Latest Newsletter: July 2026

You can find our latest newsletter  here.

Wartime memories project – the sequel

The second volume of Grayshott’s Wartime Memories was published on 15th August – the anniversary of VJ Day – and is available at several places around the village. Copies can be picked up at Business Connections, the Community Library, Post Office, Grayshott Pottery, Red Rose, Cabbage Patch, Social Club, Pets Corner, Village Hall, Poppie’s, The Counter, Peter Leete, Hairworks and Amery Vets. Thanks to grants from East Hampshire District Council and Hampshire Archives Trust, and a donation from author Valerie Mendes, they are free.

There is also a pdf copy here.

Grayshott’s Village People Book

This book is still available, but stocks are running low. Print copies might still be available from Business Connections and the Community Library and, as usual, they are free. The production costs have been covered by a grant from East Hampshire District Council and donations from Moorlands Lodge.

A PDF copy is available here.

MidSummer Afternoon Tea, 16th June 2026

Our 2026 Midsummer Afternoon Tea was this year held at St Anne’s, very kindly hosted by Vanessa and Serena Thompson, with catering  masterminded by Sarah Rowlands and Vanessa.

The Grayshott Heritage Official Meteorologist, also known as Vice-Chairman Richard Peskett, organised the weather brilliantly. We had a perfect summer afternoon of mixed sunshine and occasional cloud, neither too hot nor too cool. In the evening it rained and the next day one of the summer’s five heatwaves cut in, so jolly well done Richard.

Richard started proceedings with a short talk about the site’s previous owner, Ada Vertue. St Anne’s is one of Grayshott’s historic gardens, being on part of the land occupied initially by Edward I’Anson’s Heather Lodge then by Virtue’s The Court. Virtually nothing now remains of either, except in St Anne’s where survivors such as the old walled garden, stables and Wellingtonia trees can be seen.

Those with sufficient energy were invited to explore the beautiful garden, which was created by Vanessa and her late husband Colin. The rest of us just sat around drinking tea, eating cake and chatting. It was a perfect afternoon and we send a huge thank you to Vanessa, Sarah and Serena for their hard work and generosity.

The 2027 event is still to be confirmed, but we suggest you keep the month of June free in your diary.

Friends’ Evenings

Our next Friends’ Evening is on Tuesday 13th October at the Village Hall. Doors open at 7pm for a start at 7:30 sharp, all arrangements as usual. As a guest speaker we have Sally Grocock, food historian, telling us about Roman cookery and her authentic re-creations of original recipes. Then Richard and John will present ‘Curiosities from the Census’, some of the unusual things they’ve come across in their research.

We’ll have our display tables out and we invite you to bring along anything from your own collections that you think may be of interest – local and general history, crafts, art projects, old family albums, cakes etc. There will be the usual raffle and light refreshments by courtesy of the Grayshott Heritage Catering Corps.

As always, admission is free for Friends. Guests are welcome, and we ask of them a £5 donation towards our costs. We hope to see you. there.

The 2027 evenings are booked for 18th May and 12th October, both Tuesdays.

If anyone has suggestions for future evenings, or how we can improve things, please get in touch through the Contact page.

Grayshott’s Wartime Memories

Our original Wartime Memories book was published on the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, 15th August 2025. A few print copies might still available, if you are lucky, at Business Connections and the Community Library. Otherwise a pdf copy is available here.

Village Transport Book!

Our book ‘Grayshott’s Journey – A History of Village Transport’ was launched at the October 2024 Friends’ Evening. It’s a look at how various forms of transport – horses, bikes, cars, vans, lorries – have connected with the village’s social and economic history. It’s been financed by a grant from East Hampshire District Council and earnings from our monthly talks to Moorlands Lodge, which means we can make it available to you at no cost. Copies are available at various outlets around the village including Business Connections and the Community Library, as well as an online copy on this website for more distant readers. They’re nearly all gone so make sure you collect yours soon.

The pdf copy is available here.

Early reviews have been encouraging:
‘Less boring than I was expecting ‘ – Archivist Martin

Headley Society Programme

The Headley Society have sent us their programme for the 2024/25 period. You can find it here.
Their talks are always interesting, and their annual sub of £10 covering 12 talks is great value. Or you can attend individual talks as a guest for £2. The venue is the Church Centre in Headley, which is directly opposite the church and has its own car park. Doors open at 7:30 for an 8pm start.

