Haslemere received its market charter in 1221, establishing it as a trading town serving the scattered farms and hamlets of the western Weald. The medieval town grew around the cloth trade, weaving wool from sheep grazed on the surrounding hills. Several timber framed buildings on the High Street survive from this period, their jettied upper floors leaning out over the pavement. The town was small enough that it was a "rotten borough" in the 18th century, returning two Members of Parliament for a handful of voters until the Reform Act of 1832.
Haslemere Museum was founded in 1888 by Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, a distinguished surgeon at the London Hospital who retired to the area. Hutchinson was a compulsive collector, and he filled the museum with an eclectic assembly of natural history specimens, geological samples, ethnographic artefacts, and curiosities from around the world. The collection remains largely as he arranged it, giving the museum a wonderfully Victorian character. The building also houses a gallery dedicated to local history and the arts.
Alfred Lord Tennyson built his house Aldworth on the slopes of Blackdown in 1868, seeking clean air and solitude away from admirers who pestered him on the Isle of Wight. He wrote much of his later poetry here, including parts of "Idylls of the King," and died at Aldworth in 1892 with a volume of Shakespeare in his hand. Arnold Dolmetsch, the instrument maker and early music pioneer, settled in Haslemere in 1917 after moving his workshop from France. He established the Haslemere Festival of Early Music in 1925, reviving forgotten works played on historically accurate instruments. The festival continues annually and is one of the oldest music festivals in Britain. The town sits precisely where Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire meet at a triple point, and this borderland character has always shaped its identity.
