The people of Wonersh have been employed in a variety of trades and professions. There have been weavers, writers, printers, stonemasons, tanners, shoemakers, judges, politicians, shopkeepers, gamekeepers, brickmakers and farmers. The writer and traveller Claudia Parsons became the first person to circumnavigate the world by car in 1938. In 1739 Judge Sir William Chappel passed sentence on the highwayman Dick Turpin. In Victorian Britain, Caroline Norton, a passionate campaigner for women’s rights, was instrumental in the passing of the Custody of Infants Act and Matrimonial Causes Act. During WW2 Constance Babbington Smith was awarded an MBE and the US Legion of Merit for her work in air photo intelligence. It all began in 1966 when, a year before he moved to Wonersh, the late Anthony Fanshawe started his research into the village. He interviewed residents and people who had moved away and he visited Public Record Offices. In all he spent twenty-four years collecting a vast amount of material. On Anthony’s death, John-Paul Marix-Evans of Great Tangley and Fraser Scott of Woodyers (respectively our first Chairman and Secretary) cleared his study and both left with their cars loaded with books, pictures, maps and documents. It’s this collection that formed the basis of the Wonersh History Society which was founded in 1992 and since then the archive has continued to grow.

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