The Museum Guide to Dorking
A brief illustrated history of Dorking, its notable residents and surroundings from prehistoric times to to the wars of the 20th century. The book is based on the permanent collection of Dorking Museum & Heritage Centre and features its stunning chalk fossil collection - including the rare Polyptychodon interruptus, the tail of an Iguanodon from local Wealden clay and Baryonyx (the ‘Dorking dinosuar’) - as well as the Wedgwood collection from Leith Hill Place, home of the Wedgwood family where Charles Darwin wrote parts of The Origin of Species. Other notable residents to make appearances include the novelists George Meredith, Fanny Burney, Benjamin Disraeli, Jane Austen and EM Forster, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, the master-builder Thomas Cubitt, the suffragette leaders Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence and the eccentric ‘Walking Dunghill’, Peter Labelliere, noted for being buried upside down on Box Hill.
Little known, and often surprising, aspects of the town’s history are explored, from the riots of the 1830s and the ‘Battle of Dorking’ in the 1870s, to the development of semi-synthetic penicllins in the 1950s.
by Kathy Atherton
88pp illustrated in full colour
A brief illustrated history of Dorking, its notable residents and surroundings from prehistoric times to to the wars of the 20th century. The book is based on the permanent collection of Dorking Museum & Heritage Centre and features its stunning chalk fossil collection - including the rare Polyptychodon interruptus, the tail of an Iguanodon from local Wealden clay and Baryonyx (the ‘Dorking dinosuar’) - as well as the Wedgwood collection from Leith Hill Place, home of the Wedgwood family where Charles Darwin wrote parts of The Origin of Species. Other notable residents to make appearances include the novelists George Meredith, Fanny Burney, Benjamin Disraeli, Jane Austen and EM Forster, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, the master-builder Thomas Cubitt, the suffragette leaders Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence and the eccentric ‘Walking Dunghill’, Peter Labelliere, noted for being buried upside down on Box Hill.
Little known, and often surprising, aspects of the town’s history are explored, from the riots of the 1830s and the ‘Battle of Dorking’ in the 1870s, to the development of semi-synthetic penicllins in the 1950s.
by Kathy Atherton
88pp illustrated in full colour
A brief illustrated history of Dorking, its notable residents and surroundings from prehistoric times to to the wars of the 20th century. The book is based on the permanent collection of Dorking Museum & Heritage Centre and features its stunning chalk fossil collection - including the rare Polyptychodon interruptus, the tail of an Iguanodon from local Wealden clay and Baryonyx (the ‘Dorking dinosuar’) - as well as the Wedgwood collection from Leith Hill Place, home of the Wedgwood family where Charles Darwin wrote parts of The Origin of Species. Other notable residents to make appearances include the novelists George Meredith, Fanny Burney, Benjamin Disraeli, Jane Austen and EM Forster, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, the master-builder Thomas Cubitt, the suffragette leaders Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence and the eccentric ‘Walking Dunghill’, Peter Labelliere, noted for being buried upside down on Box Hill.
Little known, and often surprising, aspects of the town’s history are explored, from the riots of the 1830s and the ‘Battle of Dorking’ in the 1870s, to the development of semi-synthetic penicllins in the 1950s.
by Kathy Atherton
88pp illustrated in full colour