Hindhead is a relatively recent settlement compared to its neighbours. The high ground at the top of the Devil's Punch Bowl was considered too exposed and remote for permanent habitation for most of recorded history. The old Portsmouth Road crossed the ridge here, and travellers feared the lonely stretch. The Sailor's Stone, near the old road, marks the spot where an unknown sailor was murdered in 1786 by three men who robbed him and left his body in the heather. The killers were caught, tried, and hanged on Gibbet Hill above the Punch Bowl. Their bodies were left on the gibbet as a warning, and the hill took its name from the episode.
The village grew in the Victorian era when doctors began recommending the high, dry air for patients with tuberculosis and other respiratory conditions. The elevation (over 800 feet above sea level) and sandy heathland were considered therapeutic, and several large houses and hotels were built along the ridge. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle built Undershaw on the edge of Hindhead in 1897, partly because the air was thought to help his first wife Louise, who suffered from tuberculosis. He lived there until 1907 and wrote "The Hound of the Baskervilles," "The Adventure of the Empty House" (in which he brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead), and several other works. The house later became a hotel and then a school, and after a long campaign by Doyle enthusiasts, it was restored and converted into a Stepping Stones school.
The biggest transformation came in 2011 when the A3 tunnel opened, diverting all through traffic underground and away from the Punch Bowl. The National Trust removed the old road surface, and the heathland has been reconnecting across the former carriageway. It was one of the largest landscape restoration projects in southern England, and the change is striking. Where traffic once thundered across the top of the Punch Bowl at all hours, there is now open heathland with birdsong and views.