Camberley is a town in north-west Surrey, England, around south-west of central London. It is in the Surrey Heath and is close to the county boundaries with Hampshire and Berkshire. Known originally as "Cambridge Town", it was assigned its current name by the General Post Office in 1877.
Until the start of the 19th century, the area was a sparsely populated area of infertile land known as Bagshot or Frimley Heath. Following the construction of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in 1812, a small settlement grew up to the south and became known as Yorktown (also spelled York Town). A second British Army institute, the Staff College, opened to the east in 1862, and the nucleus of Cambridge Town was laid out at around the same time. The two settlements grew together over the following decades and are now contiguous. Much of the town centre dates from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including The Atrium, a retail, entertainment and residential complex, opened in 2008.
Transport links through the area began to improve with the opening of the London-Basingstoke turnpike trust in 1728, now the A30 London Road. The Basingstoke Canal, which runs to the south of Camberley, was completed in 1794 and the wharf at Frimley was used to supply building materials for the Royal Military College. Blackwater station, on the Reading to Guildford line, opened to the west of Yorktown in 1849 and Camberley station, on the Ascot to Aldershot line, followed in 1878. In the second half of the 20th century, improvements to the road network in the area included the construction of the M3 motorway and the Blackwater Valley relief road.
The area has a strong links to the performing arts – Camberley Theatre was opened in 1966 and Elmhurst Ballet School was based in the town until 2004. Among the former residents are the Victorian composer, Arthur Sullivan, who attended Yorktown School as a child, the musician Rick Wakeman, who lived in Camberley during the 1980s, and the actress, Simone Ashley, who was born in the town in 1995. There are several works of public art in Camberley, including The Concrete Elephant, which was installed in 1964 on the London Road, having been commissioned for the Lord Mayor's Show of the previous year. Into Our First World, a sculpture by Ken Ford, is on display outside the borough council offices on Knoll Road.
As Cambridge Town, the settlement was originally named for Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, who laid the cornerstone of the Staff College in December 1859. Similarly, Yorktown (sometimes spelled York Town), to the west of Camberley, was named for Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, who authorised the construction of the Royal Military College in December 1802. The dukes were commanders-in-chief of the British Army at the times when the two colleges were founded. The inns, the Duke of York and The Cambridge Hotel, were among the first buildings to be constructed in Yorktown and Camberley respectively.
Several of the street names in Camberley and Yorktown are named for early local landowners, including Teckels Avenue (after John Teckel, builder of Teckels Castle), Stanhope Road (after the family of Griselda Stanhope, Teckel’s wife) and Sparvell Walk (after David Sparvell, a town alderman). Watchetts Drive takes its name from a former manor field (Watchetts is derived from woad scaet, meaning land where Isatis tinctoria grows). Osnaburgh Parade is named after Dairsie, an estate in Fife held by Prince Frederick.
The town of Blackwater, to the west is identified by the Government Statistical Service (including its ONS office) as within the Camberley Built-up-Area but is in the Hart District of Hampshire and has its own town council (both take in Hawley).
Camberley primarily lies on the Bagshot Beds, deposited in the Eocene. This sandy layer contains seams of clay and areas of pebble gravel.
In the 17th century, the area along the turnpike trust through Bagshot Heath (now the A30) was known as a haunt of highwaymen, such as William Davies – also known as the Golden Farmer – and Claude Duval. The land remained largely undeveloped and uncultivated due to a sandy topsoil making it unsuitable for farming. In A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, written between 1724 and 1726, Daniel Defoe described the area as barren and sterile; "a mark of the just resentment shew'd by Heaven upon the Englishmen's pride… horrid and frightful to look on, not only good for little, but good for nothing". A brick tower was built on top of The Knoll in the 1770s, by John Norris of Blackwater. It may have been used for communications but there is no firm evidence. The remains are now known as The Obelisk.
During the 19th century, Camberley grew in size. This was given added impetus with the arrival of the branch-line railway and railway station in 1878 and a reputation for healthy air, due to the vast number of pine trees, which were said to be good for those suffering from pulmonary disorders. By the end of the century the population had reached 8,400. Since then, the town has absorbed the original settlement of Yorktown, which is now regarded as part of Camberley.
The defunct Barossa Golf Club, on Barossa Common, was founded in 1893 and continued until the Second World War.
The Old Dean housing estate was built in the 1950s on the "Old Dean Common" for residents of heavily bombed Surrey-area's homeless after the Second World War. Many of the roads on that half of the Old Dean are named after areas of London, with the others named after places on the common.
