A HISTORY OF SURREY 



have fared but little better than the Surrey 

 Iron Railway, and what occasional dividends 

 it may have paid never exceeded 2 per cent. 

 A further Act was obtained in 1 806 ' sanc- 

 tioning the raising of further capital, but al- 

 though some additional funds seem actually 

 to have been obtained no attempt was made 

 to carry the line further. 



No doubt considerable quantities of stone 

 and lime were carried from Merstham to 

 Wandsworth and the metropolis by means of 

 the railway, but what expectations had been 

 raised as to any noticeable reduction in the cost 

 of carriage seem not to have been realized. 

 In 1 8 14 we are told that the farmers of 

 Woodmansterne had been flattered with the 

 expectation of having their dressing brought 

 from London, and their flints taken in part 

 payment for the use of the earthenware 

 manufacturers, but that they had been dis- 

 appointed in both.' At the same time, al- 

 though a considerable quantity of fullers' 

 earth was then carried by the iron railway, it 

 had not yet appeared that the cost of carriage 

 was much, if anything, k-ss than by the com- 

 mon carriers.' A writer in 1847 describes 

 the small single line on which some thirty 

 years before a miserable team of lean mules 

 or donkeys might have been seen crawling, at 

 the rate of four miles an hour, with some trucks 

 of stone and lime behind them, and contrasts 

 the one train of trucks which then perchance 

 passed through Croydon in the day with the 

 hundred journeys and more which were made 

 at a later date by the three great railroads 

 which reached that place from London.* 



The fate of the first two railways sanc- 

 tioned by Parliament was indeed little pro- 

 phetic of the great future which the nine- 

 teenth century had in store for this method of 

 facilitating transport when the perfection of 

 the steam locomotive was to be attained. 

 The Act of 1837, which incorporated the 

 London and Brighton Railway Company, 

 gave the company power to purchase the 

 whole of the railway from Croydon to 

 Merstham.' The purchase was effected for 

 the sum of ^f 9,6 14, and by an Act of 1839 

 the Croydon, Merstham and Godstone Rail- 

 way Company was finally dissolved.' This 

 step completed the ruin of the Surrey Iron 

 Railway, which was nominally purchased by 

 the London and South-Western Railway 



1 Loc. and Pers. Acts, 46 Geo. III. cap. 93. 

 ' Manning and Bray, Hist, of Surrey, ii. 460. 

 3 Ibid. ii. 266. 



* Felii Summerley, Pleasure Excursions, Croydon. 

 '- Loc. and Pers. Acts, 7 Will. IV. and I Vict, 

 cap. 119. 



" Ibid. 2 & 3 \'ict. cap. 52. 



Company in 1844, and by that company 

 sold at cost price to the Brighton Company, 

 by which, however, it was soon found unne- 

 cessary and abandoned. The Surrey Iron 

 Railway Company was dissolved by Act of 

 Parliament in 1846.'' 



We have dwelt here on the history of these 

 two little railways in the first place because 

 they were carried out with a special view to 

 improving the industrial conditions of the 

 county ; and secondly, because their concep- 

 tion affords yet another striking illustration of 

 the initiative which the inhabitants of Surrey 

 were ready to take in the adoption of any 

 new method of communication between 

 place and place which promised to compen- 

 sate them for their deficiencies in natural 

 waterways. The county has now for many 

 years been served by the main lines of the 

 London, Brighton and South Coast and the 

 London and South- Western Railways and by 

 the Reading branch of the South-Eastern 

 Railway. The first and the last of these 

 have done much to facilitate the carriage of 

 the products of the limestone and chalk 

 quarries between Dorking and Godstone, and 

 to extend their market. But, with the ex- 

 ception of two or three large printing estab- 

 lishments, it cannot be said that any consider- 

 able new industry which did not exist before 

 these railways were built has been called into 

 being in the more rural districts of the county 

 through their agency. The principal changes 

 in Surrey brought about by its railways have 

 been in a social direction. Through their 

 means the different parts of the county have 

 become more possible for the residence of 

 those to whom easy access to London is a 

 necessity, and the whole county has tended 

 in consequence to become more and more a 

 gigantic suburb of the metropolis. The 

 history, therefore, and the effects upon the 

 county of its present railway system, fall for 

 treatment more fitly to another section of 

 the present work. 



The manufactures carried on in those 

 metropolitan parts of the old county of 

 Surrey which have recently been absorbed 

 into the newly formed county of London 

 have increased greatly in number and import- 

 ance during the past century. Doubtless this 

 increase may in great part be attributed to 

 the spread of railways, one of the most 

 general effects of which upon industries has 

 been to concentrate them in the towns. In 

 so doing railways have of course only carried 

 out still further the great result achieved by 

 the rise of the factory system in the closing 



258 



'> Ibid. 9 & 10 Vict. cap. 333. 



