[5] The "hasle" element of the name may refer to the common hazel tree[4] or to the Heysulle family from Chiddingfold, who are known to have owned land in the area until the 14th century.

The "gray" element may derive from the Old French personal name "Gerard" and there may be an association with Gerardswoded, recorded in the 14th and 15th centuries near Witley, also in south west Surrey.

[8][note 2] The area is served by two principal transport routes, the London to Portsmouth railway line and the A3 trunk road, both of which run via Guildford.

[17] The oldest outcrops in the civil parish are of Weald Clay, which comes to the surface to the east of Grayswood, where the young tributaries of the River Arun have eroded the overlying strata.

The majority of Haslemere and Shottermill lie on the Hythe Beds of the Lower Greensand[19][20] and the spring line, where the tributaries of the Wey and Arun rise, is on the junction between this permeable layer and the impermeable Atherfield Clay below.

[19] The gravel found in the river valleys is thought to have been deposited during the penultimate ice age and is composed of rock fragments of local origin.

There may have been a settlement in the area in the mid-late Bronze Age[23] and a Romano-British cemetery was discovered on the site of Beech Road, to the north of the town centre, at the start of the 20th century.

The south western corner of Surrey is thought to have been sparsely populated in the 11th century, but it is possible that some of the mills listed under the entry for Farnham, were located on the Wey in the Shottermill area.

[3] The chapel belonged to the Parish of Chiddingfold, part of the manor of Godalming and is thought to have been either on or close to the site of the current St Bartholomew's Church.

[29] The first use of the modern name Haslemere is from 1221, when permission for a market was given to Richard Poore, Bishop of Salisbury, indicating that the settlement was sufficiently large to be considered a town.

[31] The first indication of a settlement at Shottermill is from 1285, when reference is made to a Manor of Pitfold, covering the extreme southern portion of Farnham Hundred.

[37] In 1839, many administrative responsibilities were transferred to the Hambledon Rural District Council and in 1863, the civil parish of Haslemere was created, although local elections did not take place until the following year.

He and his favoured co-candidate, Philip Carteret Webb, purchased 34 freeholds and tenements, and installed their own representative as Bailiff to oversee the election.

A mill at Pophole (located at the modern-day tripoint between Surrey, West Sussex and Hampshire) harnessed water power to drive bellows for smelting and had a hammer for making iron bars.

[75] In 1835, the Appleton family installed machinery for spinning and weaving at Pitfold Mill and began to make worsted lace and epaulettes for military uniforms.

[75][76] The Peasant Arts Society was founded in Haslemere in the 1890s, when the weaver Maude King and her sister, the tapestry maker Ethel Blount, moved to the area.

[77] Ethel Blount and her husband Godfrey set up the Tapestry House in Foundry Meadow for the manufacture of appliqué needlework and embroidered items in 1896.

[107] In 1953, the UDC bought 38 acres (15 ha) of land to the north of St Bartholomew's Church for the Chatsworth Avenue and Weycombe Road estates.

[108] Although many large, detached houses on Bunch and Farnham Lanes, to the north of Shottermill, had been built in the Edwardian period, infilling took place in this area in the second half of the 20th century.

Since the town was on the route from London to Portsmouth, several army units were billeted nearby while awaiting onward transportation to France.

The following month, the research division of the Admiralty Signals and Radar Establishment, part of HMS Mercury, was relocated from Portsmouth to Lythe Hill, a country house to the south east of the town.

In 1942, a British Restaurant, a communal kitchen for those who had been bombed out of their homes, opened in Wey Hill, although Haslemere sustained only very limited damage from air raids.

[140] On the night of 29 July of that year, a group of workmen was drinking in the Kings Arms pub, when Police Inspector William Donaldson and a junior colleague arrived to enforce the midnight closing time.

Thomas Wood, who is thought to have dealt the fatal blow, was transported to Fremantle, Western Australia after serving a one-year prison sentence in London.

Design work for the conversion to an education centre was undertaken by the architects Ted Cullinan and James Stirling and involved the addition of a new classroom wing built from glass-reinforced plastic.

[200] The Catholic congregation in Haslemere traces its origins to 1908, when Franciscans from Chilworth Friary began to hold regular Masses at Oaklands Hotel.

[232] The centre has an indoor dance studio and fitness suite, outdoor pitches for sports including football and rugby, as well as an athletics track.

The club plays its home games at Woolmer Hill Sports Ground and has been a member of the Surrey County Intermediate League (Western) since 2006.

[29] In the early 18th century, an optical telegraph station, part of the Admiralty Semaphore line between London and Portsmouth was constructed on Haste Hill.

[268] Swan Barn Farm, owned by the National Trust, is an area of grassland and ancient woodland to the east of Haslemere High Street.