Wisley is a small village 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. It lies between Cobham

Cobham, Surrey

Cobham is a town in the Borough of Elmbridge in Surrey, England, about south-west of central London and north of Leatherhead. Elmbridge has been acclaimed by the Daily Mail as the best place to live in the UK, and Cobham is a prosperous part of the London commuter belt...

 and Woking

Woking

Woking is a large town and civil parish that shares its name with the surrounding local government district, located in the west of Surrey, UK. It is part of the Greater London Urban Area and the London commuter belt, with frequent trains and a journey time of 24 minutes to Waterloo station....

. It is the home of the Royal Horticultural Society

Royal Horticultural Society

The Royal Horticultural Society was founded in 1804 in London, England as the Horticultural Society of London, and gained its present name in a Royal Charter granted in 1861 by Prince Albert...

's Wisley Garden. The River Wey

River Wey

The River Wey in Surrey, Hampshire and West Sussex is a tributary of the River Thames with two separate branches which join at Tilford. The source of the north branch is at Alton, Hampshire and of the south branch at both Blackdown south of Haslemere, and also close to Gibbet Hill, near Hindhead...

 runs through the village.

Wisley gives its name to the nearby road intersection of the A3 London to Portsmouth trunk road and the London Orbital M25 motorway

M25 motorway

The M25 motorway, or London Orbital, is a orbital motorway that almost encircles Greater London, England, in the United Kingdom. The motorway was first mooted early in the 20th century. A few sections, based on the now abandoned London Ringways plan, were constructed in the early 1970s and it ...

, Junction 10.

Wisley appears in Domesday Book

Domesday Book

Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

 of 1086 as Wiselei. It was held by Osuuold (Oswold). Its domesday assets were: 1½ hide

Hide (unit)

The hide was originally an amount of land sufficient to support a household, but later in Anglo-Saxon England became a unit used in assessing land for liability to "geld", or land tax. The geld would be collected at a stated rate per hide...

s; 1 church, 1 mill

Mill (grinding)

A grinding mill is a unit operation designed to break a solid material into smaller pieces. There are many different types of grinding mills and many types of materials processed in them. Historically mills were powered by hand , working animal , wind or water...

 worth 10 shillings

£sd

£sd was the popular name for the pre-decimal currencies used in the Kingdom of England, later the United Kingdom, and ultimately in much of the British Empire...

, 3 plough

Plough

The plough or plow is a tool used in farming for initial cultivation of soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting. It has been a basic instrument for most of recorded history, and represents one of the major advances in agriculture...

s, 1 fishery

Fishery

Generally, a fishery is an entity engaged in raising or harvesting fish which is determined by some authority to be a fishery. According to the FAO, a fishery is typically defined in terms of the "people involved, species or type of fish, area of water or seabed, method of fishing, class of boats,...

 worth 5d

£sd

£sd was the popular name for the pre-decimal currencies used in the Kingdom of England, later the United Kingdom, and ultimately in much of the British Empire...

, 6 acres (24,281.2 m²) of meadow

Meadow

A meadow is a field vegetated primarily by grass and other non-woody plants . The term is from Old English mædwe. In agriculture a meadow is grassland which is not grazed by domestic livestock but rather allowed to grow unchecked in order to make hay...

, woodland

Woodland

Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...

 worth 6 hogs. It rendered £3.

Wisley Church was built in 1150. There is a medieval church track running from Byfleet

Byfleet

Byfleet is an inland island 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....

 through Wisley to St Nicholas' Church, Pyrford

Pyrford

Pyrford is an English village that for centuries had historical links with the monastery of Westminster, in whose possession it remained between the Norman Conquest and the Dissolution of the Monasteries nearly five hundred years later. It is thirty miles by road from central London and situated...

.

Amenities

Wisley Golf Club is located in the village, and has celebrity members including Colin Montgomery and Jamie Redknapp.

The former Wisley Airfield

Wisley Airfield

-History:Built in 1944, the airfield was built for the flight testing of aircraft built at Vickers aircraft factory at the nearby Brooklands. New aircraft types making their first flights from Wisley included the Vickers VC.1 Viking, Valetta, Varsity, Viscount and Valiant...

, is located in the parish of Ockham

Ockham, Surrey

Ockham is a tiny English village near East Horsley, in Surrey, England. The village lies to the east of the A3 which runs between Cobham and Guildford. Other neighbouring villages include Ripley, Wisley and Effingham....

, situated next to the junction of the M25/A3 and had a 6,691 foot (1.27 mile) runway. Built towards the end of World War 2 as a flight test airfield for the Vickers

Vickers

Vickers was a famous name in British engineering that existed through many companies from 1828 until 1999.-Early history:Vickers was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by the miller Edward Vickers and his father-in-law George Naylor in 1828. Naylor was a partner in the foundry Naylor &...

 aircraft factory at nearby Brooklands

Brooklands

Brooklands was a motor racing circuit and aerodrome built near Weybridge in Surrey, England. It opened in 1907, and was the world's first purpose-built motorsport venue, as well as one of Britain's first airfields...

, it opened in 1944 and after extended use for the development of military aircraft during the Cold War, it finally closed in 1972. Although the runway, taxiways and large areas of hardstanding survive, most of the buildings - including the unique control tower converted from an old timber-framed cottage - were demolished around 1980. The Ockham Beacon at the East end of the airfield still serves as a navigation aid for aircraft flying over the area today.

2004

On 5 September 2004, Wisley recorded a temperature of 29.2°C, beating 28.6°C, which was recorded in Cardiff

Cardiff

Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...

.

2006 heatwave

On 19 July 2006

2006 European heat wave

The 2006 European heat wave was a period of exceptionally hot weather that arrived at the end of June 2006 in certain European countries. The United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany and western part of Russia were most affected....

, the hottest temperature ever recorded in the month of July in the United Kingdom was recorded at Wisley, 36.5 °C

Celsius

Celsius is a scale and unit of measurement for temperature. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius , who developed a similar temperature scale two years before his death...

 (97.7 °F

Fahrenheit

Fahrenheit is the temperature scale proposed in 1724 by, and named after, the German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit . Within this scale, the freezing of water into ice is defined at 32 degrees, while the boiling point of water is defined to be 212 degrees...

). This broke the record of 36.0 °C recorded in Epsom

Epsom

Epsom is a town in the borough of Epsom and Ewell in Surrey, England. Small parts of Epsom are in the Borough of Reigate and Banstead. The town is located south-south-west of Charing Cross, within the Greater London Urban Area. The town lies on the chalk downland of Epsom Downs.-History:Epsom lies...

, 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...

 on 22 July 1911. The all-time United Kingdom record is 38.5 °C (101.3 °F) set near Faversham

Faversham

Faversham is a market town and civil parish in the Swale borough of Kent, England. The parish of Faversham grew up around an ancient sea port on Faversham Creek and was the birthplace of the explosives industry in England.-History:...

, Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, on 10 August 2003. That day also saw Wisley's highest temperature of 37.8 °C (100.0 °F)

External links

• 'Parishes: Wisley' A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 3 (1911), pp. 378-81. Date accessed: 26 September 2007.