Surrey

Surrey
Motto of County Council: Making Surrey a better place
Geography
Status	Ceremonial & Non-metropolitan county
Origin	Historic
Region	South East England
Area - Total - Admin. council	Ranked 35th 1,663 km2 (642 sq mi) Ranked 25th
Admin HQ	Kingston (extraterritorially)
ISO 3166-2	GB-SRY
ONS code	43
NUTS 3	UKJ23
Demography
Population - Total (2008 est.) - Density - Admin. council	Ranked 12th 1,109,700 667 /km2 (1,730 /sq mi) Ranked 5th
Ethnicity	95.0% White 2.2% S. Asian
Politics
http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/
Executive	Conservative
Members of Parliament	Sam Gyimah (C) Paul Beresford (C) Crispin Blunt (C) Jeremy Hunt (C) Anne Milton (C) Chris Grayling (C) Philip Hammond (C) Michael Gove (C) Jonathan Lord (C) Dominic Raab (C) Kwasi Kwarteng (C)
Districts
Spelthorne Runnymede Surrey Heath Woking Elmbridge Guildford Waverley Mole Valley Epsom and Ewell Reigate and Banstead Tandridge

Surrey /ˈsʌri/ is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford.^[1] Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of Greater London since 1965.

Surrey is divided into 11 boroughs and districts: Elmbridge, Epsom and Ewell, Guildford, Mole Valley, Reigate and Banstead, Runnymede, Spelthorne, Surrey Heath, Tandridge, Waverley, Woking. After the elections of 1 May 2008, the Conservatives are in control of 10 out of 11 councils in Surrey, with Epsom and Ewell in Residents Association control. The Conservatives hold all 11 Parliamentary constituencies within the county borders.

Settlements

The tower on the top of Leith Hill the highest point in Surrey

See also list of places in Surrey.

Surrey has a population of approximately 1.1 million people.^[2] The historic county town is Guildford, although the county administration was moved to Newington in 1791 and to Kingston upon Thames in 1893. The county council's headquarters have been outside the county's boundaries since 1 April 1965 when Kingston and other areas were included within Greater London by the London Government Act 1963.^[3] Recent plans to move the offices to a new site in Woking have now been abandoned.^[4] Due to its proximity to London there are many commuter towns and villages in Surrey, the population density is high and the area is more affluent than other parts of the UK. Surrey is the most densely populated county after Greater London, the metropolitan counties and Bristol. Much of the north east of the county is an urban area contiguous to Greater London. In the west, there is a conurbation straddling the Hampshire/Surrey border, including in Surrey Camberley and Farnham.

Although now fallen into disuse, some English counties had nicknames for people from that county, such as a Tyke from Yorkshire and a Yellowbelly from Lincolnshire; the traditional nickname for people from Surrey is 'Surrey Capon', as it was well known in the later Middle Ages as the county where chickens were fattened up for the London meat markets.

Physical geography

Box Hill

Surrey is divided in two by the chalk ridge of the North Downs, running east-west. The ridge is pierced by Surrey's principal rivers, the Wey and the Mole, which are tributaries of the Thames, the river which constituted the northern border of the county before modern local government reorganisations. To the north of the Downs the land is mostly flat, forming part of the basin of the Thames. The geology of this area is dominated by London Clay in the east, Bagshot Sands in the west and alluvial deposits along the rivers. To the south of the Downs in the western part of the county are the sandstone Surrey Hills, while further east is the plain of the Low Weald, rising in the extreme south-east to the hills of the High Weald. The Downs and the area to the south form part of a concentric pattern of geological deposits which also extends across southern Kent and most of Sussex, predominantly composed of Wealden Clay, Lower Greensand and the chalk of the Downs.

Much of Surrey is in the Green Belt. It contains a good deal of mature woodland (reflected in the official logo of Surrey County Council, a pair of interlocking oak leaves). Among its many notable beauty spots are Box Hill, Leith Hill, Frensham Ponds, Newlands Corner and Puttenham & Crooksbury Commons. Surrey is the most wooded county in England, with 22.4% coverage compared to a national average of 11.8%^[5] and as such is one of the few counties not to include new woodlands in their strategic plans. Box Hill has the oldest untouched area of natural woodland in the UK, one of the oldest in Europe. Surrey also contains England's principal concentration of lowland heath, on sandy soils in the west of the county.

Agriculture not being intensive, there are many commons and access lands, together with an extensive network of footpaths and bridleways including the North Downs Way, a scenic long-distance path. Accordingly, Surrey provides much in the way of rural leisure activities, with a very large horse population.