In 1969 there was an outbreak of rabies when a dog, just released from a six month quarantine after returning from Germany, attacked two people on Camberley Common. The scare resulted in restriction orders for dogs and large-scale shoots to carry out the destruction of foxes and other wildlife.
In 2009, the town's households were named by Experian as having the highest carbon footprint in the UK, estimated at 28.05 tonnes per household per year (compared to 18.36 tonnes for the lowest, South Shields).
Surrey County Council, headquartered in Reigate, is elected every four years. Camberley is represented by three councillors - one for each of the "Camberley East", "Camberley West" and "Heatherside and Parkside" divisions.
Elections to Surrey Heath take place every four years. Three councillors represent "Heatherside" ward and two councillors are elected to each of the "Old Dean", "Parkside", "St Michael's", "St Paul's", "Town" and "Watchetts" wards. The Brough of Surrey Heath is twinned with Sucy-en-Brie, France and with Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany.
The proportion of households in the civil parish who owned their home outright compares to the regional average of 35.1%. The proportion who owned their home with a loan compares to the regional average of 32.5%. The remaining percentage is made up of rented dwellings (plus a negligible percentage of households living rent-free).
Major employers include Siemens, which moved its UK headquarters to the area in 2007. Burlington Group who moved into Watchmoor Park in 2009 and Sun Microsystems, until they were taken over by Oracle in 2010, whose UK headquarters was located just across the Hampshire border in Minley next to the M3 motorway at junction 4a. Krispy Kreme UK are based in Albany Park, an industrial estate just outside Camberley in nearby Frimley.
The electricity supply to the area was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1909. Unlike most towns in Surrey, Camberley did not have its own power station and instead, electricity was purchased on the wholesale market and was distributed locally. The gas and electricity companies merged in 1927.
The Frimley and Farnborough District Water Company was formed in 1893 and began to supply Camberley four years later. Water was extracted from the chalk aquifer and was piped to a filtration plant at Frimley Green, before being pumped to a service reservoir on Frith Hill. In 1893, the Basingstoke Canal company agreed that the water company could abstract up to per day from the canal, at a cost of 1 penny per . In 2023, the drinking water supply for Camberley is provided by South East Water.
Initially, wastewater from Camberley was disposed of in or discharged to local streams. In the mid-1880s a drainage system was installed, leading to a sewage farm at Yorktown. Following a report in 1902, which condemned the state of the town sewers, new pipework was installed and a new wastewater treatment works opened in Yorktown in 1907. In 2023, Camberley Sewage Treatment Works is operated by Thames Water.
The postal service to Yorktown began in 1844 and the first postmaster was appointed in 1890. The telephone service to Camberley commenced in April 1897.
Camberley Fire Brigade was founded in May 1889 and was initially equipped with a hand-operated Merryweather pump. In 1900, the brigade moved to The Avenue and relocated to the current station in London Road in 1967. In 2023, the local fire authority is Surrey County Council and the statutory fire service is Surrey Fire and Rescue Service.
An ambulance service is recorded in Camberley in 1898. Initially it operated with a horse-drawn vehicle, but the service was equipped with a motorised ambulance during the 1920s. Patients were charged a fee for using the service, which was affiliated to the St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross. In 2023, the nearest ambulance station to Camberley is at Farnborough.
In 2023, the nearest hospital is Frimley Park Hospital around from Camberley. There are three GP surgeries in the town, on Upper Gordon, Park and Frimley Roads.
Camberley is linked by bus to local destinations in west Surrey, north-east Hampshire and south-east Berkshire. Companies operating routes through the town include: Thames Valley Buses to Bracknell; Arriva Guildford & West Surrey to Guildford via Woking; Stagecoach South to Aldershot and Farnborough; and White Bus to Ascot and Staines-upon-Thames.
The M3 runs to the south of Camberley and is accessed via junction 4 at the south-western corner of the town. The stretch of the motorway through the Borough of Surrey Heath was upgraded to a smart motorway in 2017. The other major roads in the town are the A30, which runs roughly parallel to the motorway between Hounslow and Basingstoke, and the A331 Blackwater Valley relief road. Yorktown and east Camberley are linked to Frimley by the B3411 and A325 respectively. Old Dean is linked to Deepcut via the B3015.
A £1.2M shared cycle and footpath between Blackwater station and Watchmoor was completed in 2017 and a new bike-parking facility opened in Princess Way in the town centre in 2021. In the same year, Surrey County Council consulted on a scheme to improve local cycling infrastructure, focused on a route between Camberley and Frimley.
