Byfleet is a village forming a suburb of Woking in Surrey, England. It is in the east of the borough between the River Wey and the River Mole, and is within the M25 motorway.
Byfleet is centrally located close to the A3 and M25, and is located at the foot of the St George's Hill estate, just to the south of Weybridge, to the west of Cobham and to the east of West Byfleet. The village is served by Byfleet and New Haw railway station.
The village lies within the Godley hundred, a Saxon administrative division. Byfleet appears in Domesday Book as Byeflete. It was held by Uluuin (Wulfwin) from Chertsey Abbey. Its domesday assets were: 2½ hides; 1 church, 1 mill worth 5s, 1½ fisheries worth 325 eels, 6 acres (24,000 m2) of meadow, woodland worth 10 hogs. It rendered £4.[2]
The historic St Mary's Church dates back to at least the 14th century.
In 1895, 20 year old Hampshire-born Walter George Tarrant started a new carpentry business, W G Tarrant Ltd, in Byfleet and later expanded into housebuilding. The company built extensively in Pyrford and West Byfleet in the early 1900s.
In 1898, the village gained an impressive new village hall and club thanks to the generosity of wealthy benefactor Frederick C Stoop who lived at West Hall (between Byfleet and West Byfleet).
By 1911 the Tarrant Works covered over five acres and included workshops for joinery, wrought iron and leaded lights, a stonemason’s yard and a timber mill with drying sheds. The firm also owned nurseries and brickfields elsewhere and was Byfleet's largest employer for many years.
Byfleet also expanded considerably after the opening of the Brooklands motor circuit in 1907 and when major aircraft factories opened there during World War One. A large housing estate for Vickers aircraft workers was built between Chertsey Road and Oyster Lane in WW1 and these houses still exist today. The Tarrant Tabor bomber, the largest aeroplane built in Britain during WW1, was constructed in Byfleet by W G Tarrant Ltd but crashed fatally at Farnborough on 26 May 1919 on its first attempted take-off. Several other aeroplanes were built in Byfleet by Glenny & Henderson Ltd in the late 1920s.
World War 2 affected village life in many ways with evacuees, British and Canadian soldiers and even German prisoners of war all being accommodated locally and, after the Vickers factory Brooklands was badly bombed on 4 September 1940, barrage balloons and other military defences were deployed throughout the local area. The importance of Brooklands to the war effort was emphasised by the construction in 1941 of a large anti-aircraft gun tower just east of the village at Manor Farm. Together with two similar structures on the north side of Brooklands, Byfleet's gun crew manned a 40mm Bofors gun against further enemy air attacks. A fatal accident in the centre of Byfleet around 1942/43 saw a military Bren Gun Carrier operated by the Welsh Guards collide with the corner of The Plough pub killing a regular lady customer believed to be named Minnie Caldwell. She visited the pub regularly around midday and was co-owner of 'The Log Cabin' (a small shop opposite nearby Binfield Road) but sadly she died outside the premises having been pinned against the pub's bay window. This part of the building was then shored up with timbers for a considerable period of time afterwards. In 1944 Byfleet also came under attack from V.1 'Doodlebug' flying bombs - two fell beside Byfleet Road on 21 August and slightly injured two people. That same year a new Vickers flight test airfield opened just a short distance South of Byfleet at Wisley.
Various aircraft crashed in and around Byfleet during the first half of the last century; these include a Vickers Viking amphibian (on 13/4/22, flown by record-breaking England-Australia Vimy pilot Sir Ross Macpherson Smith and Lt Bennett - both men died), the prototype Vickers Wibault (in June 1926, flown by chief test pilot 'Tiny' Scholefield - he baled out and the aeroplane crashed on the Vickers Sports Ground), an RAF Taylorcraft Auster (on 12/3/43, flown by Capt W Whitson who hit a barrage balloon cable on bad visibility and crashed) and an RAF Mustang III (on 6/4/44, flown by S/Ldr Szawblowsky who struck a balloon cable and crashed near Oyster Lane). Sometime in July/August 1945 a Vickers Warwick flown by test pilot Bob Handasyde force-landed in Three Acre Field close to St Mary's Church and just missed hitting local road-sweeper Jack Smith with a wing-tip!). One of the first British women pilots to die in a flying accident is buried in St Mary's Churchyard - Honor Wellby, who lived with her parents at nearby St George's Hill, died after crashing an Avro 504 on take-off from Brooklands in 1928.
Byfleet inevitably had connections motor racing at Brooklands too - record-breaking racing driver J G Parry-Thomas and motorcycle racer Bert Denley both lived in Byfleet in the 1920s and the renowned race-tuner Robin Jackson lived at St George's Hill and had an engineering works in Byfleet after WW2. The village had many garages and petrol stations during the 20th century and postwar racing driver Duncan Hamilton's old racing workshop survives today as a car showroom at 15, High Road, opposite the old fire station. The modern 'Cobb House' in Oyster Lane is presumed to have been named in memory of record-reaking racing driver John Cobb who lived in Esher.