The highest elevation in Surrey is Leith Hill near Dorking. It is either 293,^[6] 294 ^[7] or 295 ^[8] metres (961, 965 or 968 ft) above sea level and is the second highest point in southeastern England after Walbury Hill 297 metres (974 ft) in West Berkshire.

History

British and Roman Surrey

The Roman Stane or Stone Street runs through Surrey

Before Roman times the area today known as Surrey was very probably occupied by the Atrebates tribe centred at Calleva Atrebatum in the modern county of Hampshire. They are known to have controlled the southern bank of the Thames from Roman texts describing the tribal relations between them and the powerful Catuvellauni on the north bank. In about 42AD King Cunobelinus or Cynfelin ap Tegfan of the Catuvellauni died and war broke out between his sons and King Verica of the Atrebates. The Atrebates were defeated in the conflict, their capital captured and their lands made subject to the Catuvellauni now led by Togodumnus ruling from Camulodunum. Verica fled to Gaul and appealed for Roman aid. The Atrebates were allies with Rome during their invasion of Britain in 43AD. The area of Surrey was traversed by Stane Street and other less well known Roman roads. There were Roman temples on Farley Heath and near Wanborough.

The Saxon tribes and the sub-kingdom

During the fifth and sixth centuries Surrey was conquered and settled by Saxons. The names of a number of Saxon tribes who may have inhabited different parts of Surrey in this period have been conjectured on the basis of place names. These include the Æschingas, Godhelmingas (around Godalming), Tetingas (around Tooting) and Woccingas (between Woking and Wokingham in Berkshire). It has also been speculated that the Nox gaga and the Oht gaga tribes listed in the Mercian Tribal Hidage refer to two distinct groups living in Surrey. They were valued together at 7,000 hides. Surrey may have formed part of a larger Middle Saxon kingdom or confederacy also including areas north of the Thames. The name Surrey is derived from Suthrige, meaning "southern region", and this may originate in its status as the southern half of the Middle Saxon territory.

If it ever existed, the Middle Saxon kingdom had disappeared by the seventh century, and Surrey became a frontier area disputed between the kingdoms of Kent, Essex, Sussex, Wessex and Mercia, until its permanent absorption by Wessex in 825. Despite this fluctuating situation it retained its identity as a coherent territorial unit. During the seventh century Surrey became Christian and initially formed part of the East Saxon diocese of London, indicating that it was under East Saxon rule at that time, but was later transferred to the West Saxon diocese of Winchester. Its most important religious institution throughout the Anglo-Saxon period and beyond was Chertsey Abbey, founded in 666. At this point Surrey was evidently under Kentish domination, as the abbey was founded under the patronage of King Ecgberht of Kent, but a few years later at least part of it was subject to Mercia. In 673-5 further lands were given to Chertsey Abbey by Frithuwald, a local sub-king (subregulus) ruling under the sovereignty of King Wulfhere of Mercia. A decade later Surrey passed into the hands of King Caedwalla of Wessex, who also conquered Kent and Sussex and founded a monastery at Farnham in 686, and it remained under the control of Caedwalla's successor Ine in the early eighth century. Its political history for most of the eighth century is unclear, although it may have been under South Saxon control around 722, but by 784-5 it had passed into the hands of Offa of Mercia. Mercian rule continued until 825, when following his victory over the Mercians at the Battle of Ashdown, King Egbert of Wessex seized control of Surrey, along with Sussex, Kent and Essex. It was incorporated into Wessex as a shire and continued thereafter under the rule of the West Saxon kings, who eventually became kings of all England.

Identified sub-kings of Surrey

• Frithuwold (c.673 - 675)
• Frithuric? (675 - c.686)

The West Saxon and English shire

In the ninth century England was afflicted, along with the rest of north-western Europe, by the attacks of Scandinavian Vikings. Surrey's inland position shielded it from coastal raiding, so that it was not normally troubled except by the largest and most ambitious Scandinavian armies. In 851 an exceptionally large invasion force of Danes arrived in the mouth of the Thames on a fleet of about 350 ships, which would have carried over 15,000 men. Having sacked Canterbury and London and defeated King Beorhtwulf of Mercia in battle, the Danes crossed the Thames into Surrey, but were slaughtered by a West Saxon army led by King Aethelwulf of Wessex in the Battle of Aclea, bringing the invasion to an end. In 892 Surrey was the scene of another important battle when a large Danish army, variously reported at 200, 250 and 350 ship-loads, moved west from its encampment in Kent. It was intercepted and defeated at Farnham by an army led by Alfred the Great's son Edward, the future King Edward the Elder, and fled across the Thames towards Essex.

