Jolly Farmer
The Jolly Farmer is a four-exit, partly traffic light-controlled roundabout on the A30 (London Road) on the boundary between Camberley and Bagshot in Surrey, United Kingdom. It derives its name from a gold-robbing farmer, William Davies or William Davis who spent years plundering various sections of the country's main south-west road including the area in question. To remember his notoriety, two centuries thereafter a coaching house was built, named the 'Golden Farmer'.
History
Malden wrote the Victoria County History in 1911, finding little of economic productivity or architecture in Bagshot to record other than its coaching inns, stating "Thirty coaches a day passed through, and there were many inns, since closed...The later history is full of the exploits of highwaymen, who found the wild country hereabouts specially favourable for their purposes".[1]
The late 17th century saw a highwayman, William Davies, who targeted heaths across England from Putney near London to Cornwall at the south-west extreme and took significant gold from his victims. He plied the uninhabited main road across Bagshot/Frimley Heath (Camberley not existing until the 20th century). His identity was discovered since he was a Sodbury, Gloucestershire farmer bearing 18 children with his wife who paid "any considerable sum in gold".[2] A picture of him was painted and hung in the Golden Farmer pub along the London Road. One day however it was remarked that the golden farmer looked jolly, so the pub changed its name to the Jolly Farmer.
Davies is by oral history attested to have received his sentence at the upper end of accordingly named Gibbet Lane, the following south-west linking residential road.
The roundabout used to be smaller and have at its western end the pub which became in the 2000s decade the Mongolian Barbecue. This in the 2010s ceased trading, and Burger King made a bid to buy the building. Following a safety campaign, Surrey Heath council rejected this offer.[3]
Within roundabout
The 19th century whitewashed building is the American Discount Golf Store forming one side of the approximately triangular roundabout, the others being low hedge and flower bed planting with a low wall and parking spaces.
References
- ↑ 'Parishes: Windlesham' A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 3, ed. H E Malden (London, 1911), pp. 376-378
- ↑ History of the Lives and Actions of the World's Most Famous Highwaymen, Cpt. Charles Johnson, Edinburgh, 1814, p. 28, at Google Books
- ↑ "Safe solution agreed to Jolly Farmer roundabout planning controversy". 20 March 2003. Retrieved 25 February 2012.