Facts about Oxted
General Info
Oxted is a town and civil parish in the Tandridge district of Surrey, England, at the foot of the North Downs. It is 9 miles (14 km) south south-east of Croydon in Greater London, 8.5 miles (13.7 km) west of Sevenoaks in Kent, and 9 miles (14 km) north of East Grinstead in West Sussex.
Oxted is a commuter town with a railway station, with direct train services to London and has the district council offices. Its main developed area is contiguous with the village of Limpsfield. Six intermittent headwaters of the River Eden unite in the occasional market town including its furthest source, east of Titsey Place. The Eden feeds into Kent’s longest river, the Medway. Only the southern slope of the North Downs is steep and its towns and farmland form the Vale of Holmesdale, a series of headwaters across Surrey and Kent to separate rivers.
History
The town lay within the Anglo-Saxon Tandridge hundred. Oxted appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Acstede, meaning ‘Place where oaks grew’. It was held by Eustace II of Boulogne. Its Domesday assets were: 5 hides; 1 church, 2 mills worth 12s 6d, 20 ploughs, 4 acres (1.6 ha) of meadow, pannage worth 100 hogs. It rendered £14 and 2d from a house in Southwark to its feudal overlords per year.
Three mills are mentioned in the inquisition on Roland of Oxted, 1291–2. To a greater or lesser extent these were alienated from the main manor, which had become one of four, before 1689, when they were in the possession of Thomas Causton. In 1712 only one is mentioned as appertaining to the manor. The five manors were: Oxted, Barrow Green, Bursted/Bearsted, Broadham, Stocketts and Foyle.