Its location and the growing power of the West Saxon, later English, kingdom kept Surrey safe from attack for over a century thereafter. Kingston was the scene for the coronation of Aethelstan in 924 and Aethelred the Unready in 978, and, according to later tradition, of other tenth century Kings of England as well. The renewed Danish attacks during the disastrous reign of Aethelred led to the devastation of Surrey by the army of Thorkell the Tall, which ravaged all of south-eastern England in 1009-11. The climax of this wave of attacks came in 1016, which saw prolonged fighting between the forces of King Edmund Ironside and the Danish king Cnut, including an English victory over the Danes somewhere in northern Surrey, but ended with the Danish conquest of England and the establishment of Cnut as king.

Hundreds of Surrey

Cnut's death in 1035 was followed by a period of political uncertainty as the succession was disputed between his sons. In 1036 Alfred, son of Aethelred the Unready, returned from Normandy, where he had been taken for safety as a child at the time of Cnut's conquest of England. It is uncertain what his intentions were, but after landing with a small retinue in Sussex he was met by Godwin, Earl of Wessex, who escorted him in apparently friendly fashion to Guildford. Having taken lodgings there, Alfred's men were attacked as they slept and massacred by Godwin's followers, while the prince himself was blinded and imprisoned, dying shortly afterwards.

This butchery must have contributed to the antipathy between Godwin and Alfred's brother Edward the Confessor, who came to the throne in 1042. This hostility was of critical importance in bringing about the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Domesday Book records that the largest landowners in Surrey at the end of Edward's reign were Chertsey Abbey and Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex and later king, followed by the estates of King Edward himself.

The Anglo-Saxon period saw the emergence of the shire's internal division into 14 hundreds, which continued until Victorian times. These were the hundreds of Blackheath, Brixton, Copthorne, Effingham Half-Hundred, Elmbridge, Farnham, Godalming, Godley, Kingston, Reigate, Tandridge, Wallington, Woking and Wotton.

Identified ealdormen of Surrey

• Wulfheard (c.823)
• Huda (c.853)
• Æðelweard (late 10th century)
• Æðelmær (? - 1016)

Later Medieval Surrey

Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was sealed

After the Battle of Hastings, the Norman army advanced through Kent into Surrey, where they defeated an English force which attacked them at Southwark, before proceeding westwards on a circuitous march to reach London from the north-west. As was the case across England, the native ruling class of Surrey was virtually eliminated by Norman seizure of land, with only one significant English landowner remaining by the time the Domesday survey was conducted in 1086. At that time the largest landholding in Surrey, as in many other parts of the country, was the expanded royal estate, while the next largest holding belonged to Richard fitz Gilbert, founder of the de Clare family.

In 1088, King William II granted William de Warenne the title of Earl of Surrey as a reward for Warenne's loyalty during the rebellion that followed the death of William I. When the male line of the Warennes became extinct in the fourteenth century the earldom was inherited by the Fitzalan Earls of Arundel. The Fitzalan line of Earls of Surrey became extinct in 1415 but the title was revived in the late fifteenth century for the Howard family who still hold it. However, Surrey was not the principal focus of any of these families' interests.

Guildford Castle, one of many fortresses originally established by the Normans as part of the process of subjugating the country, was developed as a royal palace in the twelfth century. Farnham Castle was built during the twelfth century as a residence for the Bishop of Winchester, while other stone castles were built in the same period at Bletchingley by the de Clares and at Reigate by the Warennes. During King John's struggle with the barons, Magna Carta was issued in June 1215 at Runnymede. In the following year Surrey was overrun by forces supporting Prince Louis of France, who passed through on their way from London to Winchester and back and occupied Guildford and Reigate castles. Guildford Castle later became one of the favourite residences of King Henry III, who considerably expanded the palace there. In 1264, during the baronial revolt against Henry III, the rebel army of Simon de Montfort passed southwards through Surrey on their way to the Battle of Lewes in Sussex. Although the rebels were victorious, soon after the battle royal forces captured and destroyed Bletchingley Castle, whose owner Gilbert de Clare was one of de Montfort's leading supporters. By the fourteenth century castles were of dwindling military importance, but continued to be a mark of social prestige, leading to the construction of castles at Betchworth by Lord Cobham and at Starborough near Lingfield by John Fitzalan, whose father had recently inherited the Earldom of Surrey.

