London Car Rental
Sutton
Car Rental - Sutton
The Car Hire Company offers quality delivery and collection
services in Sutton and the London home counties. We will deliver
your choice of car rental right to your doorstep and also
collect it when you are finished.
Sutton Local Information
Sutton is a very common place name, thought to mean ‘south
settlement’ in Saxon, and so there are many ‘Sutton’s
in Britain. Others think that Sutton means ‘south enclosure’
in Anglo-Saxon, from the word Sudtone. In Surrey, ‘enclosure’
meant farm, and in Sutton it may have referred to Oldfields
farm, and being as it was ‘south’ (it lay on the
south side of the ancient Roman road Stane Street, and on
the southern slope from Rose Hill to the Angel) the name stuck.
Stane Street is now known as the A24, or Stonecot Hill and
London Road in the Sutton area. Drive part of the A24 in your
car rental, and imagine what it would have been like so long
ago.
In this instance, though, Sutton refers to the principle
town in the London borough of Sutton. Sutton is one of a few
towns that lie on a bed of thanet sands, the bed stretching
from Croydon to Epsom. South of this belt of thanet sands
lay the chalk ridges of the North Downs, and north of the
thanet sand bed lies clay. The bed of thanet sands allows
wells of clean water to be accessed, whereas the clay only
provides dirty surface water. Because of this, people settled
along the thanet sand bed from very early on.
When the Saxons settled an area, they put in the centre of
the settlement the church, manor house and village, then surrounded
this with the cultivated fields, then the grazing land on
the outside. Because the beds of thanet sands were so narrow,
this set up was not possible. So in Sutton the Saxons stretched
out their settlements, and as a consequence Sutton is about
three miles long but only a mile wide. Ditch the car rental
and walk around the town, exploring the old town centre. If
you wish to catch public transport, Sutton is well serviced
and with three car parks you can park the car rental and jump
on any number of buses, taxis or trains.
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