Woking
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| Woking | |
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| Population | 62,796[1] |
|---|---|
| OS grid reference | |
| District | Woking |
| Shire county | Surrey |
| Region | South East |
| Constituent country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Woking |
| Postcode district | GU21, GU22 |
| Dial code | 01483 |
| Police | Surrey |
| Fire | Surrey |
| Ambulance | South East Coast |
| UK Parliament | Woking |
| European Parliament | South East England |
| List of places: UK • England • Surrey | |
- See Woking (borough) for the administrative district.
Woking is a large town and local government district with borough status in the west of Surrey in South East England. It functions as a dormitory town of the London commuter belt and is located 23 miles (37 km) south west of Charing Cross in central London. Woking town itself, excluding the district, has a population of 62,796.[2]
Woking also plays a role in literature: it is the town in which the Martians landed in H. G. Wells science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. It also features in Douglas Adams's The Meaning of Liff, as the word for when you go to the kitchen but forget why.
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[edit] Twin towns
Rastatt in Germany
Amstelveen in the Netherlands
Le Plessis-Robinson in France
[edit] History
- For more details on this topic, see History of Woking.
Woking's history starts in 673AD. Woking began around this time as a settlement of a Wessex tribe, followers of Wocca. The name has been corrupted and was spelt as Woccingas, Wochinges, Wokynge, Wochynghe at different times.
Modern Woking was formed around the railway station built over 150 years ago at the junction between trains to the south coast, the south-west of England and the necropolis railway to Brookwood Cemetery. This cemetery was developed by the London Necropolis Company as an overflow burial ground for London's dead. Later, Woking was home to the first crematorium in the United Kingdom (St Johns) and the first mosque in the UK (on Oriental Road). The Shahjehan Mosque was commissioned by Shahjehan, Begum of Bhopal (1868-1901), one of the four female Muslim rulers of Bhopal who reigned between 1819 and 1926.
[edit] Politics
The constituency of Woking has historically been a Conservative party safe seat, with the Liberal Democrats the principal opposition in the last two general elections. Its current Member of Parliament is Humfrey Malins, who has a majority of around 6,500. The borough council is currently run by a minority Liberal Democrat administration.
[edit] Facilities
Woking has a modern shopping centre called The Peacocks and an older shopping area, Wolsey Place.[3]
The main area for evening entertainment is around Chertsey Road[4] which contains restaurants serving a number of cuisines and there are also numerous bars and pubs. The Ambassadors cinemas[5] and New Victoria Theatre[5] can be accessed via the top floor of The Peacocks.
Woking has indoor swimming pools, "Pool in the Park",[6] and a separate leisure centre. Outdoor facilities include a skatepark, tennis courts, five-a-side football pitches, a cricket pitch (during the summer), bowling greens, a crazy golf course, and a children's adventure playground. These leisure facilities are all located within the attractively landscaped Woking Park[7] near to the town centre.
The scene at St Peter's Church, Old Woking is an inspiration for many local artists, as is another local beauty spot at the lock at St John's Lye.[8]
[edit] Energy policy
- See related article: Energy policy of the United Kingdom
Woking council is one of country's leaders in adopting greener energy technologies. Several combined heat and power stations provide district heating and electricity, and electricity is also provided by a combination of hydrogen fuel cells and solar cells dispersed throughout the borough. These are linked via an innovative private electricity distribution system operating completely off the public power grid.
In order to do this the local government laid new power lines to all locations on the Woking sustainable community energy system (due to Department of Trade and Industry regulations). Should the public power grid fail, central Woking would continue to have an energy supply.[9]
  Map sources for Woking at grid reference TQ0058
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The cost for providing this is approximately UK£0.01/kWh less than for public electricity. It has been reported that the borough saves UK£974,000 a year in energy costs if the installation costs are ignored.[9] By March 2004 the initiatives had also cut the borough's carbon emissions by 17.24%, and those of the council by 77.4%.[10]
On Friday 23rd March 2007, Prince Charles opened a climate change exhibition in Woking. The exhibition, which is a joint venture by Business in the Community and BCSC and endorsed by the Climate Group, featured display stands with information on issues like recycling, energy use, transport, waste reduction and food sources.
[edit] Transport
Woking railway station is situated on the Alton Line, Portsmouth Direct Line, South Western Main Line and West of England Main Line. Accordingly, there are frequent trains to and from London Waterloo (via Clapham Junction), a journey taking approximately half an hour. There is also the twice hourly Waterloo/Woking stopping service that calls at many stations between Waterloo and Woking.
There is a RailAir coach every 30 minutes between the terminus immediately outside the railway station and Heathrow Airport, using the M25 motorway. Gatwick Airport can be accessed via Guildford railway station or Clapham Junction.
Principal roads include the A320, which connects to the M25 to Woking's north near Chertsey and to the A3 to its south at Guildford. The A320 is frequently very congested at peak hours.
The main bus services go to Byfleet and West Byfleet, Camberly, Guildford, Kingston, Ripley and Staines. These are in addition to a number of local services.
The Basingstoke Canal passes through Woking.
