Clandon Park (National Trust) before the disastrous fire in 2015 A friend of mine lived in Cranleigh Road, Worthing. Why was her road called after our village? It turns out that it is not alone. There are roads in towns and villages all over the country that also boast our name. In the London A-Z there are more ...
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Cromwell Cottage and Oliver House (Cranleigh Guide, 1994) Cranleigh has shown its appreciation of Oliver Cromwell by commemorating him in the names of a street, a house and a tea shop (closed last year, sadly). Why is this? The reason goes back more than 360 years. On May 15th 1657, Oliver Cromwell, Lord ...
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Common Crane (Grus Grus) in full flight Almost all Cranleigh’s road names have been given in the last 150 years. By contrast, many of the nearby farms and villages have names that go back many centuries. King William the Conqueror famously ordered a great survey of England, way back in 1086, to make sure he was ...
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A 19th-century farrier, painted by the Suffolk artist, Edward Robert Smythe (1810-99) For centuries, Cranleigh did not have road-names, and did not need them. The village consisted of two clusters of houses, one around the Common and the other near the parish church, plus the outlying farms. The road linking the ...
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From Left to Right: Swallow, Nightingale and Lark In 1949, the Cranleigh Women’s Institute produced a scrapbook of Cranleigh, which is now in the care of the Cranleigh History Society. In it is an anecdote about Dr Albert Arthur Napper, who was the principal local doctor for 50 years until 1920. He took over in ...
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A Valentine’s postcard of the 1920s, with Pond Cottage on the extreme left A few incidents may give a flavour of life here 100 years ago. The Cranleigh Women’s Institute was founded in 1921 under the direction of Mrs Eric Bonham of Knowle ‘for the Beneficial and Instructional advantage of the Women of the ...
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From the days of horse-drawn coaches: Mann’s in the late 19th century People of Cranleigh faced the unimaginable this autumn when David Mann & Sons department store announced that it was closing, with the retirement of the chairman, Richard Womack. For 134 years it had been at the heart of the village and was ...
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The Daily Telegraph's reporting of the wedding Cranleigh is not often able to enjoy a celebrity wedding. So it made the most of the marriage of England and Surrey cricket captain Peter May to local girl Virginia Gilligan in the parish church on Friday April 24th 1959. Virginia came from Shamley Green, and was a ...
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This book is not so much a historical evaluation, or analysis, as it is a personal perspective and recollection of village life during the war years in Cranleigh: its people, shops and businesses. In some ways, the book sets an everyday scene of a simpler way of life, maintained in the face of great hardship. In ...
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The Lusitania at New York in 1907 On May 17th 1915, The Times carried this death notice: ‘On the 7th May, by the sinking of the SS Lusitania, Frank Gustavus Naumann, of ‘Redhurst’, Cranleigh, aged 61 years. Burial service on Tuesday, 18th May, at St Nicholas Church, Cranleigh at 2.45. No flowers, by request.’ ...
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