Ashtead

Coordinates: 51°18′36″N 0°17′56″W / 51.310°N 0.299°W / 51.310; -0.299

Ashtead /ˈæʃstɛd/ is a village in the Metropolitan Green Belt of Surrey, England and has a railway station on secondary routes to Horsham and Guildford, formerly the Portsmouth Main Line. It is separated from Leatherhead by the M25, and from Epsom by Ashtead Common and Langley Vale. Its district council is Mole Valley. Ashtead is on western slopes of the Mole Gap of the North Downs and is on the A24 where it is a single carriageway as is generally the case within the M25 motorway. Ashtead has a large two-part conservation area including the mansion Ashtead House used by City of London Freemen's School, and six other schools. Amenities include parks, outlying woodland trails and a high street with convenience shopping, cafés and restaurants, a football club and a cricket club.

History

There has been settlement in Ashtead since at least Roman times, with a Roman villa excavated in what is now Ashtead common. Ashtead within a few hundred years of the foundations of Anglo-Saxon England lay within the Copthorne hundred.