Hindhead
Encyclopedia
Hindhead is a village
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...

 in Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

, England, about 11 miles south-west of Guildford
Guildford
Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...

. Neighbouring settlements include Haslemere
Haslemere
Haslemere is a town in Surrey, England, close to the border with both Hampshire and West Sussex. The major road between London and Portsmouth, the A3, lies to the west, and a branch of the River Wey to the south. Haslemere is approximately south-west of Guildford.Haslemere is surrounded by hills,...

, Grayshott
Grayshott
Grayshott is a village and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is located on the Hampshire / Surrey border 2.4 miles northwest of Haslemere, approximately one hour by road from central London....

 and Beacon Hill. Hindhead is the highest village in Surrey. The village was a notorious bottleneck on the A3, but has now been bypassed.

The place-name 'Hindhead' is first attested in 1571, and means 'hill frequented by hinds', that is to say deer
Deer
Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the Cervidae family include white-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer, fallow deer, roe deer and chital. Male deer of all species and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year...

.

Near Hindhead is the Devil's Punch Bowl
Devil's Punch Bowl
The Devil's Punch Bowl is a large natural amphitheatre and beauty spot near Hindhead, Surrey, in England, and is the source of many stories about the area. The London to Portsmouth road used to climb round its side, but this is now closed due to the Hindhead Tunnel opening on the 27th July 2011...

, a site of special scientific interest
Site of Special Scientific Interest
A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...

. This area was notorious in times past for highwaymen and lawlessness and was only "tamed" in the 19th century when the London to Portsmouth railway line removed much of the freight being transported by road. Gibbet Hill
Gibbet Hill, Hindhead
Gibbet Hill, at Hindhead, Surrey, is a hill above the Devil's Punch Bowl, not far from the A3 London to Portsmouth road in England. It is the second highest point in Surrey after Leith Hill....

 above the Devil's Punch Bowl is where murderers and robbers were hung in chains to warn others.

George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, playwright, lived at "Blen Cathra" in Hindhead, now the site of St. Edmund's School
St. Edmund's School (Hindhead)
St. Edmund's School is a coeducational nursery, pre-prep and preparatory school originally founded in Hunstanton, Norfolk, England in 1874, and subsequently moved to Hindhead, Surrey, England in 1900, where the school moved into a large country house named Blen Cathra, previously a home of George...

, whilst Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

 lived at "Undershaw
Undershaw
Undershaw is a former residence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. The house was built for Doyle at his order, and it is the location where he wrote many of his works, including The Hound of the Baskervilles...

" from 1897 to 1907. It was here that he wrote some of his most famous novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of four crime novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West Country and tells the story of an...

. Undershaw later became a hotel and restaurant on the A3. It is now closed and, after a proposal to turn it into flats was denied, the Hindhead council had to step in and do some repairs. Another author to live at Hindhead was the Canadian-born novelist Grant Allen
Grant Allen
Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen was a science writer, author and novelist, and a successful upholder of the theory of evolution.-Biography:...

 (1848-99), who lived at "Hilltop." Arthur Conan Doyle was one of Allen's neighbours and became his friend. It was Doyle who completed Allen's novel Hilda Wade when Allen died.
Also the relatively well-known scientist John Tyndall
John Tyndall
John Tyndall FRS was a prominent Irish 19th century physicist. His initial scientific fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. Later he studied thermal radiation, and produced a number of discoveries about processes in the atmosphere...

 (1820-1893) lived and died in the village at a house now on "Tyndalls", named after him. He is most famous for his work on the discovery of the Greenhouse Effect.

The centre of the village lies near a set of traffic lights with the A287 and the A333
A333 road
The A333 is a road in Surrey, south-east England. It runs between the Hazel Grove interchange and the Hindhead crossroads . It was formerly a small section of the A3 and was re-numbered in 2011 as part of the Hindhead Tunnel project....

. A £371 million bypass has been constructed, which includes the 1.9 miles (3.1 km) twin-bore tunnel
Hindhead Tunnel
The Hindhead Tunnel is a road tunnel that opened on 29 July 2011 as part of the new Hindhead bypass for the A3 road in Surrey. It forms part of the 4 mile dual-carriageway being built to replace the last remaining stretch of single-carriageway on the London to Portsmouth road...

, which is the longest non-estuarial tunnel in the UK.. The bypass and tunnel opened to southbound trafic on 27th July 2011, and to northbound trafic on 29th July 2011. The section of the old A3
A3 road
The A3, known as the Portsmouth Road for much of its length, is a dual carriageway, or expressway, which follows the historic route between London and Portsmouth passing close to Kingston upon Thames, Guildford, Haslemere and Petersfield. For much of its length, it is classified as a trunk road...

north of Hindhead is now due to be dug up and the area returned to heathland.

External links

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