History of Woking

Woking means "(settlement belonging to the) followers of Wocc (or 'Wocca')". Over time, the name has been written variously as, for example, Wochingas, and Wokynge.

In Horsell Common there are three ancient bell barrow burial mounds that are around 3-4,000 years old. A possible explanation to these burial mounds (as Bell Barrow Mounds are not common in Surrey) is that they were built to 'commemorate leaders who had migrated from Wessex to colonise new lands'. There is a reference to these three burial mounds in the antiquarian John Aubrey's 1718 book 'A History of Surrey'. Although there was and is knowledge of these bell barrow mounds, there is no official evidence they have ever been excavated.

It is likely the spot where the burial mounds was once farmland, though because of its poor soil the burial mounds were put there instead. It is likely there are more than three of the burial mounds, though no more have yet been found.

Woking appears in written materials which, though created in the 12th century at Peterborough Abbey, formerly known as Medeshamstede, reliably describe earlier events. The earliest of these is the grant by Pope Constantine (708-715) of privileges to a monastery at Wochingas. Later in the 8th century a charter of King Offa of Mercia granted further privileges, freeing this church from numerous standard liabilities. This charter is paraphrased in a 12th-century interpolation to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's entry for 777 AD, also written at Peterborough:

In the time of King Offa of Mercia there was an ealdorman called Brorda who petitioned the king for love of him to free a church of his called Woking, because he wished to give it to Medeshamstede and to St Peter and the abbot that then was, who was called Pusa. ... And the king freed the church of Woking from all obligations due to king and to bishop and to earl and to all men, so that no one should have any authority there, except St Peter and the abbot (of Medeshamstede). This was ratified in the royal manor of Freoricburna.

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