Guildford Castle

Surrey had little political or economic importance in the Middle Ages. Its agricultural wealth was limited by its generally poor soils, while urban development, excepting the London suburb of Southwark, was sapped by the overshadowing predominance of London and the major towns in neighbouring shires, many of which benefited from access to the sea or from political or ecclesiastical eminence. It was also not the main power-base of any major aristocratic family or the seat of a bishopric. It did however achieve a significant degree of prosperity in the later Middle Ages through its role in the production of woollen cloth, England's main export industry, which in Surrey was centred on Guildford.

One benefit of obscurity was that Surrey largely avoided being seriously fought over in the various rebellions and civil wars of the period, although armies from Kent heading for London passed through what was then north-eastern Surrey in 1381, 1450 and 1460, and later in 1554. During the Cornish Rebellion of 1497, 15,000 Cornish rebels heading for London entered Surrey in June. They briefly occupied Guildford and fought a skirmish with a government detachment on Guildown outside the town before marching on to Blackheath in Kent where they were crushed by a royal army.

In 1082 a Cluniac abbey was founded at Bermondsey by Alwine, a wealthy English citizen of London. The twelfth century saw the foundation of Waverley Abbey, the first Cistercian monastery in England, and of Augustinian priories at Merton, Newark, Tandridge and Southwark, joined in the early thirteenth century by another Augustinian house at Reigate. A Dominican friary was established at Guildford by Henry III's widow Eleanor of Provence, in memory of her grandson who had died at Guildford in 1274. In the fifteenth century a Carthusian priory was founded by King Henry V at Sheen and a Franciscan friary nearby at Richmond in 1499. These all perished, along with the still important Benedictine abbey of Chertsey, in the sixteenth century Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Early Modern Surrey

Surrey's cloth industry declined in the sixteenth century, and had effectively collapsed by the early seventeenth. However, this period also saw the emergence of important new industries, centred on the valley of the Tillingbourne. The manufacture of copper and brass goods in this area in the sixteenth century proved short-lived, but in the seventeenth more durable industries were established, producing paper and gunpowder. For a time in the mid-seventeenth century the Surrey mills were the main producers of gunpowder in England, and this industry would survive until the end of the First World War. The Wey Navigation, begun in 1635, was one of England's first canal systems.

Bankside in Southwark, then part of Surrey, was the principal entertainment district of early modern London, owing to its convenient location outside the jurisdiction of the government of the City of London, since the social control exercised over this London suburb by the local authorities of Surrey was less effectively restrictive. As a result this was where the city's theatres were located and was the setting for the golden age of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, with the work of playwrights including William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and John Webster being performed in playhouses along the south bank of the Thames.

The gate of Abbot's Hospital

George Abbot, a Guildford clothworker's son, served as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1611-33. In 1619 he founded Abbot's Hospital, an almshouse in Guildford, which is still operating. He also made unsuccessful efforts to revitalise the ailing local cloth industry. One of his brothers, Robert, became Bishop of Salisbury and another, Maurice, was a founding shareholder of the East India Company who became the company's governor and later Lord Mayor of London.

Surrey almost entirely escaped the direct impact of fighting during the main phase of the English Civil War. The local Parliamentarian gentry led by Sir Richard Onslow were able to secure the county without difficulty on the outbreak of war. Farnham Castle was briefly occupied by the advancing Royalists in late 1642, but was easily stormed by the Parliamentarians under Sir William Waller. A new Royalist offensive in late 1643 saw skirmishing around Farnham between Waller's forces and Ralph Hopton's Royalists, but these brief incursions into the western fringes of Surrey marked the limits of Royalist advances on the county. During the brief Second Civil War in 1648 the Earl of Holland entered Surrey in July hoping to raise a Royalist revolt but found little support. After confused manoeuvres between Reigate and Dorking as Parliamentary troops closed in, his force of 500 men fled northwards and was overtaken and routed at Kingston.

Surrey had a prominent role in the development of the radical political movements unleashed by the civil war. In October 1647 the first manifesto of what became known as the Leveller movement, The Case of the Army Truly Stated, was drafted at Guildford by the elected representatives of New Model Army regiments and civilian radicals from London. This document combined the presentation of specific grievances with wider demands for constitutional change on the basis of popular sovereignty. It formed the basis for the more systematic and radical Agreement of the People drafted by the same men later that month and led to the Putney Debates between the radicals and the army leadership. In 1649 the Diggers led by Gerrard Winstanley established a communal settlement at St. George's Hill to implement their egalitarian ideals of common ownership, but were eventually driven out by the local landowners through violence and litigation. A smaller Digger commune was then established near Cobham, but suffered the same fate in 1650.

