Claygate is an affluent suburban village in Surrey, England, southwest of central London. It is the only civil parish in the borough of Elmbridge. Surrounded by green belt, it lies inside the Greater London Built-up Area. Claygate was once in the main manor of Thames Ditton, but is now administered from Esher. It is primarily residential and has a small number of offices, outlying farms and two small shopping areas, the Old Village and the Parade, with hair and beauty shops, a supermarket, five pubs and a number of restaurants. Claygate lies on the Claygate Beds, a clay formation up to thick, which extends well beyond the village. These beds are the youngest part of the London Clay geological formation, forming a transition between the clay and the sandier Bagshot Beds above. History Etymology Claygate may have its name from the clay pits in the village that provided bricks for a large surrounding area including some of Hampton Court Palace. Claygate's lack of main thoroughfares has been attributed to angle of the River Thames leading the A307 main road (from London) south-west instead through Esher, as well as historical conditions where through roads became impassible in wet weather because of the clay; often close to the surface. Equally, mid-distance routes chose a line to avoid this land, before the advent of road surfacing, such as those through Tolworth and Esher. Manor Claygate appears in Domesday Book as a manor of Thames Ditton, Claigate. This main manor of the village was held by Westminster Abbey. Its domesday assets were: hide; 2 ploughs, of meadow, woodland worth 1 hog. It rendered £2 10s 0d per year to its overlords. The manor descended (after its purchase in 1565) from the Vincent family to the Evelyn family. Much land remained in the manor when it was sold between 1718 and 1721 to the Earl of Lovelace, the King family and currently Locke King family who had sold the vast majority of its land by 1970. Other medieval history Claygate was formed as an ecclesiastical parish from Thames Ditton in 1841. Scant remains were traced in boundary lines of an early medieval track running from Kingston Hill to the ford of the Mole near to a square entrenchment in Leatherhead almost in Stoke D'Abernon. 19th century In about 1822 the Claygate Pearmain apple was discovered by John Braddick, growing in a hedge here. In 1840