For over a hundred years the Surrey Yeomanry was embedded in the lives and concerns of the wealthy gentry of Dorking and its surrounding estates. It began as a volunteer unit formed in 1794, during the war against Revolutionary France. Prime Minister William Pitt proposed that each English county should form a volunteer cavalry unit to defend against invasion by the French. But it was also envisaged that these local forces would put down outbreaks of unrest in their own communities.
The Surrey volunteers were commanded by Baron Leslie of Shrub Hill, a large house on the eastern approach to Dorking. Some men were recruited from the local area but the regiment was headquartered in Clapham and most of the volunteers were from villages to the south of the Thames, as Lambeth, Southwark, Clapham, Wimbledon and Battersea were then part of Surrey. The regiment’s drill manual was printed in Dorking and in 1803 its regulations were agreed at the White Horse.
The volunteers were stood down when the threat of invasion came to an end with the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 but were called on to control the crowd at Westminster during protests when the unpopular George IV excluded his wife, Queen Caroline, from his coronation in 1820.
Despite growing rural poverty and agricultural unrest in the 1820s the regiment was disbanded in 1828. Two years later local farms and businesses were threatened by a mob of starving labourers. The town magistrates called for cavalrymen to be mustered and 114 special constables were sworn in to protect property. The ensuing riot was put down by the cavalry. The Yeomanry was re-established the following year. In 1832 the Earl of Lovelace, of East Horsley Park, became its Lieutenant Colonel. The Dorking and Reigate troop was one of six which formed the regiment, which was disbanded once more in 1848.