Historic architecture and monuments

Few traces of the ancient British and Roman periods survive in Surrey. There are remains of Iron Age hillforts at Holmbury Hill, Hascombe Hill, Anstiebury (near Capel), Dry Hill (near Lingfield), St. Ann's Hill, Chertsey and St George's Hill, Weybridge. Most of these sites were created in the 1st century BC and many were re-occupied during the middle of the 1st century AD.^[9] There are a number of round barrows and bell barrows in various locations. Only fragments of Stane Street and Ermine Street, the Roman roads which crossed the county, remain.

Anglo-Saxon elements survive in a number of Surrey churches, notably at Guildford (St. Mary's), Godalming (St. Peter & St. Paul), Stoke D'Abernon, Thursley, Witley, Compton and Albury (old church).

Nonsuch Palace

Numerous medieval churches exist in Surrey, but the county's parish churches are typically relatively small and simple, and have suffered particularly heavily at the hands of Victorian restoration. Important medieval church interiors are to be found at Stoke D'Abernon, Compton, Chaldon, Dunsfold and Lingfield. The larger monastic churches fell into ruin after their institutions were dissolved, although some remains of those at Waverley and Newark still exist, while Southwark Priory, no longer in Surrey, has survived intact as a cathedral. Substantial ruins remain at Guildford and Farnham castles, while a handful of fifteenth century domestic buildings survive intact, most notably Old Surrey Hall near Lingfield.

The sixteenth century is the earliest from which a sizeable amount of non-military secular architecture survives in Surrey. The most spectacular such constructions were the royal palaces of Richmond, rebuilt under King Henry VII, and Nonsuch, built for Henry VIII near Ewell, but these have since been demolished. Major buildings of this period which do still exist include the grand mid-century country houses of Loseley Park and Sutton Place and the old building of the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, founded in 1509. A considerable number of more ordinary houses and commercial buildings of the sixteenth century are also still standing, and with the seventeenth century the number of surviving buildings proliferates further. Abbot's Hospital, founded in 1619, is a grand edifice built in the Tudor style, despite its date. More characteristic examples of major seventeenth century building include West Horsley Place, Slyfield Manor and the guildhall in Guildford, as well as Ham House and Kew Palace, formerly in Surrey but now in Greater London.

Local government

Surrey
Geography
Status	Administrative county
HQ	Newington 1889 - 1893 Kingston upon Thames from 1893
History
Created	1889
Abolished	1974
Succeeded by	Surrey
Demography
1891 population	452,218[10]
1971 population	1,002,832[11]

The Local Government Act 1888 reorganised county-level local government throughout England and Wales. Accordingly, the administrative county of Surrey was formed in 1889 when the Provisional Surrey County Council first met, consisting of 19 aldermen and 57 councillors. The county council assumed the administrative responsibilities previously exercised by the county's justices in quarter sessions. The county had revised boundaries, with the north east of the historic county bordering the City of London becoming part of a new County of London. These areas now form the London Boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark and Wandsworth, and the Penge area of the London Borough of Bromley. At the same time, the borough of Croydon became a county borough, outside the jurisdiction of the county council.

For purposes other than local government the administrative county of Surrey and county borough of Croydon continued to form a "county of Surrey" to which a Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum (Chief Magistrate) and a High Sheriff were appointed.

Surrey had been administered from Newington since the 1790s, and the county council was initially based in the sessions house there. As Newington was included in the County of London it lay outside the area administered by the council, and a site for a new county hall within the administrative county was sought. By 1890 six towns were being considered: Epsom, Guildford, Kingston, Redhill, Surbiton and Wimbledon.^[12] A decision to build the new County Hall at Kingston was made in 1891, (the building opened in 1893^[13]) but this site would also became overtaken by the growing London conurbation and by the 1930s most of the north of the county had been built over, becoming outer suburbs of London, although continuing to form part of Surrey administratively.

In 1960 the report of the Herbert Commission recommended that much of north Surrey (including Kingston and Croydon) be included in a new "Greater London". The recommendations of the report were enacted in highly modified form in 1965 by the London Government Act 1963. The areas that now form the London Boroughs of Croydon, Kingston, Merton, Sutton and that part of Richmond south of the River Thames were transferred from Surrey to Greater London. At the same time part of the county of Middlesex, which had been abolished by the legislation, was added to Surrey. This area now forms the borough of Spelthorne.

