Camberley is a town in northwest Surrey, England, around 29 miles (47 kilometres) south-west of central London. It is in the Borough of Surrey Heath and is close to the county boundaries with Hampshire and Berkshire. Known originally as "Cambridge Town", it was assigned its current name by the General Post Office in 1877.
Until the start of the 19th century, the area was a sparsely populated area of infertile land known as Bagshot or Frimley Heath. Following the construction of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in 1812, a small settlement grew up to the south and became known as Yorktown (also spelled York Town). A second British Army institute, the Staff College, opened to the east in 1862, and the nucleus of Cambridge Town was laid out at around the same time. The two settlements grew together over the following decades and are now contiguous. Much of the town centre dates from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including The Atrium, a retail, entertainment and residential complex, opened in 2008.
Transport links through the area began to improve with the opening of the London-Basingstoke turnpike in 1728, now the A30 London Road. The Basingstoke Canal, which runs to the south of Camberley, was completed in 1794 and the wharf at Frimley was used to supply building materials for the Royal Military College. Blackwater station, on the Reading to Guildford line, opened to the west of Yorktown in 1849 and Camberley station, on the Ascot to Aldershot line, followed in 1878. In the second half of the 20th century, improvements to the road network in the area included the construction of the M3 motorway and the Blackwater Valley relief road.
The area has a strong links to the performing arts - Camberley Theatre was opened in 1966 and Elmhurst Ballet School was based in the town until 2004. Among the former residents are the Victorian composer, Arthur Sullivan, who attended Yorktown School as a child, the musician Rick Wakeman, who lived in Camberley during the 1980s, and the actress, Simone Ashley, who was born in the town in 1995. There are several works of public art in Camberley, including The Concrete Elephant, which was installed in 1964 on the London Road, having been commissioned for the Lord Mayor's Show of the previous year. Into Our First World, a sculpture by Ken Ford, is on display outside the borough council offices on Knoll Road.
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