Soldiers have been a familiar sight in Guildford for hundreds of years. Lying halfway on the road from London to Portsmouth, the town was a natural stopping place for troops going overseas.
There were frequent musters of the local militia and during the Civil Wars Parliamentarian forces were quartered in Guildford. Troops were often billeted in the local inns.
In the 17th century there was accommodation for 124 men and 129 horses. During the 18th century there was increasing resistance to this billeting from the innkeepers who claimed, apparently with some justification, that their business was being ruined. However, no barracks were built until 1794.
Apart from soldiers passing through, men of the many varied volunteer and militia units would have been a common sight in the town during the Napoleonic period.
The Surrey Militia was re-established in 1756 with the 2nd Battalion based in Guildford. The Surrey Yeomanry Cavalry were embodied in 1794 under Lord Leslie as colonel. They were light dragoons and their task was to ‘preserve the internal peace of the community’ against such revolutionary disturbances as had been seen in France. This regiment was disbanded in the mid 19th century and reformed as the Surrey Imperial Yeomanry in 1901.
The Friary was a mansion house built in 1630 on the site of the mediaeval Dominican Friary. In 1794 the government bought it and its grounds. The mansion became officers’ quarters and new buildings were erected to house 800 men and their horses.
From 1794 to 1812 there are records of various cavalry units staying there, mostly light dragoons. Conditions within the barracks were apparently very bad, with overcrowding and poor heating. Unfortunately, these barracks did not solve the problem and soldiers continued to be billeted in the town. The innkeepers continued to complain about loss of trade caused by troops being quartered on them.
In 1812 the cavalry left the Friary and it was given over to the 2nd Royal Surrey Militia, which up to then had had no central headquarters. The Militia fought in Ireland during 1813, but after Napoleon’s apparent defeat in 1814 they were disbanded. They left the Friary on 24th June 1814 and in 1818, the barracks, together with the old mansion house, were pulled down.
The 2nd Royal Surrey Militia was revived in 1852 and a new depot was built for them in 1854. It was in Friary Street at the bottom of North Street, and was said to have been designed by the Earl of Lovelace, the Colonel of the Militia, in the style of his house at Horseley Towers. This building was intended as a depot rather than a true barracks, but there was a small permanent staff. There was little activity apart from the few weeks of annual training, which was the only time the militia came together.
Until 1870 the men were billeted in the town for this period, but for the next six years a tented camp outside the town was used. The militia depot was sold when the barracks at Stoughton were completed in 1876. The buildings were converted into business premises and were finally demolished in 1969.
In 1875 it was decided that the regiments of the regular army should be linked to particular districts. Guildford was chosen as the headquarters of the 2nd Regiment of Foot, ‘The Queens’. A new barracks was built at Stoughton and the 1st and 2nd Battalions moved in during October 1876.
The Queen’s was one of the founding regiments of the British Army, being established in 1661 and later named after Charles II’s wife Catherine of Braganza. The members of the regiment earned themselves an unenviable reputation during the suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion in 1685, under Colonel Kirke. They were known ironically as ‘Kirke’s Lambs’ because of the Paschal Lamb on their badges.
In 1703 it became a royal regiment. In 1881 it was officially named the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment and in 1959 amalgamated with the East Surreys to become the Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment. The Queen’s then left Stoughton Barracks and Guildford.
During the last war a hutted camp was built to the north of Stoughton Barracks for the Auxiliary Territorial Service, later named the Women’s Royal Army Corps. In 1951 this became the depot and training centre of the W.R.A.C., being later renamed the Queen Elizabeth Barracks. The WRAC was disbanded in 1992.
During the 1880s there was a lack of confidence in the ability of the Royal Navy to defend the country against invasion. A plan was drawn up for a line of entrenched defences to be dug along the crest of the North Downs that would protect London if an invasion of the South Coast seemed imminent. These would be manned by local volunteer gunners and riflemen and it was decided to build a series of permanent ‘Mobilisation Centres’ along the Downs, from which ammunition and trenching tools could be distributed. The westernmost of these centres were at Guildford, Henley Grove and Pewley Hill.
They were intended to be supplied from a base at Nine Elms via an advanced depot at Guildford Station. The War Office acquired the land on Pewley Hill in 1890 and construction was in full swing by 1893. From the first the centres were referred to locally as ‘forts’ although technically they were not as they did not mount artillery.
The magazine and storerooms were protected by earth banks and ditches, and there was some limited provision for local defence. The Pewley Hill centre was very much larger than that at Henley Grove. It had a deep, concrete-revetted ditch, and its fort-like design and dominant position suggest that it was intended to form part of the defensive line. By the time they were completed, however, the Navy was back in favour and after 1905 the Mobilisation Centres were abandoned and sold off.
With the threat of a German invasion in 1940 a similar plan was adopted, and General Ironside constructed his ‘G.H.Q. Stopline’ along the foot of the greensand ridge. The huge anti-tank ditch has been filled in, but the large concrete pillboxes can still be seen. We now know that if the Germans had landed they would have tried to outflank London on the West by driving through the Guildford Gap. Had history run differently one of the most crucial battles of English history might have been fought at Shalford.