In the 1530s, Henry VIII constructed Oatlands Palace to the north of the town centre, which he intended to be the residence of his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves.

The town began to expand beyond its medieval footprint in the early 19th century, catalysed by the initial breakup of the Oatlands House estate, the enclosure of Weybridge Heath and the opening of the railway station in 1838.

The track hosted the first British Grand Prix in 1926 and was used by Malcolm Campbell to develop his final land speed record car, Campbell-Railton Blue Bird.

Throughout the 20th century, Brooklands was an important location for the aerospace industry and aircraft developed and tested there included the Sopwith Camel, the Wellington bomber and the Hurricane fighter.

[10] Ironstone, containing 33-48% iron(III) oxide, is also found on the Hill,[11] along with a capping of chert gravels, thought to have been deposited by a former course of the River Wey.

It is thought to have originated in northern Italy in the late Bronze or early Iron Age and similar vessels have been found in Austria, Belgium and Germany.

A chapel is mentioned in a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander III in 1176 and a later document shows that Chertsey Abbey had sold the advowson to Newark Priory by 1200.

By 1262, the Priory had obtained a license that confirmed its rights to appoint a priest, to hold church property and to collect tithes from the local residents.

[29] In June of the same year, Henry VIII began to construct Oatlands Palace by expanding an existing late-medieval manor house located to the north of the town centre.

[28] Reforms during the Tudor period reduced the importance of manorial courts and the day-to-day administration of towns such as Weybridge became the responsibility of the vestry of the parish church.

[45] The construction of the locks regulated the flow of the river and increased its depth, facilitating navigation and maintaining an adequate head of water to power mills.

The 100 ft wide (30 m) navigable channel bypasses a three-mile (5 km) meander and was primarily designed to increase the flood capacity of the river.

A year later he began the construction of the Tennis and Golf Clubs and published a series of promotions in the Surrey Herald to advertise the houses that he intended to build.

[87][88] Although no mill is mentioned in the Weybridge entries in the Domesday book, watermills appear to have played an important role in the economy of the area since at least the early modern period.

[95] At the start of the First World War, Weybridge became a training base for the 244 Motorised Transport Company, an army unit of mechanics and drivers operating as part of the 19th Divisional Supply Column.

Oatlands Park Hotel was requisitioned in 1916 as a hospital for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and was primarily used to treat "medical & tuberculosis cases and limbless men".

[97] Ethel Locke King, the chair of the Chertsey branch of the Red Cross, was instrumental in establishing 15 hospitals in the local area during the First World War.

[101] The local civil defence headquarters were established at the UDC offices in Aberdeen House and the council built a large air raid shelter at the Churchfields Recreation Ground.

[147] The site, to the north of Weybridge town centre, had previously been occupied by a school for girls, founded in 1898 by the nuns of Les Dames de St Maur.

[148] There is no mention of a church at Weybridge in the Domesday Book[26] and the first record of a place of worship is in 1175, in which a chapel in the town is listed as a dependent of Chertsey Abbey.

[186] Following the Dreyfus affair, the French novelist Émile Zola (1840–1902) was exiled to England from July 1898 to June 1899, during which time he lived at the Oatlands Park Hotel.

[192] In John Wyndham's novel The Kraken Wakes (1953), the main characters are stopped in their attempt to reach Cornwall on a dinghy through a flooded England in the "Staines-Weybridge area".

[214] The club moved to the premises of a former private zoo on Desborough Island in 1932 and, in 2003, changed its name to Weybridge Vandals RFC to reflect the location of its home ground.

[221] As aircraft manufacture at Brooklands began to decline in the 1970s, BAC closed the factory buildings on the west side of the runway and the area was redeveloped for light industry, offices and retail units.

As part of the work to construct the new attraction, the section of the motor racing circuit adjacent to the railway was restored and a new car park and entrance to the Brooklands Museum were provided.

[235][236] It commemorates the radical leader of the Diggers or True Levellers, a group of 17th-century religious dissidents, who set up an encampment on St George's Hill.

[237] Following the demolition of Oatlands Palace in the mid-17th century, the surrounding hunting park passed through a series of owners until it was inherited by Henry Clinton, 7th Earl of Lincoln in 1716.

It was built in the Italianate style using yellow London stock bricks,[242] but the original entrance gateway, designed in the mid-18th century by William Kent, was retained.

[247] Today, the 1.2 km long (0.75 mi) lake runs in a shallow arc from west to north east[246] and is fed by springs close to St George's Junior School.

The remainder of the park is naturalised dry-acid grassland, which provides a habitat for plants including hoary cinquefoil and yellow rattle, as well as butterfly species such as the small copper and common blue.