HomeRedhill is a town in the borough of Reigate and Banstead, Surrey, England and is part of the London commuter belt. Redhill and the adjacent town of Reigate form a single urban area.
the town came into being when a road was built in 1818. The settlement was originally known as Warwick Town and became known as Redhill when the post office moved from Red Hill Common in 1856.
A major factor in the development of the town was the coming of the railway. Redhill railway station continues to be an important junction. Redhill is also one of the few places in the UK where Fuller’s Earth can be extracted. Alfred Nobel demonstrated dynamite for the first time at a Redhill quarry in 1867.
A Victorian psychiatric hospital to the south of Redhill, the Royal Earlswood Hospital, was for 40 years home to two of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s cousins, Katherine Bowes-Lyon and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon, both of whom had learning difficulties. The inmate James Henry Pullen (1835-1916) was an autistic savant. He was a brilliant craftsman and artist. His work was accepted by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Some of Pullen’s ship models, designs and art work can be seen on permanent display at the Belfry Shopping Centre, High Street, Redhill. The hospital site has now been converted to luxury apartments.
On the edge of Redhill is Gatton Park, an estate once owned by the Colmans. The estate had a private chapel (now open to the public) and Japanese gardens that were featured on TV recently. The veteran London to Brighton car rally runs through the town each year.
Over the years the town centre has included many major high street names. It has a market each Thursday and Saturday and sometimes hosts a French market.
The town has a distinctive red-brick theatre-cinema-library complex, called the Warwick Quadrant (housing the Harlequin Theatre and Cinema, library, Sainsbury’s and other shops), and an old shopping arcade (that currently houses Road Runners taxi services and among other shops, a small local record store called “Hits” that has been in Redhill since the 1980s). For many years this was simply called “The Arcade”; today its name has changed to “Redhill Indoor Market” although many locals still refer to it by its previous name.
A Sainsbury’s store (with underground car park) is situated adjacent to the Harlequin and a parade of modern shops, including MotherCare, Martins Newsagents, Carphone Warehouse, Choice clothing store and last but not least STREETALK designer clothing.
Further along the pedestrianised High Street is the Belfry Shopping Mall which has its own multi-storey car park and over its two floors there are about fifty shops including a post office, recently relocated to inside WHSmith on the lower floor.
In the latter half of 2005, an area full of empty shops and offices was revamped and now includes many eateries such as Frankie & Benny’s. This was the first in a series of new developments in the town centre, continuing in 2007 with redevelopment of the neighbouring Kingsgate House site into a landmark office building, and the Lidl/Queensway building into a mixed residential and retail development. There are plans for these to be the start of a wider revamp of the town over the course of the next 10 years, which may take in the Warwick Quadrant, Marketfield Way car park, and Cromwell Road areas.
Source: Wikipedia