Photograph of St Martha's Church

This photograph shows a view of St Martha's Church, near Chilworth, taken during World War I. The trees near the church are not growing there. The authorities cut them down and piled them around the church to disguise it. People feared that German airships could use the church as a navigation aid to strike at an important local factory.

St Martha-on-the-Hill is a parish church southeast of Guildford. There was a chapel on the site in Saxon times. The current building dates from the late 12^th century. The church suffered many disasters over the years. In the 18^th century, a gunpowder explosion badly damaged it. The church fell into disrepair in the early 19^th century but was restored in the late 1840s.

Very few churches in England are dedicated to St Martha. In fact, there is a strong local tradition that the church was never dedicated to St Martha. Instead, some people think 'Martha' was a corruption of the word 'martyr'. We're not sure who those martyrs were: ideas vary from St Thomas Becket to a group of missionaries in early Anglo-Saxon times.

German airships, known as 'Zeppelins', did attack Surrey in World War I. In 1915, several bombs fell on the St Catherine's area of Guildford. This also has a chapel on top of it. Some people think that the captain mistook this for St Martha's and was using it to aim at the gunpowder mill just down the hill in Chilworth. Other sources suggest the captain was completely lost.