A village may never have developed if a lunatic asylum had not been built nearby, a historian has said.

The opening of the Banstead Asylum provided the “catalyst” for the emergence of the village as a new community in the late Victorian period, according to Roland Sparkes.

Mr Sparkes, who is originally from Belmont and has just published a book about the area, said the early connurbation could be considered a “village colony” to the institution.

He said: “Although most of the staff at Banstead Asylum lived on the asylum’s premises, there was still a demand for more housing nearby, and the first significant building activity in the Belmont area occurred in the late 19th century to meet this need.

“Most of the asylum employees who resided outside the grounds lived in Belmont.

“Banstead Asylum became Belmont’s principle industry: by 1890 nearly a third of Belmont’s working class men were directly employed at Banstead Asylum.”

Mr Sparkes said Banstead Asylum, which opened in March 1877 and overlooked Banstead Downs, originally had about 1,500 patients, but later took more than 2,400 patients.

He said an early visitor wrote: “Many of those patients are very violent, and can only be controlled by an exercise of great firmness and unceasing vigilance.

“In some cases destructive mania manifests itself in a disposition to tear their clothing to shreds; others are noisy and clamorous; and yet others are filthy and obscene in language and in person.”

In 1889, it transferred to the control of London County Council and became known as Banstead Mental Hospital around the 1920s.

Later known as Banstead Hospital, the site is now occupied by High Down Prison.

Mr Sparkes, a former Greenshaw High School student, said: “I think my interest in Belmont’s history really started in my teens.

“I found, however, that there was very little published about the history of the village.

“This prompted me to take the initiative and so, after I left university, I began researching the local history of the Belmont area.”

Belmont: A Century Ago, by Roland Sparkes, is published by Belmont Local History and costs £4.95. Copies can be bought at Eclipse Hairdressers on Station Road, Belmont, Waterstones in Sutton High Street, or via belmonthistory.org.uk.