2025 AGM Report

Our 2025 AGM was held online on Tuesday 4th November. 40 people voted, and all of the minutes and reports were approved. The committee members were also all re-confirmed in post.

We are in good shape financially, and members and the wider community seem to like what we do, so we’ll keep on doing it. Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond.

Moorlands Lodge Classic Car Show, July 2026

Every month, more or less, we give a talk to the residents at Moorlands Lodge. In July, for a change, we take along a selection of older or interesting cars, to make a mini motoring festival. This year, due to the extreme temperature during the peak of a heatwave, we had to be prudent and cancel the event. Instead, we gave readings from our new Wartime Memories book, which attracted a full house and more very interesting recollections from residents.

We fully intend to re-convene the car show next year, date TBC but likely to be mid-July If you have something suitable that you’d like to display please get in touch and we’ll put you on the list. It doesn’t have to be old or valuable, just a bit out of  the ordinary by today’s standards.

Boundary Walk Booklets

We have now finished the series of Boundary Walks, produced in conjunction with the Grayshott Green Spaces group.

The first walk, Kingswood and Stoney Bottom, is available in pdf form, to download or print yourself, here.

The second walk, the Medieval Hamlet, is available in pdf here.

Our third walk, Flat Wood and the Southwater, has a pdf copy is here.

Walk 4, The Hanger and Whitmore, is here.

Finally, Walk 5, Architecture, Trade and Prosperity, is here. This walk concentrates on the village centre, especially upon its development as a service centre for the tourism industry in the decades around 1900. It’s packed with period photos and adverts, which give a fascinating taste of our village’s life and trade at that time. The walk itself is quite short and easy, only about a mile and all on footpaths.

The booklets are also available in pdf form on Grayshott Parish Council website here.

All are now almost out of stock in print form. You might, if you are very lucky indeed, find a rare copy lingering in the Community Library or Business Connections. If you draw a blank and absolutely must have a copy to complete your collection then contact us and we’ll have a rummage down the back of the sofa. There may be a stray, cat-chewed example hiding somewhere.We couldn’t have done this project without generous grants and donations from Hidden Gardens of Grayshott, Party in Grayshott, Hampshire County Council and East Hampshire District Council. To all of these, we send our thanks, and also to Colin Thompson, Chairman of the Green Spaces Group, for championing the project at its start and throughout.

As a special bonus you can now also access a pdf copy of our Tree Walk booklet here.

Our booklet commemorating the 120th anniversary of the Fox and Pelican is still just about available. At the moment there might be a very few remaining copies in the pub, free of charge. Written by Richard Peskett, it describes how the pub came into existence and became an enduring part of village life. The official launch was conducted at the F&P on Thursday 19th December 2019, attended by an honorary guest in the form of George Bernard Shaw, and several Friends. If you can’t get your hands on a print copy then you can find a pdf version here.

New Finds – Additions to the Archive

Very sadly, we have recently lost two of our long-standing members, John Hill and Bob Cherry. With great kindness their families have, in both cases, passed on their extensive local history collections to Grayshott Heritage. Archivist Martin has taken the collections into safe custody and is currently cataloging and digitising their contents.

In other news, we’ve discovered that Hampshire Record Office holds a copy of the 1855 Headley Enclosure Apportionments map. The map is a spectacular thing and we were able to view the original. The accompanying apportionment list is unfortunately only viewable on a pretty poor microfiche copy, much of it illegible. However, over the dark winter evenings we hope to make some sense of it and publish our findings. The enclosure was a fundamental part of Grayshott’s development and the new roads and landholdings resulting from it started to define the modern village as we see it.

We send our thanks to those who donate to our archive or make their personal material available, the like of which we rely upon heavily to enrich our archive. Some items can’t easily be digitised and we’ll have to scratch our heads a bit to work out how to present them for you, perhaps put them on display at our Friends’ Evenings. We do have a stack of New Finds awaiting publication, which we’ll try to catch up with. Take a look at the New Finds page to see the latest feature and the full back-series.

Some New Articles

Residents of Grayshott may have seen our series of articles in Grayshott Today magazine. For those further afield, we have put them onto our website on a new page called Grayshott Through the Ages. You will also find some of them on the Do You Know page.

Latest Loss – The Golden Hind

The latest building to succumb is the Golden Hind Cafe at Hindhead, more recently known as Cooper Brothers furniture shop. Time and decades of pounding from recent traffic had taken its toll, and the building was sadly beyond economic repair. It was demolished in May 2018