St Mary's Church interior features some very rare wooden crosses (grave markers) recovered from the Continent shortly after World War 1 and among notable graves in the churchyard, are those of Brooklands-based racing driver J G Parry-Thomas who died at Pendine Sands in Wales in 1927 while attacking the world Land Speed Record and Bert le Vack, one of the greatest ever motorcyclists to have raced at Brooklands. Also buried there were Scottish aviation pioneer and Vickers' first test pilot Harold Barnwell who was killed flying a new prototype fighter at Joyce Green Aerodrome near Dartford, Kent, in 1917 and Ebeneezer Mears, who founded a well-known construction company which was based in the village for many years. Three victims of the 1940 bombing of Brooklands are also buried here - 17 year old Irene Coleman, 36 year old Edward Eastwood and 21 year old Gwendoline Goddard, who all worked for Vickers at the time.
Despite many new housing developments in recent decades and a number of flats for older residents such as 'Barnes Wallis Court' Opened in 2009 at the junction of Oyster Lane and Parvis Road, Byfleet Village still has character and a number of interesting old buildings today with 12 being nationally designated Listed buildings. Nine others are Locally Listed and the West end of High Road is also a Conservation Area.
Byfleet was an ancient parish, and was included as a civil parish in the Chertsey Rural District from 1884 to 1949, before then being added to the Woking urban district in 1933 under a County Review Order, thus extinguishing its parish council. Byfleet constitutes a civil parish and so has had a parish council. The most recent of these was formed in 1989.[3] In June 2005 The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister refused to abolish the parish, despite its request.[4]In May 2007, a group standing under an "Abolish Byfleet Parish Council" banner won election to the Parish Council and proceeded to seek its abolition.[5] . This was ultimately achieved and reported in the Byfleet News and Mail on 17th December 2009.
The War Memorial commemorates military personnel and civilians who died in both world wars who came from the local community.
The Byfleet Heritage Society meets regularly in either the Library's Heritage Room or St Mary's Day Centre and, in partnership with nearby Brooklands Museum, is currently working to preserve the rare surviving Victorian Byfleet Fire Station built in High Road in 1885 by the notable local MP and former Lord Mayor of London Sir John Ellis. and designated a Grade 2 Listed building in February 2008. A new development of retirement flats was completed next to the fire station in November 2009 and is named Ellis Court in his memory. Other Society projects include making oral history recordings with older residents, recording older gravestones and memorials in St Mary's Churchyard and researching specific subjects such as village life in WW2 and the history of the Stoop family and West Hall.
Property values of Byfleet have been reasonable in comparison to its adjoining affluent neighbours of Weybridge and West Byfleet. This is unusual for a Surrey village located less than a mile away from Britain's wealthy estate of St George's Hill - which was itself first developed by Byfleet builder, W G Tarrant.
Lloyds TSB is now the only bank in Byfleet but there are four pubs, a post office, Co-op and a variety of other local shops and businesses as well as the nearby Brooklands Retail Park.
A Farmers' Market is held on the village green on the first Saturday every month except January and the traditional Byfleet Parish Day is held on the Recreation Ground with supporting events in the nearby village hall and St Mary's Day Centre every July.
Other recent developments include The Clockhouse in High Road at the east end of the village; this 18th century mansion has a significant history and was converted in the sixties into a retirement home for the elderly before its latest renovation as flats for the over fifties - completed in 2009.
Byfleet is mentioned in chapter twelve of The War of the Worlds (1898) by H. G. Wells, viz;
Byfleet was in a tumult; people packing, and a score of hussars, some of them dismounted, some on horseback, were hunting them about. Three or four black government waggons, with crosses in white circles, and an old omnibus, among other vehicles, were being loaded in the village street. There were scores of people, most of them sufficiently sabbatical to have assumed their best clothes. The soldiers were having the greatest difficulty in making them realise the gravity of their position. We saw one shrivelled old fellow with a huge box and a score or more of flower pots containing orchids, angrily expostulating with the corporal who would leave them behind.
Bert Denley - this record-breaking Brooklands motorcyclist lived in the Sanway area of Byfleet and once worked for Derisley's, the local butcher
Sir John Ellis - former Lord Mayor of London, MP and founder of Byfleet Fire Brigade, lived at Petersham House in High Road in the late 19th century.
Ebeneezer Mears
Sarah Miles - lived in Byfleet in the late 1960s - early 1970s
J G Parry-Thomas - racing driver
Joseph Spence - 18th Century historian
Walter George Tarrant - lived at Lake House, Chertsey Road.
Captain Herbert F Wood - first manager of the Vickers School of Flying; lived at Wey Mede house in 1912