Further local government reform under the Local Government Act 1972 took place in 1974. The 1972 Act abolished administrative counties and introduced non-metropolitan counties in their place. The boundaries of the non-metropolitan county of Surrey were similar to those of the administrative county with the exception of Gatwick Airport and some surrounding land which was transferred to West Sussex. It was originally proposed that the parishes of Horley and Charlwood would become part of West Sussex, however fierce local opposition led to a reversal of this under the Charlwood and Horley Act 1974.

Economy

Surrey is an affluent county with a service based economy closely tied to that of London. Surrey has the highest GDP per capita of any county in the UK and the highest cost of living in the UK outside of London. Surrey is credited with having the highest proportion of millionaires in the UK. The average wage in Surrey is bolstered by the high number of residents who work in financial services.^[14]

The busiest single runway airport in the world (Gatwick) was historically in Surrey, but is now part of West Sussex.

Surrey has more organisation and company headquarters than any other county in the UK. Electronic giants Nikon, Whirlpool, Canon, Toshiba, Samsung and Philips are housed here. Kia Motors and Toyota UK also have their HQs in Surrey. Some of the largest FMCG multinationals in the world have their UK and/or European headquarters here, including Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Superdrug, Nestle, SC Johnson, Kimberly-Clark and Colgate-Palmolive. NGOs including WWF UK & Compassion in World Farming are also based here.

Government Quangos such as SEEDA, SEERA and GOSE are headquartered in Guildford. Drug giants Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventis house their UK headquarters here, as does oil conglomerate Esso. The racing organisation McLaren is based in Woking, and the once famous Brooklands race track is near Weybridge.

There has been criticism in recent years due to public spending per head being the lowest of any county in the UK.

This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Surrey at current basic prices published (pp. 240–253) by Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.^[15]

Major towns

See List of places in Surrey

The largest town in Surrey is Guildford with 66,773; Woking is a close second with a population of 62,796. The third largest town is Ewell with 39,994 people to the north of the county and the fourth is Camberley with 30,155 people in the west of the county. Towns with between 25,000 and 30,000 are Ashford, Epsom, Farnham, Staines and Redhill.^[20]

Transport

Road

Three major motorways pass through the county. These are the M25 (London Orbital), M3 and the M23.

The A3 trunk road is another important road and is a major route to the south coast and London.

Rail

Surrey is well connected to London by rail and services to Surrey originate from London's Waterloo, Victoria or London Bridge stations. Services are operated by Southern and South West Trains.

There are three main lines which pass through Surrey. They are the Brighton Main Line from Victoria or London Bridge, the South Western Main Line and the Portsmouth Direct Line from Waterloo. Several other lines branch off from those three.

The main stations in Surrey are Woking, Guildford and Redhill.

Air

Both Heathrow (in the London Borough of Hillingdon) and Gatwick (near the Sussex/Surrey border) are close at hand and both are connected to Surrey by the M25 in particular. There is also a National Express Coach from Woking to Heathrow Airport.

Fairoaks Airport , on the edge of Chobham and Ottershaw is just 2.3 miles from Woking Town centre which operates as a private airfield with two training schools. It is also home to other aviation related insustries.

Education

Royal Holloway College, Egham

Surrey has a comprehensive secondary education system with 53 state schools (not including sixth form colleges), but there are also 41 independent schools including Preparatory schools and Senior schools —a high proportion of school children in Surrey are privately educated. Most have sixth forms although Reigate, Esher, Egham, Spelthorne, Woking and Waverley districts tend to have separate sixth form colleges.

Higher education

• The University of Surrey is based in Guildford and the University of Creative Arts (UCA) is based in Farnham.
• Royal Holloway, University of London is based in Egham
• Kingston University is based in Greater London/Surrey.

Places of interest

Significant landscapes in Surrey include Box Hill just north of Dorking; the Devil's Punch Bowl at Hindhead and Frensham Common. Leith Hill to the south west of Dorking is the highest point in south-east England. Witley Common and Thursley Common are expansive areas of ancient heathland south of Godalming run by the National Trust and Ministry of Defence. The Surrey Hills are an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB).

Lawns at RHS Garden, Wisley

More manicured landscapes can be seen at Claremont Landscape Garden, south of Esher (dating from 1715). There is also Winkworth Arboretum south east of Godalming which was created in the 20th century. Wisley is home to the Royal Horticultural Society gardens. Kew, historically part of Surrey but now in Greater London, features the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as well as The National Archives for England & Wales.

