History of Deepcut

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Deepcut is a 20th-century military village in Surrey Heath, Surrey, 3 miles (4.8 km) southeast of Camberley, its post town and only town in the borough — it was from 1866 until 1894 part of Frimley, before which it was part of Ash. Deepcut is connected by a mixed military land and residential road to Frimley Green and has substantial green buffers of heath including Pirbright and West End Commons, owned by the MOD.

Deepcut has since 1906 been home of the Princess Royal Barracks and its predecessors since 1906, which began as Blackdown Camp. Deepcut was part of the parish of Ash until 1866, when Frimley gained its own civil and ecclesiastical parishes. Due to non-agricultural soil and undulating landscape leading to little transport infrastructure few people lived here. The parish provided the traditional community structures of church, particularly vestry, and the increasingly redundant rights and functions of manors. Frimley and Ash manors were among the major landholdings whose owners could acquire the common land covering almost the entire area in 1801 and 1826.

In 1537 the abbey granted Ash with its other lands to Henry VIII. Edward VI of England, however, shortly after his accession granted it to Winchester College, which held the adjoining lands to the south, Ash Manor, in 1911.

Deepcut from 1894 was in the administrative area Frimley and Camberley Urban District until the establishment of Surrey Heath in 1974. Blackdown camp, which became the Deepcut barracks was established by the Royal Engineers in late 1903 to accommodate artillery and infantry, centred on Winchester House, renamed Blackdown House when it was bought from the Pain family of Frimley Green by the War Office for military use.