Pyrford

Pyrford ˈpɜrfərd is a village in the borough of Woking in Surrey, England. It is on the left bank of the River Wey, around east of the town of Woking and just south of West Byfleet; the M25 motorway is northeast of the edge of the former parish. The village sits on raised mixed heath soil, and has historical links with the abbey at Westminster, in whose possession it remained between the Norman conquest in 1066 and the Dissolution of the Monasteries nearly five hundred years later. At the foot of slopes in the south of the area are agricultural flood plain pasture meadows bisected by the River Wey Navigation; the actual border is the River Wey itself (though slightly inaccurate as based on meanders as they were before 1820). Roads passing through the village include the B367 (Upshott Lane/Church Hill) and B382 (Old Woking Road). Open areas in the south and east of the village are designated Metropolitan Green Belt. The current village name 'Pyrford' is derived from the Saxon dialect of Old English combined term "Pyrianford", which scholarly research into Old English asserts means 'pear tree ford'. King James and Anne of Denmark stayed with Sir Francis Wolley at Pyrford on 10 August 1603. Famous residents include the poet John Donne, and Jack Brabham who used to live on Forest Road. Pyrford is mentioned in The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells, in which it is near the landing site of the third of ten Martian invasion cylinders. The Rowley Bristow Hospital from 1928 to 1992 was in Pyrford in the area now occupied by St Martin's Mews and St Nicholas Crescent. Early in World War II, due to the risk of enemy air attack, the Vickers Armstrongs aircraft factory at nearby Brooklands had a dispersed facility known as Depot No. W95 in Lower Pyrford Road with two aircraft hangars used for 'aircraft salvage' purposes until at least 1944. Post-war, one of these hangars was occupied by a factory making electrical switches and the other was used as a temporary store for historic aeroplanes by the national Science Museum until Autumn 1958; these premises were finally demolished and redeveloped for new housing in the late 1980s.