The first Cordwalles School was founded in Elliot Place, Greenwich, in 1805 and one of its early pupils was the future prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli. In 1875, it moved to Cordwalls Farm, Maidenhead, from which it acquired its name. The school merged with Kingswood School, Camberley, which had been established on part of the former Collinwood Estate in 1910. In 1939, the school was evacuated to Market Drayton, but did not return to Camberley at the end of the war. The site was used by Ballard School in the 1950s.
Barossa Secondary School began teaching its first pupils in September 1963, although the official opening ceremony did not take place for another two years. The secondary modern school, on the Old Dean estate, was constructed on a site adjacent to the former Ballard School.
Frimley and Camberley Grammar School opened in 1931 on Frimley Road. The school moved to the former Ballard School, adjacent to the then new Barossa Secondary School in 1967. The original site was then used as an annex for France until 1971. The buildings have since been used for Watchetts School, now South Camberley Primary and Nursery School.
Collingwood College was formed in 1971 from the merger of Camberley Grammar School, Barossa Secondary School and Bagshot Secondary School. It became a self-governing Technology College in September 1994 and gained Foundation status in September 1999.
The current Cordwalles School was founded in 1962 and was officially opened on 5 March 1963. Initially a primary and infants school, it became a middle school in 1971, before reverting to a junior school again in 1994.
Elmhurst Ballet School was founded as the Mortimer School of Dancing in 1923. It adopted its current name in 1947, taken from Elmhurst House in Camberley, where it was based. During the Second World War, Sadlers Wells and Rambert Schools were evacuated to Elmhurst and the pupils of all three schools performed to entertain soldiers billeted locally and to raise money for the war effort. After the end of the war, pupil numbers began to expand (from 60 in 1933 to 240 in 1947) and a purpose-built theatre was constructed, opening in May 1960. Much of the rest of the school was rebuilt during the 1970s and the new buildings were opened by Princess Margaret in 1979. The school relocated to Birmingham in 2004, with the aim of providing professional dance training outside of the south-east of England. The former school site in Camberley was redeveloped as Elmhurst Court.
St Paul's Church was designed by W. D. Caröe in 1902 and elements of the building are influenced by Swedish architectural trends of the period. The chancel is topped by a wood shingle spire. One of the stained glass windows is dedicated to Doveton Sturdee, a local resident who died in 1925. St Mary's Church, designed by E. E. Lofting, was consecrated in 1937 and was built as a daughter church to St Paul's. The building has a small tower and is constructed of brick and concrete with a stucco finish.
St Martin's Church, dedicated to Martin of Tours, was consecrated in 1978. The construction was paid for in part with money raised from the sale of the site of the former St George's Church, which had closed in 1966. Proceeds from the sale of copies of the John Betjeman poem, A Subaltern's love song, which mentions Camberley, were also used to fund the building work. The congregation of Heatherside Parish Church began meeting in January 1977. Heatherside became an ecclesiastical parish in September 2000.
High Cross Church opened in Knoll Road in March 1990. It replaced the Congregational Church, which was demolished in 1990 to make way for the College Gardens shopping complex, and the Methodist Church, demolished in October of the same year.
The local Bengali Welfare Association established an Islamic centre in the former St Gregory's Roman Catholic School building in 1996. In 2010, a planning application to demolish the school and replace it with a purpose-built mosque was rejected by the borough council. The plans were rejected again the following year, following a public inquiry.
There are several works of public art in Camberley. The Concrete Elephant, adjacent to the London Road in Yorktown, was installed at the yard of Trollope & Colls in 1964. It had been commissioned for the Lord Mayor's Show the previous year and the artist, Barbara Jones, designed the sculpture using pipework from the company's product range. The current tenants of the site, HSS Hire, are required to maintain the artwork as part of their lease.
Into Our First World, by Ken Ford, was unveiled outside the borough council offices in March 1993. The sculpture, cast in silicon bronze, depicts a figure reclining beneath a tree. It explores the relationship between humanity and the natural world, and its form echoes the Castanea sativa tree growing behind it. The Right Way, by Rick Kirby was unveiled outside the Atrium in January 2009. It depicts three metal figures pointing in different directions along Park Street and Obelisk Way.
Until the 1990s, Crabtree Park was a landfill. The landfill site was closed, the waste was capped and the area reopened as a recreation ground. The skate park was reopened in 2014, following a £25,000 refurbishment project.
