By Tim Lambert
Early Cobham
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. The old English word stoc meant a hamlet dependent on a larger village nearby. In place names it changed to stoke. Stoke D’abernon was owned by a family of that name. It’s believed that Oxshott was once Ocga’s sceat, meaning Ocga’s parcel of land.
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.
Cobham is known for its historic pubs. The Bear was built as a farmhouse about 1500 but it has been a pub since 1771. The Running Mare in Cobham was built in 1729. It has been a pub since 1756.
Modern Cobham
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. (It opened to the public in 1993.)
A famous house, Cobham Park was built in 1870-73. The poet Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) lived in Cobham after he retired in 1873). Harold Byron Hudson was born in Cobham in 1898. His family moved to Canada in 1912 and he was a flying ace during the First World War.
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 the time of the First World War, in 1914 it had its own police station and fire station. Cobham War Memorial was unveiled in 1921.
Waitrose opened in Cobham in 1982. 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