By Tim Lambert
The village of Cobham in Surrey began as an Anglo-Saxon settlement. It’s not certain where its name came from but it may have once been Cobba’s ham, which means Cobba’s village.
By the time of the Domesday Book, in 1086 Cobham probably had a population of about 160. By the standards of the time it was quite a large village. It had 3 watermills which ground grain into flour. (The River Mole possibly gets its name from the Latin word for mill ‘mola’. St Andrews Church existed by the mid-12th century. Painshill Park was created between 1738 and 1773.
For centuries Cobham was a small community. By the middle of the 19th century it still only had a population a little over 1,600. Meanwhile Cobham Mill was built in the early 19th century. Cobham was changed by the coming of the railway in 1885. That made it much easier to travel to and from London. As a result the population of Cobham rose. By 1911 it was over 4,700. By then it had its own police station and fire station.
Cobham Village Hall was built in 1987. Cobham Training Centre opened in 2007. Today Cobham is known for its Millennium Clock, which was refurbished in 2019. ACS International School opened in 1967. Cobham Free School opened in 2012.
Today, the population of Cobham is about 9,700. Cobham is an affluent commuter village only 17 miles from London.
Painshill