Hooley
| Hooley | |
| Surrey | |
|---|---|
 Rural part of the Brighton Road (A23) in Hooley | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ287564 |
| Location: | 51°17’35"N, 0°9’50"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 1,203 |
| Post town: | Coulsdon |
| Postcode: | CR5 |
| Dialling code: | 01737 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Reigate and Banstead |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Reigate |
Hooley is a geographically small village in Surrey. It features, in its small grid of streets, the 13th-century church of Chipstead which has been, since time immemorial, its ecclesiastical parish. Officially it remains a hamlet but today is an equal distance via paths and road to larger Coulsdon's centre which is downhill to the north and has a main-line railway station.
History
Hooley until the early 20th century was the sparsely inhabited hamlet of Chipstead, a largely permeable chalk upland area with little housing or industry.[1] Both the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and the South Eastern Railway recognised the construction of short tunnels here as the best route out of London to Brighton for their rival railway lines. Before these the 1805 extension of the Surrey Iron Railway, a horse-drawn plateway came through this pass.
Geography and amenities
The land equates to part of a western slope and a narrow pass which is the lowest road crossing point of the North Downs east of Westhumble/Mickleham in Mid-Surrey and west of Otford in Kent and avoids the height of the escarpment and steep south sides at neighbouring Reigate and Caterham.
Hooley consists of houses on either side of the A23 Brighton Road plus some land to the west and is about two miles south of Coulsdon.
The village has two petrol stations, a few shops, a newsagent, a village hall, a social club and bar and a café.
The settlement is today distinct from Chipstead which is to the north west — St Margaret's the parish church of Chipstead, is in Hooley at the junction of Star and Church Lanes - (51°17’33"N, 0°9’39"W).
To the east, about a mile by a relatively steep, curved road, the early 21st-century village of Netherne-on-the-Hill has established its own identity (in the parish) on the site of the Victorian Netherne asylum for mentally ill people, expected to be completed by the 2020s.
A large proportion of the secondary age children of Hooley attend Sutton Grammar School, in nearby Sutton.
The M23 motorway also terminates at Hooley, converting to a mixture of a single carriageway with verges and trees and a dual carriageway.
References
- ↑ 'Parishes: Chipstead', in A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 3, ed. H E Malden (London, 1911), pp. 189-196 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/surrey/vol3/pp189-196 Accessed 20 March 2015.
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