Oxted is a town and civil parish in the Tandridge district of Surrey, England, at the foot of the North Downs. It is south south-east of Croydon in Greater London, west of Sevenoaks in Kent, and north of East Grinstead in West Sussex. Oxted is a commuter town with a railway station, with direct train services to London and has the district council offices. Its main developed area is contiguous with the village of Limpsfield. Six intermittent headwaters of the River Eden unite in the occasional market town including its furthest source, east of Titsey Place. The Eden feeds into Kent's longest river, the Medway. Only the southern slope of the North Downs is steep and its towns and farmland form the Vale of Holmesdale, a series of headwaters across Surrey and Kent to separate rivers. The settlements of Hurst Green and Holland within the civil parish to the south, including a public house named after Oxted, are continuous but almost wholly residential areas (contiguous neighbourhoods). Toponymy The first written mention of Oxted is from an Anglo-Saxon charter of 862 AD, in which it appears as Acustyde. In the Domesday Book of 1086, the settlement is recorded as Acstede. In later documents, it appears as Akested (12th century), Axsted, Axstude and Ocsted (13th century) and Oxsted (14th century). The name derives from the Old English āc meaning "oak" and stede meaning "place". Oxted is generally agreed to mean "place of oak trees". Hurst Green is first recorded in the mid-15th century as le Herst in a deed of Edward IV and as Herste grene in 1577. The name is thought to mean "open space by the wood (hurst)". "Holland" appears in 1757 as Hollands and is thought to mean "land by the hill". Geography Location and topography Oxted is in east Surrey, around south of central London. It is on the Greenwich Meridian, which passes through Oxted School, Station Road East and East Hill (the A25). The town straddles the London to East Grinstead railway line, which runs roughly north–south through the Parish. The civil parish extends from the North Downs in the north to the settlement of Holland in the south. It includes Old Oxted and Hurst Green, which are to the west and south of the town respectively. Although the urban area of Limpsfield is contiguous with that of Oxted, the village is part of a separate parish.