Chertsey, United Kingdom

The abbey grew to become one of the largest Benedictine abbeys in England, supported by large fiefs in the northwest corner of Sussex and Surrey until it was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1536. The King took stone from the abbey to construct his palace at Oatlands Palace; the villagers also used stone for raising the streets. By the late 17th century, only some outer walls of the abbey remained. During this period until at least 1911 a wider area was included in Chertsey: Ottershaw (and Brox) was an ecclesiastical district; whose church-sponsored (first built) schools were built in 1870, so too was Addlestone.

Today the history of the abbey is reflected in local place names and the surviving former fishponds that fill with water after heavy rain. The nearby Hardwick Court Farm, now much reduced in size and cut off from the town by the M25, has the successor to the abbey's large and well-supported 15th-century tithe barn, mostly rebuilt in the 17th century.

The eighteenth-century Chertsey Bridge provides an important cross-river link, and Chertsey Lock is a short distance above it on the opposite side. On the south west corner of the bridge is a bronze statue of local heroine Blanche Heriot striking the bell by Sheila MitchellFRBS.

The summit of St Ann's Hill in Chertsey was a vital viewing point for the Anglo-French Survey, which calculated the distance between the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the Paris Observatory using trigonometry. A grid of triangles was measured all the way to the French coast, to join up with the French survey; St Ann's Hill was crucial for the link with the base-line of the English survey on Hounslow Heath.

In the 18th century, Chertsey Cricket Club was one of the strongest in the country and beat the rest of England (excluding Hampshire) by more than an innings in 1778. The Duke of Dorset, (who played cricket for Chertsey), was appointed Ambassador to France in 1784. He arranged to have the Chertsey cricket team travel to France in 1789 to introduce cricket to the French nobility. However, the team, on arriving at Dover, met the Ambassador returning from France at the outset of the French Revolution and the opportunity was missed.

The original Chertsey railway station was built by the London and Southampton Railway and opened on 14 February 1848. The present station, across the level crossing from the site of the original one, was opened on 10 October 1866 by the London and South Western Railway. The Southern Railway completed electrification of the line on 3 January 1937.

Samuel Lewis devotes one of his longest entries to the small town in his 1848 topographical guide to England:

...a market-town and parish, and the head of a union... 13 miles [21 km] (N. N. E.) from Guildford, and 20 [miles (30 km)] (W. S. W.) from London; containing 5347 inhabitants. During the Heptarchy, the South Saxon kings had their residence in this town; and it became noted for a Benedictine monastery, founded in 666 by Erkenwald...which, having been burnt to the ground in the war with the Danes, was refounded by King Edgar, and dedicated to St. Peter. In this abbey Henry VI was privately interred; but his remains were subsequently removed, and deposited, with appropriate solemnities, in the Chapel Royal. At the dissolution, its [annual] revenue was £774. 13. 6.: some portions of the outer walls remain, and on the site, and with part of the materials, of the abbey, a private mansion, called the Abbey House, was erected, but this was pulled down some years ago.