
Farnham is a market town in Surrey, England, located 35 miles southwest of London, 11 miles west of Guildford, and 28 miles east of Winchester. It was first inhabited by the Brythonic Atrebates tribe of Commius, and it became a pottery center of Roman Britain. The Anglo-Saxons arrived in the 6th century AD, naming the area Fearnhamme (fern and water meadows). By 688, when King Caedwalla of Wessex donated the land around Farnham to the Roman Catholic Church, a Saxon community grew up in the valley. In 892, it was the site of the Battle of Farnham, after which the defeated Danes were forced to flee across the River Thames and into Essex. In 1138, Henry de Blois built Farnham Castle at Farnham, as it was located midway between London and Winchester, and the garrison provided a market for farms and local businesses. Farnham was chartered in 1249. The Black Death killed a third of Farnham's population in 1348, and the return of the plague and King Charles I of England's heavy taxes led to the town's decline in the 1640s. Farnham played a major role in the English Civil War as a battleground between the Parliamentarians and Royalists. It later became a successful market town with the greatest corn-market after London, and the railway arrived in 1848. In 2011, Farnham had a population of 39,488 people, and its eponymous constituency in Parliament was held by the Conservative Party from its creation in 1918 to its abolition in 1983; as part of South West Surrey from 1983, it continued to be a Conservative Party stronghold without interruption.