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A crossroads hamlet situated south of Chessington World of Adventures in the southernmost part of the ‘tongue’
of the borough that protrudes into the Surrey woodland. Eleventh century Malden rambled across two manors, one of which has
since become Malden Rushett – a reference to the rushes that grew here. The manor was heavily wooded at the time of
Domesday Book and remained so for several hundred years. Sixty Acre Wood is a surviving part of the ancient woodland. Cultivation
in the seventeenth century made use of a technique known as devonshiring, or denshiring – paring off old turf, burning
it and spreading the ashes on the land. Malden Rushett, also known as Lower Chessington or ‘the Rushett’, remained
part of Malden parish until 1884 when it transferred to Chessington. Until then residents of the hamlet’s cottages had
to go to (Old) Malden to be married, although they could be buried in Chessington. Some years later a temporary corrugated
mission house known as an ‘iron church’ was erected with room for sixty cottagers, and ‘improving’
lectures were given here. In the 1930s the Southern Railway Company planned to extend the Chessington branch line to Leatherhead,
with ribbon development along the route and a sizeable town with its own station, probably built at Malden Rushett. The plan
was stymied by the outbreak of the Second World War and then by post-war designation of the area as green belt. A plan to
locate an airport at Byhurst Farm also came to nothing, but Rushett Farm has a small landing strip and a hangar for light
aircraft.
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