Until the mid-1930s, Camberley residents used the Blackwater River to swim. The first purpose-built pool, the Blue Pool, was built on the London Road by a private company and opened in May 1934. The borough council took over the facility in 1973, but it closed three years later when essential repair works were found to be financially unviable. The Manor House flats were built on the site of the Blue Pool in the early 1980s.
The Arena Leisure Centre was built on the north-eastern corner of the London Road Recreation Ground and opened in November 1984. The facility closed in August 2019 and was demolished. The new Arena Leisure Centre, on the same site as the previous centre, opened in July 2021. It has two swimming pools, a gym and three exercise studios. The centre is owned by the borough council and is operated by Places Leisure on a 25-year design, build, operate and maintain contract.
The first cycling club to be founded in the area is recorded in a local directory of 1889. By 1904, the Camberley Wheelers had been formed and was organising meetings at the London Road Recreation Ground. In 1969, the club merged with Farnborough Cycling Club to form the Farnborough & Camberley Cycling Club.
Camberley RFC was founded in 1931 and played its first game at Watchetts Recreation Ground in October of that year. The club affiliated to the Surrey Rugby Football Union in 1933 and, like most other local teams, disbanded in September 1939. During the Second World War, the recreation ground was used to grow potatoes and it was not until the autumn of 1947 that club was able to resume. Initially Camberley R.F.C. had use of the cricket pavilion as tenants of the cricket club, but constructed their own clubhouse in 1970. In March 1973, the first team won the Surrey Cup.
Camberley Heath Golf Club was designed by Harry Colt and was formally opened by Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein on 1 January 1914. A project to regenerate the course, reinstating some of the original bunker designs, was undertaken in the mid-2010s. In 2020, the course was used as a location for third series of the BBC television drama, Killing Eve.
By the mid-1860s, there were two cricket teams in the area, one for Yorktown and one for Cambridge Town, and a match is recorded between the two in June 1865. They had merged by 1882, when the name "Camberley Cricket Club" was adopted. The club shut down at the start of the First World War, but was refounded in 1929 and began playing its home games at the Watchetts Recreation Ground the following year. Local cricket again ceased at the start of the Second World War, but a new club was founded in 1944 and the first match was played the following year. A new ground was leased from the Watchetts estate and the first home games were played there in 1951. The ground was officially opened in 1952 and was bought by the club the following year. Over the next three decades, the club sold off part of the land surrounding the ground to fund improvements to the pitch and pavilion. The first girls' team was launched in 2013.
The first hockey club in Camberley was formed in 1898 and, by 1907, there were two clubs in the town. The present Camberley and Farnborough Hockey Club was founded in the 1950s and plays its home games at Kings International College. There are two tennis clubs in the area: Camberley Lawn Tennis Club is based at Southcote Park, which has five all-weather courts; Frimley Tennis Club is based at Watchetts Recreation Ground and has four outdoor courts.
The Staff College, to the north of Camberley town centre, is part of the Joint Services Command and Staff College, which provides training and education for established officers in the British Armed Forces and civil servants in the Ministry of Defence. The institution has its origins in the Royal Military College, High Wycombe, which was founded in 1799. It moved to Farnham in 1813, relocating seven years later to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. The Staff College building was designed by James Pennethorne and constructed in 1862. It was primarily built using London stock bricks, although the front elevation is partially faced with stone. The uppermost storey was added in 1913.
Camberley War Memorial was erected in 1922 at the southern entrance to the Royal Military Academy. It takes the form of a Latin cross, carved from granite. The names of 233 people who died in the First World War are recorded on two columns at the base of the cross and 140 who died in the Second World War are listed on four piers at the corners of the plinth. A stone, set into the pavement at the foot of the memorial, commemorates Victoria Cross recipient Garth Walford, who was born in Yorktown in 1882 and who died at Gallipoli in 1915.
Geography
History
19th century
20th century
21st century
Local and national government
Demography and housing
The average level of accommodation in the region composed of detached houses was 28%, the average that was apartments was 22.6%. The remaining households not accounted for above were temporary/caravans and shared households.
+ 2011 Census homes 127 428 182 846 150 576 441 + 2011 Census Key Statistics 177 304 273 202 247 263 212
Economy
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Emergency services and healthcare
Transport
Education
Early schools
Current schools
Relocated schools
Places of worship
Anglican churches
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Culture
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Venues
Organisations
Notable buildings and landmarks
Notable people
Notes
Bibliography
External links
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