Chobham - Chertsey

The Stonehill Road runs from Chertsey to the centre of Chobham. This road was probably constructed before Domesday to connect Chertsey Abbey to Chobham.

There are reasons to believe that it may be of Roman origin:

• From Stonehill eastwards it is remarkably straight.  It has a little jink at the ridge just west of the Accommodation Rd junction - but roads often zigzagged over ridges to reduce the slope.
• The bounds of Chertsey in the Chertsey Abbey charter of 673AD, mention a here-street (in Old English usually used to signify a Roman military road) between Crockford Bridge and Three Barrows.  The Chobham-Chertsey road does indeed lie between these two boundary points.
• The area where this road meets Gracious Pond road appears to be a Roman finds hotspot (see the Roman era pages)
• The farm where this road meets Mincing Lane was called Stanes Farm. 'stanes', meaning 'stones' is thought to have an association with Roman paved roads.

David Bird, in the Archaeology of Surrey to 1541 states that it may part of the Roman road from Winchester to London via Chertsey.

Sometime at a later date, between the junctions of Gracious Pond Rd and Mincing Lane the road appears to have been diverted south around Chobham Park.  This probably happened shortly after 1535 when Henry VIII obtained and expanded Chobham Park.  The map shows its probably original route through Chobham Park.

The road does not head straight for the centre of Chobham but for the bridge over the Bourne at the north end of the village.  If it headed for an existing bridge or ford, then does that then indicate that the crossing, and the Windsor Rd, predates the road to Chertsey? Or does it mean that there was a more significant settlement just north of the Bourne that it headed for?  Certainly this part of Chobham has some very old houses.

This road may well have been the principle route to London during the period between the decay of the London-Silchester Roman road via Egham and Staines, and the building of a bridge at Staines in the early 13th C and the construction of the causeway across the boggy ground between Egham and Staines.^{1 p14}

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