Dorking, United Kingdom

There is thought to have been a settlement at Dorking in Roman times, although its size and extent are unclear. Coins from the reigns of Hadrian (117–138 AD), Commodus (180–192) and Claudius Gothicus (214–270), as well as tiles and pottery fragments, have been found in the town. Stane Street, the Roman road linking London to Chichester, was constructed during the first century AD and is thought to have run through Dorking. The exact course through the town is not known and no definitive archaeological evidence has been discovered for the route in the 3 mi (5 km) gap between the crossing of the River Mole at the Burford Bridge and North Holmwood. A posting station is thought to have been located in the area and sites have been proposed in the town centre, at Pixham and at the Burford Bridge, where the road crossed the River Mole.

Although the name Dorking implies a settlement that was well established by the time of the Norman Conquest, archaeological evidence of Saxon activity in the town centre is limited to pottery sherds. Probable Saxon cemeteries have been found close to Yew Tree Road (to the north of the centre) and at Vincent Lane (to the west). In 1817, the so-called "Dorking Hoard" of around 700 silver pennies, dating from the mid-8th to the late-9th centuries, was found near the source of the Pipp Brook on the northern slopes of Leith Hill. In the late Saxon period, the manor and parish were administered as part of the Wotton Hundred and may have been part of a large royal estate centred on Leatherhead.

Dorking appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as the Manor of Dorchinges. It was held by William the Conqueror, who had assumed the lordship in 1075 on the death of Edith of Wessex, widow of Edward the Confessor. The settlement included one church, three mills worth 15s 4d, 16 ploughs, woodland and herbage for 88 hogs and 3 acres (1.2 ha) of meadow. It rendered £18 per year in 1086. The residents included 38 villagers, 14 smallholders and 4 villeins, which placed it in the top 20% of settlements in England by population.

In around 1087, William II granted the manor of Dorking to Willam de Warenne, the first Earl of Surrey, whose descendants have held the lordship almost continuously until the present day. By the early 14th century, the manor had been divided for administrative purposes into four tithings: Eastburgh and Chippingburgh (corresponding respectively to the eastern and western halves of the modern town); Foreignburgh (the area covered by the Holmwoods) and Waldburgh (which would later be renamed Capel). On the death of the seventh Earl, John de Warenne, in 1347, the manor passed to his brother-in-law, Richard Fitzalan, the third Earl of Arundel. In 1580 both Earldoms passed through the female line to Phillip Howard, whose father, Thomas Howard, had forfeited the title of Duke of Norfolk and had been executed for his involvement in the Ridolfi plot to assassinate Elizabeth I. The dukedom was restored to the family in 1660, following the accession of Charles II.

As the status of the de Warennes and their descendants increased, they became less interested in the town. In the 14th and 15th centuries, prominent local families (including the Sondes and the Goodwyns) were able to buy the leases on some of the lordship lands. One such area was the Deepdene, first mentioned in a court roll of 1399. This woodland was held by several tenants, before being inherited in 1652 by Charles Howard, the fourth son of the 15th Earl of Arundel, in whose family it remained until 1790. The estate was expanded by successive owners, including the Anglo-Dutch banker Thomas Hope and his eldest son Henry Thomas Hope, who commissioned William Atkinson to remodel the main house as a "sumptuous High Renaissance palazzo".

Unlike the neighbouring towns of Guildford and Reigate, Dorking was never granted a Borough Charter and remained under the control of the Lord of the Manor throughout the Middle Ages. Reforms during the Tudor period reduced the importance of manorial courts and the day-to-day administration of towns such as Dorking became the responsibility of the vestry of the parish church. There was little change in local government structure over the subsequent three centuries, until the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 transferred responsibility for poor relief to the Poor Law Commission, whose local powers were delegated to the newly formed Poor Law union in 1836. In 1841, the Dorking Union constructed a new workhouse, south of the town centre, designed by William Shearburn. The entrance block still stands and is now part of Dorking Hospital.