Fetcham is first recorded as 'Fecham' in the late 10th century, the first element of the name referring to a Saxon personal name. In the Domesday Survey of 1086 it was divided into three different holdings belonging to King William, the Bishop of Bayeux and 'Oswald the Thane'. The king's property had no less than four mills, the bishop's manor had shares in two mills and Oswald also had income from a mill. The Bishop of Bayeux's manor was held from the bishop by Richard de Tonbridge. Presumably, all the mills were on the adjacent River Mole.

No church is mentioned in Domesday, but 11th century features surviving in the parish church of St Mary suggest that there must have been one. The church suffered very little 'restoration' in the Victorian period and, as a result, is predominately an unspoilt medieval church of the 12th to 14th centuries.

The manorial divisions of Fetcham resulted in a complicated history. Suffice to say that the D'Abernon family held land here in the 13th and 14th centuries and the Vincent family during the 16th and 17th centuries. The Vincents may have been responsible for building a house at Fetcham Park but the core of the present house was built by the architect, William Talman, for George Moore M.P. in 1705-10. It was extensively remodelled in about 1870.

There is no railway station at Fetcham but those at Leatherhead, opened 1859, and Bookham, opened 1885, must have had a marked effect on the growth of Fetcham from a small village to an attractive residential suburb.