For 700 years the small isolated community in the Wey valley at Shottermill was a corner of industry. By the end of the nineteenth century there had existed six watermills which over the years had been used for operations as diverse as corn milling, fulling, iron working, and in particular sickle making, leather dressing, and paper and military braid making. On surrounding commons 'broom-makers' used the natural products of the heathland to manufacture besoms for sale as far afield as London, while yeoman farmers and their descendants used the better land for livestock and arable crops. This first volume on the history of Shottermill covers the period from the earliest days through the times of plague, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Civil War to the decline of the local iron industry in the 1700s. A second volume covers the history of Shottermill from the appearance of the Simmons family of paper makers in the 1700s to the early twentieth century when it became part of Haslemere.