Local Area Information and History

Surbiton is a bustling commuter town with terrific transport links, a regular farmers’ market and the Thames flowing through it.

With good schools, dozens of independent shops and a lively restaurant scene, there is no shortage of demand for housing, from sturdy Victorian properties to modern quality housing – for sale and to let.

The fast train service from Surbiton to Waterloo takes 17 minutes – an improvement on the 31 minutes it took the early puffers to travel to London from ‘Kingston by Railway’, as the station was known when the line opened in 1838.

The railway’s arrival proved the spur for the early boom in house-building, with Adelaide Road, Claremont Road, St Mark’s Hill and Cottage Grove among the first streets established.

Maple Road was properly established in 1857, with the fine trees which line its route planted in 1860.

At around the same time, Surbiton became a key location for the filtration of water for large areas of London, playing a part in the elimination of cholera in the capital.

Tolworth began developing in late Victorian times, but it wasn’t until the 1920s and 1930s that the biggest building boom arrived in Berrylands and Tolworth, prompted by another major transport project, the opening of the Kingston By-Pass in 1927.

Surbiton’s iconic art deco station frontage was created between 1936 and 1938, to cope with the growing number of commuters.

The 22-storey landmark Tolworth Tower, which dominates the skyline on the A3, was finished in 1964.

In 1975, the BBC began screening the sitcom which helped define the area in popular folklore – The Good Life.

Though actually filmed in Northwood, Middlesex, the show summed up the leafy suburbia which forms so much of Surbiton today.

Along with neighbouring Kingston, Chessington and New Malden, Surbiton forms part of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, one of the safest, most sought-after suburbs of the capital.