Woodmansterne

Woodmansterne
St Peter's Church (Church of England)
Population	2,979 - 2011 Census
OS grid reference	TQ272599
District	Reigate and Banstead
Shire county	Surrey
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Banstead
Postcode district	SM7
Police	Surrey
Fire	Surrey
Ambulance	South East Coast
UK Parliament	Reigate

Woodmansterne is a village in the borough of Reigate and Banstead, Surrey bordering Greater London, England. It sits on a small plateau of and a southern down slope of the North Downs and its ecclesiastical parish borders continue to span old boundaries and reach into Chipstead, Coulsdon and Wallington.

History

The village lay within the Anglo-Saxon hundred of Wallington which served for strategic meetings of elders and manor owners in the various kingdoms, including in the two centuries before the Norman Conquest, the Kingdom of England.

Woodmansterne appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Odemerestor, derived from Old English "Ode" = (W)ode = Wood, "mere" = pond, and "tor" = high ground. It was held by Richard de Tonebrige. Its Domesday assets were: 15 hides; 1 church, 1 mill worth 20s, 5 ploughs, 4 acres (16,000 m²) of meadow, wood worth 10 hogs. It rendered £8 per year to its overlords.

The traditional parish borders are very long and narrow and reach into Chipstead, Coulsdon and Wallington, based on the borders of Greater London as they have stood since 1965 and the loose and informal widening of Chipstead that has occurred since its railway station and appoximately 400m on all sides is within these boundaries.

Landmarks

St Peter's Church

The parish church is a Victorian replacement of an older building and due to its late Victorian date and not being by an architect of national renown (as at 2013) it is not listed. It was built in 1877 having been built to a tall and steeply hipped-gable roof design by Mr J. Clarke.

Weston Acres

This westerly home within a smallholding is listed including its garden terrace wall, in the initial class (of Grade II). Built as a large house it later became accommodation for Seafarers UK (at the time: the Seafarer's Society). Mostly built in 1906, the north entrance front was added in 1915, designed by architect Sydney Tatchell. The design was exhibited at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1916 and was published in several building magazines of the period.

Geography

A residential linear settlement on two main roads, with a few side estates, Woodmansterne is green-buffered in every direction bar two compass points by woods, allotments, and two small farms. The two contiguous settlements it adjoins are in the south, Chipstead, and in the east, a suburban part of the town of Coulsdon. The buffer zones are Metropolitan Green Belt. The area of the primary school, recreation ground and Carshalton Road is on a significant-to-the village northern plateau at 140m above sea level and the remainder of the village is a long, gentle down slope to the south, which contains a majority of the homes. This slope is a middle part of the Chipstead Bottom Valley which descends to only 85m Above Ordnance Datum draining as a dry valley to the north-east. The large gentle slope is half of the major crevice into the widest part of the North Downs which the north of the borough spans. Geologically revealing the sea creatures hidden in the chalk and limestone range, 5 miles (8.0 km) south is the 8km-long, narrow due-south slope of the North Downs by the M25 motorway, at Betchworth Quarries and Box Hill scaling 80m to 120m from top to bottom, in less than 250m.

Demography

The United Kingdom Census 2011 recorded three settlements as a ward, as Woodmansterne is not large enough in population to merit a ward of it own. As the parish has no equivalent civil parish for extra tiers of local government, being part of an unparished district for those purposes save for Salfords and Sidlow, its population can be produced from the related combined boundaries of output areas Reigate and Banstead 004A and 004B, as an approximation. This altogether had a population of 2,979, living in 1,117 households.

Local government

The ward returning three councillors to the borough council is named after the three villages it covers: Chipstead, Hooley and Woodmansterne.

At the Surrey County Council authority, which is responsible for roads, subsidised public transport, surface water drainage of public roads, most social care and services not to the elderly, libraries, subsidised adult education, overall waste disposal and minerals extraction, state colleges and certain, one councillor is returned per electoral area, here serving the division Banstead, Woodmansterne and Chipstead.

Transport

Road

Just beyond Woodmansterne upper part border to the north, in the Oaks area of the Wallington is on the A2022, a chord-like route within the M25 from Epsom to the London Boroughs of Croydon and Bromley. The centre of the village is on the B278, (from Morden via Carshalton to Chipstead Bottom). A local easterly route, Woodmansterne Lane connects the middle of the above main, long, north-south route through the village to Banstead, adjoining to the west.

Rail

The railway station on the London to Tattenham Corner Line "Woodmansterne" is served by Chipstead Valley Road, Coulsdon less than 200m beyond the border of the London Borough of Croydon

Notes and references

Notes

References

External links

Media related to Woodmansterne at Wikimedia Commons