Kersey, a woollen cloth, dyed blue, was produced at Godalming for much of the Middle Ages, but the industry declined in the early modern period.

Among the notable former residents of the civil parish were Jack Phillips, the senior wireless operator on the RMS Titanic, and the mountaineer George Mallory.

James Oglethorpe, the founder of the Colony of Georgia, was born in Godalming in 1696 and the town maintains a friendship with the U.S. state and the cities of Savannah and Augusta in particular.

[3][note 1] Thomas William Shore (1840–1905) suggested that Godhelm may be of Gothic origin[5] and Robert Eugen Zachrisson (1880–1937) proposed that it may have been an early name for the River Ock or another local stream.

[10][11] Godalming High Street runs roughly east to west, linking an ancient crossing point of the Wey to the road leading south over Holloway Hill.

[15][16] Godalming lies on the northwestern side of the Weald and primarily sits on the strata of the Lower Greensand Group, laid down in the early Cretaceous.

Although rare elsewhere in these strata, fossils of mollusc species occur in these beds in the Godalming area, including the bivalves Ostrea macroptera and Exogyra sinuata, and the brachiopods Rhynchonella parvirostris and Waldheimia tamarindus.

[14][17] Frith Hill and Charterhouse are on the iron-rich Bargate Beds, a part of the more widespread lower Sandgate Formation that is only found in the Godalming area.

This layer contains Bargate stone, a dark honey-coloured calcerous sandstone that was quarried until the Second World War at several sites in the civil parish.

[24] The higher ground above the River Wey floodplain at Charterhouse was occupied during the middle Iron Age[29] and human habitation is thought to have continued into the early Roman period.

[36] The earliest documentary evidence for Godalming, is from the will of Alfred the Great in 880, in which the settlement and surrounding land is left to his nephew, Æthelwold ætheling.

[37][38] By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, the town was the administrative centre of the Godalming Hundred, which stretched from Puttenham in the northwest to Chiddingfold in the southeast.

[49] The following year, the Guildford Poor Law Union was formed, with responsibility for a total area of 12 sq mi (31 km2) stretching from Godalming to Woking.

[67][note 7] The Godalming area was an important centre for papermaking and, in the early 17th century, several mills in the town produced coarse sheets of "whited brown paper".

[12][note 9] The road through Godalming between Kingston upon Thames and Petersfield was turnpiked in 1749[73] and the present Town Bridge was constructed in 1782 by the County Surveyor, George Gwilt.

[81] The busiest period for the navigation was during the 1810s, when timber, flour, and goods made of iron were shipped from Godalming, but after the arrival of the railway in 1849, it went into sharp decline.

[103] Allotments were planted at the Holloway Hill Recreation Ground[104] and villagers in Busbridge were employed to manufacture baskets for 18 lb high-explosive shells.

[110] The manufacturer, RFD, set up a factory in Catteshall Lane to produce barrage balloons, inflatable boats and life jackets and, by the end of the war, was employing over 1000 local people.

[126][127] The town retains strong friendship links with the state of Georgia, USA, and with the cities of Savannah and Augusta in particular, through the organisation, the Friends of Oglethorpe.

[144] From the early part of the 17th century, the borough appears to have employed a "bedle" or "bellman" to apprehend troublemakers and, in 1747, there is a reference to a "cage prison" in Godalming.

[161] Changing Perceptions, in Godalming High Street, is The Meath's social enterprise and offers patients opportunities to work in the furniture workshop and in the café.

[195] The main school buildings were designed by the architect, Philip Charles Hardwick,[196] and the chapel, by Giles Gilbert Scott, was erected in 1927 as a memorial to former pupils who had died in the First World War.

[221] Godalming Museum owns paintings by James Peel[222] and Gertrude Jekyll[223][224] as well as a sculpture of the artist, George Frederic Watts, by Louis Reid Deuchars.

[234][235] Ian Fleming's James Bond short story, Quantum of Solace, referred to Godalming as a venue for retired colonial civil servants with memories of postings to places "that no one at the local golf club would have heard about or would care about.

[290][291][292][note 18] The museum houses numerous artefacts relating to the history of the local area and the Arts and Crafts movement in southwest Surrey.

[295] Phillips was honoured by his home town through the construction of a memorial cloister, designed by Hugh Thackeray Turner and a garden by Gertrude Jekyll.

Wyatt stipulated that accommodation should be offered to ten poor men of the parishes of Godalming, Puttenham, Hambledon, Compton and Dunsfold.

In November of that year, an area of 1.8 ha (4.4 acres), including the cricket ground, were bought by P. C. Fletcher, the Mayor of Godalming, and presented to the town.

From medieval times until the early 19th century, the area was managed as a hay meadow and, once the grass had been cut around Lammas Day (1 August), local residents were permitted to graze their cattle until Candlemas (1 February) the following year.

A 1994 survey noted the presence of over 108 species of flowering plants, including black knapweed, meadow saxifrage, marsh marigold and water mint.