Surrey's important country houses include the Tudor mansion of Loseley Park, built in the 1560s and Clandon Park, an 18th century Palladian mansion in West Clandon to the east of Guildford. Nearby Hatchlands Park in East Clandon, was built in 1758 with Robert Adam interiors and a collection of keyboard instruments. Polesden Lacey south of Great Bookham is a regency villa with extensive grounds. On a smaller scale, Oakhurst Cottage in Hambledon near Godalming is a restored 16th century worker's home.

The county is linked to the sea by the River Wey and the Wey and Godalming Navigations. Dapdune Wharf in Guildford commemorates the work of the canal system and is home to a restored Wey barge, the Reliance. Furthermore on the River Tillingbourne, Shalford Mill is an 18th century water-mill.

Runnymede at Egham is the site of the sealing of the Magna Carta in 1215.

Guildford Cathedral is a post-war cathedral built from bricks made from the clay hill on which it stands.

Brooklands Museum recognises the motoring past of Surrey. The county is also home to Thorpe Park, & Chessington World of Adventures, sister theme parks of Alton Towers.

Sport

The first known record of cricket was in Guildford, Surrey (see History of English cricket to 1696). Currently, the Surrey County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Surrey, although its largest ground, The Oval in Kennington, is now in Greater London. The club also uses Whitgift School, South Croydon and Woodbridge Road, Guildford for some games. Mitcham Cricket Club, formed in 1685 and the oldest documented club in the game's history, was within Surrey's borders until 1965.^[21]

Woking plays host to the headquarters of the McLaren Formula 1 team, giving Surrey the rarity of having a local F1 team.

James Hunt, the 1976 Formula 1 World Driver's Champion was born in Belmont, Surrey in 1947 (Belmont is administered by the London Borough of Sutton).

Brooklands was the first ever purpose-built motorsport race circuit.

Surrey has numerous football teams. As of the end of the 2008/09 season the top 20 clubs based on their league finishes within the National League System were:

• 1st Woking (Step 1 - 21st)
• 2nd Staines Town (Step 3 - 2nd)
• 3rd Ashford Town (Middx) (Step 3 - 10th)
• 4th Metropolitan Police (Step 4 - 4th)
• 5th Merstham (Step 4 - 7th)
• 6th Godalming Town (Step 4 - 9th)
• 7th Walton & Hersham (Step 4 - 14th)
• 8th Leatherhead (Step 4 - 15th)
• 9th Walton Casuals (Step 4 - 17th)
• 10th Whyteleafe (Step 4 - 18th)
• 11th Chipstead (Step 4 - 21st)
• 12th Chertsey Town (Step 5 - 3rd)
• 13th Epsom & Ewell (Step 5 - 4th)
• 14th Camberley Town (Step 5 - 5th)
• 15th Badshot Lea (Step 5 - 7th)
• 16th Redhill (Step 5 - 8th)
• =17th Ash United (Step 5 - 9th)
• =17th Lingfield (Step 5 - 9th)
• 19th Banstead Athletic (Step 5 - 10th)
• 20th Molesey (Step 5 - 11th)

Literature

Besides its role in Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, many imprortant writers have lived and worked in Surrey.

• The Owl and the Nightingale, one of the earliest Middle English poems, may have been written by one Nicholas of Guildford, who is mentioned in its text.
• John Donne (1572-1631) lived and worked for much of his life in Pyrford.
• John Evelyn (1620-1706) was born at Wotton and spent much of his life there.
• Daniel Defoe (1659/61-1731) was educated in Dorking.
• William Cobbett (1763-1835) was born in Farnham and is buried there; Surrey features prominently in his Rural Rides.
• Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) wrote Conningsby while living in Dorking.
• Alfred Tennyson (1809-92) spent the latter part of his life, and died, in Haslemere.
• Charles Dickens (1812-70) wrote part of The Pickwick Papers in Dorking, and refers to the town in the novel.
• Robert Browning (1812-89) was born in Camberwell, then part of Surrey.
• George Eliot (1819-80) wrote most of Middlemarch while living in Haslemere.
• George Meredith (1828-1909) lived at Box Hill.
• Lewis Carroll (1832-98) died and is buried in Guildford, where he had spent much time at his sisters' home.
• George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) lived in Woking and later in Hindhead, where he wrote Caesar and Cleopatra.
• Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles while living in Hindhead. He was also deputy lieutenant of Surrey.
• J.M. Barrie (1860-1937) lived in Tilford, and based The Boy Castaways, which later evolved into Peter Pan in the nearby countryside.
• H.G. Wells (1866-1946) wrote The War of the Worlds while living in Woking, and much of northern Surrey is laid waste in the course of the story.
• John Galsworthy (1867-1933) was born in Kingston and the Forsyte Saga is set in the area.
• E.M. Forster (1879-1970) lived and wrote in Weybridge.
• P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) was born in Guildford.
• Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was born in Godalming and his remains are interred at Compton; the end of Brave New World is set in Surrey.

