Market Place, Kingston upon Thames - 020 8547 5592 chris@allaboutweybridge.co.uk

Weybridge appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Webrige and Webruge held partly by Chertsey Abbey; partly by an Englishman from the abbey; and partly by Herfrid from the conqueror's brother, the Bishop of Bayeux. Its domesday assets were: 6 hides; 1½ ploughs, 32 acres of meadow, wood worth 9 hogs. It was much smaller than today's post town, and about one quarter of the size of neighbouring Walton.

In 1235 Henry III granted to William son of Daniel Pincerna, for his homage and service, two mills on the River Wey, one above the 'bridge of Wey,' and the other at Feyreford (a place which no longer exists) at an annual rent of five silver marks.

Until the late 18th century Weybridge was as a very small village with a river crossing, seed milling to make flour and nurseries would continue to provide the major source of home-grown income until the 20th century but no tanneries, major coaching houses, shops, markets, forges or gunpowder works are documented for example in the medieval period. The earliest monuments on the tower wall of St James's C of E Church are 15th century plaques, and the Church was rebuilt in 1848 with a south aisle added in 1864. In 1537 the south-west of Walton on Thames extra-territorially a manor house affiliated to Weybridge on what was a border of Weybridge and Walton, Oatlands Palace, was built by Henry VIII, which was where he married his fifth wife Catherine Howard. When it was demolished in 1650, bricks from its walls helped to line the then new Wey Navigation canal.

In 1571 commissioners were appointed to report on the condition of the bridge across the Wey. They stated that for some years it had been so decayed as to be "unsafe for passengers, and that it was now ruinous...if the queen (Elizabeth I of England) should be at her house at Oatlands and the waters should rise, 'as often they do,' she could not pass to her forest to hunt". It was accordingly ordered that a new bridge - a horse-bridge like the last - should be built, wood being used for its construction, as stonework would be too costly. The expense was to be borne by the queen, as the land on either side belonged to her.

St. George's Hill was the site of the Diggers' Commune in the 1640s.

At the bottom of Monument Hill, within the definition of the town centre is a monument to the Duchess of York, erected by public subscription in 1820 from the remains of the original Seven Dials Monument that stood in St. Martin's Lane, London until 1773. The Duchess is buried in St. James's Churchyard.

In the 19th century Oatlands broke away from the parish of Walton on Thames to become a village in its own right, eventually to have three places of worship. Influenced by the secondary manor of Weybridge, the forerunner of Oatlands Palace (at which time the heart of the grounds became the Oatlands Park Hotel), the post town adopted Oatlands as its only village in the 19th century.

The entomologist, Horace Donisthorpe, visited Weybridge Heath to investigate the ant colony.

Weybridge grew into a commuter town with the advent of the fast train link into London Waterloo and a lot of 'new' houses have been built around the Oatlands Park and Broadwater Lake area.

In Weybridge Heath, many rare species of insects (particularly ants), rare birds and insectivorous plant have been recorded. The heath was allowed to become vastly overgrown in recent years, but recently Surrey Wildlife Trust invoked a scrub clearance plan in an attempt to restore this valuable habitat.

In H. G. Wells' classic novel The War of the Worlds (1897), Weybridge was the location of a battle in which a Martian fighting machine was destroyed. The title of chapter 12 of the book is: "What I saw of the destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton". The battle also featured in the track "The Artilleryman and the Fighting Machine" from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds (1978), and in a graphic novel by Ian Edginton and D'Israeli (2006), adapted from Wells' book. It was also the location that a ship carrying refugees from Southern England, sailed out of the Harbour protected by several vessels including the ship "Thunderchild". It was this ship that was involved in the battle and also managed to destroy one of the Martian Fighting Machines (only to be destroyed itself)

In John Wyndham's novel The Kraken Wakes (1953), the main characters are stopped in their attempt to reach Cornwall on a dinghy, through a flooded England, in the whereabouts of Weybridge.

In Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1998), Weybridge was referred to by one of Saladin Chamcha's interrogators as his place of residence and also (incorrectly) as that of The Beatles (in fact only John Lennon and Ringo Starr lived in Weybridge for short periods).

In Cosmos Epic' s song "Dorking", he mentions Weybridge when naming specific towns, namely Weybridge, Walton, Hersham, Addlestone, Compton and Dorking.

Abbey Clancy - model - lived here, as did singers Tom Jones and Cliff Richard.