Egham Hythe

Egham Hythe, Pooley Green and Thorpe Lea are adjacent settlements in the Borough of Runnymede in Surrey, England, approximately 18 miles (29 km) west of central London. They are separated from the town of Egham by the M25 and from Staines upon Thames by the River Thames.

Egham Hythe has been bypassed by the A30 since the 1950s. It is home to Staines Boat Club and four pubs. It has a large riverside inn and hotel facing the inn, in a conservation area known as the Hythe, meaning port in Old and Middle English. One end of Staines Bridge, a 'local road' crossing of the river, connects Egham Hythe to Staines and the Thames Path crosses from one bank to the other.

In the centuries around the time of the Norman Conquest the tything of the Hythe, which belonged to Chertsey Abbey, supported only shepherd's tenements and lowly agriculture dwellings due to flooding quite often by the river Thames. The consistent use of the Hythe in ecclesiastical records, Assize Rolls and feet of fines denotes that Anglo-Saxon speakers ran an inland port here, as hythe means port in Old and Middle English. The other three Egham tythings were:

A water-mill known as Trumpes Mill on the stream marking with border of Thorpe in about 1500 was granted with the manor of Mylton or Middleton occupying most of the tything that was not common land to the college of Corpus Christi; tithes from it to the value of 21s. 4d (equivalent to £880 in 2023 based on rough 1323 annual rent calculations) remained due to the almoner of Chertsey Abbey until the Dissolution in 1537. The last long lessee of the manor, still somewhat intact, was Priscilla Edgell who married Richard Wyatt in 1766, their surnames giving rise to the current names of streets.

Thomas de Oxenford to protect many fields, even Chertsey from common winter deluge and summer flash flooding at his own expense constructed the great Egham Causeway, leading from the town of Egham to the bridge of Staines, in the time of Henry III to be used as a highway and as a dyke (embankment), which prevented the inundation of "all the surrounding country" by the River Thames as caused regularly following prolonged heavy rainfall. In 1350 a royal commission was appointed to find the persons responsible for the repair of the causeway, damaged by flood, but decided that none was so responsible. By 1385 the Sheriff of Surrey was irked by the causeway's condition and ordered by public proclamation:

...that all persons, ecclesiastical as well as secular, shall each, according to the extent of his holding, cause the same to be repaired with all haste.

Before the century was finished, Chertsey Abbey frequently undertook the repair out of charity and the Abbot found himself in his words of 1395, charged with its repair by "the malevolent instigation of adversaries" and he prayed for a better settlement. Using the large passing trade of Staines Bridge various ordinary people in the 15th century were bound to keep up the causeway including Thomas Stanes, John Edmed, William Mulso in return for being given the right to levy tolls (grants of pontage). The character of the partly Tudor street has been protected by the designation of a conservation area and the building in the 19th century of Staines Bridge directly upstream of it rather than being its main street as it was before that reconstruction.

One of the two significant commons of Egham here known as Hythefield, was stated to be in Stevenson's 1809 survey more highly rent-able than most such common of Surrey were it to be made private, was enclosed on 12 June 1817 – to this day two large publicly administered allotments provide fertile soil in the Pooley Green locality for tomato and vegetable growers who wish to hire these, subject to a waiting list.