Arts and sciences

• William of Ockham (c.1288-c.1348), scholastic philosopher, most famous for "Occam's Razor", came from Ockham.
• Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), pioneer of demography, was born and grew up at Westcott.
• Ada Lovelace (1815-52), mathematician, regarded as the first computer programmer for her work with Charles Babbage's analytical engine, lived at East Horsley.
• Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), garden designer, lived for much of her life in Bramley and Busbridge, created significant gardens in Surrey and is buried in Busbridge.
• Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944), architect, grew up in Thursley and many of his early works were built in west Surrey, including collaborations with Gertrude Jekyll.
• Laurence Olivier (1907-89), actor, was born in Dorking.
• Alan Turing (1912-54), mathematician and pioneer of computer science, lived for much of his early life in Guildford.

Popular music

The "Surrey Delta" produced many of the musicians in 60s British blues movements. The Rolling Stones developed their music at Crawdaddy Club in Richmond.

• Jimmy Page (1944-) spent much of his early life in Epsom.
• Jeff Beck (1944-) was born in Wallington, then part of Surrey.
• Eric Clapton (1945-) was born and grew up in Ripley.
• Paul Weller (1958-) was born and grew up in Woking, which inspired the song Town Called Malice.

Surrey in film and books

Sculpture of a Wellsian Martian tripod in Woking

Much of H. G. Wells's 1898 novella The War of the Worlds is set in Surrey with many specific towns and villages identified. The Martians first land on Horsell Common on the north side of Woking, outside the Bleak House pub, now called Sands. In the story the narrator flees in the direction of London, first passing Byfleet and then Weybridge before travelling east along the north bank of the Thames. Jane Austen's novel Emma is set in Surrey and the famous picnic where Emma embarrasses Miss Bates takes place on Box Hill. The character Ford Prefect from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy claimed to be from Guildford in Surrey, but in actuality he was from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelguese. Atonement is set in Surrey. The late Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman mentions Camberley in his poem "A Subaltern's Lovesong", while Carshalton forms the literary backdrop to many of the poems by James Farrar.

The county has also been used as a film location. Part of the movie The Holiday was filmed in Godalming and Shere: Kate Winslet's character Iris lived in a cottage in Shere and Cameron Diaz's character Amanda switched houses with her as part of a home exchange. The final scene of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason uses the village church, also in Shere, as does the movie The Wedding Date. In the 1976 film The Omen, the scenes at the cathedral were filmed at Guildford Cathedral.^[22] The film I Want Candy follows two hopeful lads from Leatherhead trying to break into the movies. Surrey woodland represented Germany in the opening scene of Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe; it was filmed at the Bourne Woods near Farnham in Surrey. Scenes for the 2009 BBC production of Emma by Jane Austen, starring Romola Garai and Michael Gambon, were filmed at St Mary the Virgin Church Send near Guildford and at Loseley House.

Emergency services

Surrey is served by these emergency services.

• Surrey Police, with twelve police stations in Surrey.
• South East Coast Ambulance Service as of 1 July 2006. Previously Surrey Ambulance Service covered Surrey; on 1 July 2006, it merged with Sussex Ambulance Service and Kent Ambulance Service to form the South East Coast Ambulance Service. Surrey has twenty-one ambulance stations.
• Surrey Fire & Rescue Service, with twenty-four fire stations in Surrey.

See also

• Portal:Surrey

References

Bibliography

• Vladimir Moss. "Martyr-Prince Alfred Of England". http://uk.oocities.com/guildfordian2002/AngloSaxon/PrinceAlfred.htm. Retrieved 2007-10-16. 
• "The Day the Cornish Invaded Guildford". The Surrey Advertiser. 2 June 1989. http://www.btinternet.com/~john.whitbourn/Cornish.htm. Retrieved 2007-10-16. 

External links

• Surrey County Council
• Living in Surrey - a website that champions local businesses and events.
• Surrey Life - a monthly Surrey based community magazine.
• Surrey Online Forum - local insights and business owners discussing Surrey's future.
• Surrey at the Open Directory Project
• Surrey Interactive Map
• Exploring Surrey's Past

Neighbouring counties

	Berkshire	Berkshire, Greater London	Greater London
	Hampshire		Kent
		Surrey
	Hampshire	West Sussex	East Sussex