REIGATE and Redhill have connections with a number of individuals who have had a significant impact beyond this locality, writes John Capon.
Leaving aside those who are still living, Yesteryear will be reminding readers of just some of them over the next three weeks.
In this 150th anniversary of the granting of municipal borough status to Reigate and Redhill in 1863, it is hoped to place heritage plaques on buildings in the two towns associated with some of these people.
At the end of three weeks, Yesteryear readers will be invited to choose which three, six or ten of those featured are most worthy of such recognition. If there are other names you feel ought to be on this list, please let us know.
This week, we look at seven such figures.
John Foxe (1517-1587). John Foxe was an English scholar and historian, who became a Protestant at a difficult time for those opposed to the state church. He resigned his Oxford college post and took up a number of different roles, including that of tutor to the Earl of Surrey's children around 1550, during which time he lived in Reigate Castle. He went on to write a major ecclesiastical history, entitled Acts and Monuments, which subsequently became known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, still in print today.
Lord Howard of Effingham (1536-1624). Charles Howard lived in Reigate Priory, which had been given to his father, William, by Henry VIII, when Charles was five, the year his cousin Catherine [Howard's] brief reign as Queen of England came to an end.
On his father's death, in 1573, he succeeded to the title Lord Howard of Effingham and, like his father, was made Lord Admiral of England.
In that capacity he was in command of Queen Elizabeth's Navy when the Spanish Armada sailed to attack Britain in 1588, and with the help of his second in command, Sir Francis Drake, secured a famous victory.
The street names Howard Road and Effingham Road recall Lord Howard, and The Admiral Inn, Nutley Lane, Reigate, no doubt commemorates the victory.
John Linnell (1792-1882). When he decided to make his home on Redstone Hill (having fallen in love with it while changing trains at Redhill, en route for Edenbridge in 1849), John Linnell was already a well-established artist, with about 170 paintings hung at the Royal Academy. A deeply committed Christian, and a contemporary of William Blake, Holman Hunt and Albrecht Durer, he spent the rest of his life at Redstone Wood, the house he built in 1850, and painted many local scenes featuring the North Downs and the Weald.
He is recalled in the street name Linnell Road, in Earlswood.
Samuel Palmer (1805-81). Prior to moving to Furze Hill House, Redhill, in 1862, Samuel Palmer had led a rather chaotic life as an artist. He was a key figure in Romanticism, his early visionary pastoral paintings being inspired by William Blake, to whom he was introduced by the man who became his father-in-law – John Linnell. He was largely forgotten after his death, but interest in his work revived in the 1950s and had a great influence on, among others, Graham Sutherland, famous for his tapestry in Coventry Cathedral.
Palmer Close, off Redstone Hollow, Redhill, recalls the artist.
Francis Frith (1822-98). Born in Derbyshire, Francis Frith started as a photographer, based in Liverpool, and paid three visits to the Middle East before he reached 40. In 1859, he settled in Reigate, setting up the firm of F. Frith & Co.
He set himself the colossal task of photographing every town and village in the UK and selling the images as postcards through 2,000 shops. A committed Quaker, he was based in Reigate for the rest of his life, and the firm continued locally for a further 70 years after his death.
Frith Drive, off Raglan Road, commemorates him and the site of some of Frith's businesses. During construction work of the modern Frith Drive, piles of glass negatives were found in the gardens of the old house.
Richard Carrington (1826-75). Richard Carrington selected Furze Hill, Redhill, as the ideal site on which to build his observatory in 1852, having already established a reputation as an amateur astronomer. While in Redhill, he began a painstaking programme of observations of sun-spots. After seven and a half years he published the results in Observations of the Spots on the Sun from November 9, 1853, to March 24, 1861, made at Redhill, which, despite its prosaic title, according to one reviewer, served to revolutionise ideas on solar physics.
The Redhill streets Observatory Walk, Carrington Close, and The Dome flats ensure Carrington is never forgotten.
There is no known photograph or portrait of Carrington.
Lady Henry Somerset (1851-1921). The daughter of the 3rd Earl Somers, then owner of Reigate Priory, Lady Henry Somerset returned to Reigate after her marriage broke down and lived there until her father's death in 1883, after which she moved to Herefordshire.
A committed Christian, philanthropist, temperance advocate and women's rights campaigner, she is best remembered for the founding of the colony at Duxhurst, three miles south of Reigate, in the 1890s, where she spent the last 25 years of her life, caring for women suffering from alcoholism.
The name of Somerset Road, Meadvale, may be linked with this great woman.
