“Why Woking?” is possibly the most frequently asked question by visitors to The Hockey Museum (THM) and by many people we chat to on the phone or in meetings.

The simple answer is that Woking is the home of THM’s founder, President and Honorary Curator Mike Smith. The original collection was stored in his company’s warehouse from the 1970s until Woking Borough Council, pleased to help a local charity, offered THM premises back in 2011. The rest, as they say, is recent history!

Woking’s Martian sculpture, which celebrates the town’s ties to author H G Wells. It is one of many pieces of civic art in and around Woking Town Centre. You can explore more of Woking’s public sculpture on the Art UK website: Woking sculpture (filtered) | artuk.org Photo credit: Neil Howard (Flickr).

Woking itself may not have any great ancient history having been created in the mid-19th century by the coming of the railway around 1840. Today, this makes Woking a very busy junction town. It may not have a Medieval town centre, but it does have significant history across the last two centuries: the Basingstoke Canal; Britain’s first mosque (Shah Jahan Mosque) and its first crematorium; Brookwood, Europe’s largest cemetery; Woking is the scene of the Martian landings in H G Well’s novel The War of the Worlds; it was the birthplace and home of the cricketing Besder twins; birthplace of ‘The Modfather’ Paul Weller (A Town Called Malice was inspired by Woking); and home of the McLaren Formula 1 team.

THM’s current home at 13 High Street affords us an excellent space to display, store and manage our ever-growing collection. Situated only 100 yards from Woking’s train and bus stations, we couldn’t be easier to visit. Woking enjoys some of the best travel connections being close to the M25, M3, M4 and A3, making it very accessible by car and by train – only 29 minutes from London Waterloo with over a dozen trains an hour, plus an hourly bus service to and from London Heathrow airport. The town’s ‘commutability’ was highlighted in the property section of The Daily Telegraph recently. Its survey of London’s commuter towns placed Woking as no.1 for “Best Quality of Life”. This, of course, includes The Hockey Museum as Woking’s only national sports museum!

Click the PDF icon to the right to view the article from The Daily Telegraph (the Woking parts are helpfully highlighted in yellow).