SANDHURST is situated on the River Blackwater in the south east of the Royal County of Berkshire, close to the boundaries of Hampshire and Surrey. It is a town of about 7,500 houses and 22,000 inhabitants.

One of the earliest records of Sandhurst is in the Sonning Hundreds of 1316 when it belonged to the Bishop of Salisbury. In 1354, there is a record of a manor, but no great house existed. Only the small sub manor houses stood - one in the grounds of what is now the Royal Military Academy and the other on the site of Sandhurst Lodge. Nothing remains of either building. Part of the area between College Town and Central Sandhurst was owned by Sir William Sandy, Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII from 1526 to 1540.

Sandhurst was a small farming community. As part of Windsor Forest and subject to forest laws, local people therefore had the right to cut turf, heather, bracken and wood that had been cultivated to feed the forest deer. There are records of disputes that were caused by locals taking wood other than that which was allowed.

Very little changed until the 1800's when large sections of land were sold for the building of the Royal Military College in 1812. The railway arrived in 1849. In 1856, Wellington College was built and Broadmoor Asylum in 1863. Large houses were built - Sandhurst Lodge in about 1858 by Robert Gibson, and leased to John Walter, founder of the Times Newspaper and also Sir William Farrer, solicitor to Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington.

Hart's Leap Road is thought, by some, to have been on the very edge of Windsor Forest and was the site of a Royal Hunting Lodge. King George III is said to have been the lodge's last Royal visitor. Centuries earlier, Prince Arthur, elder brother of Henry VIII, crossed the River Blackwater at Sandhurst whilst on his way to meet his future bride, Princess Catherine of Aragon, Castile & Leon at Dogmersfield Park in Hampshire.

The local population expanded with the arrival of the railways, College, Institutions and large houses. More houses were necessary for the workers, more schools for the children and more churches built.

Sandhurst now has nine public houses, the oldest being the Rose and Crown in the High Street - at one time a Simmonds house. The Simmonds family had land in the village and owned a brewery which supplied beer and ale to the RMA and, indeed, to much of the British Army around the world.

The place is now best-known as the home of the Royal Military Academy. It was established in the parish as the Royal Military College in 1813, when moved from Great Marlow. In 1946 it was merged with the RMA at Woolwich.