The Bustler community transport service operates in and around Woking, serving people with a transportation disadvantage.[11]
[edit] Sport
Woking has a non-League football club, Woking F.C., that competes in the Nationwide Conference (tier 5). The origin of the club's nickname, the "Cards", is disputed. One attractive proposal is that the name was acquired because Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, after whom the smaller of the two shopping centres is named, was staying with King Henry VIII at Woking Palace (the remains of which can be seen near the River Wey at Old Woking) when he heard he had been made a cardinal by Pope Leo X in 1515. A more prosaic alternative is that the Cards are so named because of the cardinal red in one half of their home strip.
Woking has a rugby union club[12] that competes in Surrey league 4 (tier 9).
Woking Hockey Club[13] women's first XI compete in the English Hockey League Women's League 1 (tier 2); the men's first XI compete in a regional league. The club has two AstroTurf pitches at a clubhouse based in Goldsworth Park.
Woking also has a number of cricket clubs including Old Woking CC, Woking & Horsell CC, and Westfield CC.
The McLaren Formula One motor racing team is based near to the town, as is Räikkönen Robertson Racing, begun by former McLaren driver Kimi Räikkönen.
[edit] Education
Infant and junior schools in the area include: Goldsworth Primary School, Knaphill Junior School, Knaphill Lower School, Horsell CofE Aided Junior School, Horsell Village School, The Prins Willem-Alexander school (Dutch private primary school), St Hugh of Lincoln Catholic Primary School, St. Dunstan's Catholic Primary School, Barnsbury Primary and Infant School, The Hermitage Junior School, Sythwood Primary School and The Oaktree School,Beaufort Primary School.
Secondary schools in the area include:Bishop David Brown School , St. John the Baptist School, St Andrew's School The Winston Churchill School, and Woking High School.
Woking College is located in Old Woking and provides post-16 education. Other colleges situated near to Woking include Brooklands College, Godalming College, Guildford College, St John the Baptist Sixth Form College and The Sixth Form College, Farborough.
There are also private sector schools. There are several private preparatory schools in Woking: Hoebridge, St Andrew's, Greenfields and Ripley Court are all mixed, while Halstead School is girls only. There are no private secondary schools in Woking itself, the nearest being Sir William Perkins in Chertsey (girls), St George's College, Weybridge (mixed), Guildford High School and Tormead School (both girls, with junior and senior schools), and the Royal Grammar School, Guildford (boys).
[edit] Notable residents
Woking was home to author H.G. Wells, who had the Martians in The War of the Worlds land on Horsell Common, close to the town centre. There is a large sculpture of a (Wellsian) Martian Fighting Machine in the town centre commemorating Woking's fictional destruction.
The English composer Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) lived and died in Woking.
The Jam are from Woking, and its singer/songwriter Paul Weller (who later, together with Mick Talbot, formed the The Style Council) was born there in 1958. The song A Town Called Malice was written about Woking[citation needed] and Weller's 1995 solo album, Stanley Road, is named after the street in which he was born and lived.[14]
Other notable people who were born in Woking include:
- Ron Dennis, team principal of the McLaren Formula One team, 1947
- Susie Dent, a lexicographer and the dictionary expert on Countdown, 1964
- Harry Hill, comedian, 1964
- David Lock Labour MP for Wyre Forest
- Sean Lock, comedian, 1963
- Liz Lynne, Liberal Democrat politician, 1948
- Ian Ogilvy, actor, 1943
- Rick Parfitt, guitarist for Status Quo, 1948
- Douglas Pearce, musician behind Death in June, 1956
- Delia Smith, celebrity chef, 1941
[edit] Trivia
- There is also a Hawker Hunter jet fighter painted silver and mounted on a pole roughly ten metres tall outside the Big Apple family entertainment complex. This was used to promote the previous Planets family entertainment complex, designed to look like a space craft, and has never been removed.
- Abi Titmuss unveiled the HMV Store at the Peacocks Shopping Centre at 12.30pm on 4th November 2004.
- On Friday 23rd March 2007, Prince Charles opened a climate change exhibition in Woking. The exhibition, which is a joint venture by Business in the Community and BCSC and endorsed by the Climate Group, featured display stands with information on issues like recycling, energy use, transport, waste reduction and food sources. He also inspected work on the Albion Square canopy. After the launch, the prince took lunch at Auberge. He then gave a speech to introduce Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, which was being viewed by local business leaders.
[edit] Emergency services
Woking is served by these emergency sevices:
- Surrey Police.
- South East Coast Ambulance Service as of 1st July 2006, is the local NHS Ambulance Services Trust. The Surrey Ambulance Service, Sussex, and Kent Ambulance services have all merged, and have now ceased to exist.
- Surrey Fire & Rescue Service.
- 2 x Water Tender Ladder
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Surrey Council census data
- ^ Surrey Country Council census data
- ^ Wolsey Place web site
- ^ Map showing Chertsey Road
- ^ a b Web site for the Ambassadors cinemas and New Victoria Theatre
- ^ Pool in the Park web site
- ^ Woking Park web site
- ^ (a) (b) Two sites on David Drury, a local artist
- ^ a b Brown, Paul. "Woking shines in providing renewable energy", The Guardian, 2004-01-26.
- ^ London Climate Change Authority Press Release
- ^ Woking Bustler web site
- ^ Woking RFC
- ^ Woking Hockey Club
- ^ Map with Stanley Road indicated
