep up with all that's happening you'll have to read the Ashtead Parish Magazine!

The quote we started this article with comes from The Homeland Handbooks, Vol. 44, Dorking Leatherhead & Ashtead it continues, "Its [Ashtead's] distinction is, however, that in the process it has managed to preserve most of its delightful characteristics".

100 years later we heartily concur.

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