Dorking People
In addition to the well-known people who have lived in the surrounding countryside, for example EM Forster who lived in Abinger and Leslie Howard in Westcott, Dorking itself has had its share of celebrities. These have included residents such as actor Laurence Olivier, who was born in Dorking, and the builder Thomas Cubitt. Visitors to Dorking included Disraeli and the novelist George Gissing.
Undoubtedly one of Dorking's most colourful characters was Major Peter Labelliere, 1726-1800, devout eccentric and author, who rented rooms in South Street after serving in the Army. Unbalanced possibly by unrequited love, this harmless "Walking Dung-hill" would often give away his coat or shoes to a poor man. While meditating on Box Hill he fell and gouged out an eye. He chose to be buried there upside down, supposedly because "as the world was topsy-turvy, he would thus be right at last." A huge crowd attended his funeral and many returned on anniversaries of his burial to visit the grave, picnic and dance.
The composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1872-1958, spent most of his childhood in Leith Hill Place and, from 1929 to 1953, off the Westcott Road in Dorking. He collected many folk songs locally but was best known in the area as Conductor of the Leith Hill Musical Festival, from 1905 until 1953. His enthusiasm raised the standard of choral music throughout the area. He played his part in the community in other ways: during World War 2 he collected salvage, worked for refugees and arranged concerts in the White Horse Hotel. [A sculpture of him is outside Dorking Halls & a bronze relief in the foyer and in St Martin's Church]
The novelist Daniel Defoe, 1661-1731, probably attended a boarding-school in Pixham Lane kept by a Dissenter who was ejected from Fetcham for his Puritanical views. In his Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, Defoe refers to local places: a tunnel in the Deepdene gardens, a fish-trap beside the flooded Mole and the blowing-up of a cave on Box Hill where local gentry went to revel on Sundays. He later became speculator, spy, journalist and writer of fiction, including Robinson Crusoe.
More details of these and other inhabitants of the Dorking district may be found in Dorking People by Coffey Holland, available from Waterstones, Dorking or in the Dorking Public Library.
Coffey Holland
