The Railway Bell, and the Hampton area itself, boast a long and interesting history.
The manor of Hampton was awarded to Walter de St Valery after the Norman Conquest and was listed in the Domesday Book of 1086. It remained in his family until 1217 at which time it became the property of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem, the forerunners of today’s St John’s Ambulance. Purchased by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in 1514, the manor became the site of the spectacular Hampton Court Palace. In an attempt to avoid incurring the displeasure of Henry VIII, who had taken a shine to the place, the cardinal made a gift of the palace, and the manor, to the king and it remained in royal hands from then on.
Hampton features in two novels by Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby & Oliver Twist. In the latter, on the way to a burglary in Chertsey, Bill Sykes takes Oliver to a pub in Hampton where they “ordered some dinner by the kitchen fire …”
