West Surrey (UK Parliament constituency)

West Surrey (formally the Western division of Surrey) was a parliamentary constituency in the county of Surrey, which returned two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the bloc vote system.

It was created under the Great Reform Act for the 1832 general election, and abolished for the 1885 general election.

Boundaries

The constituency consisted of the hundreds of Blackheath, Copthorne, Effingham, Elmbridge, Farnham, Godalming, Godley, Woking and Wotton. It was therefore the more extensive and more rural of the two divisions of Surrey established in 1832, although including a number of towns on the south-western fringes of London. Elections were conducted at Guildford; other principal towns in the constituency included Chertsey, Dorking, Epsom, Farnham, Godalming, Haslemere, Walton-on-Thames, Weybridge and Woking. (Guildford was a borough returning Members of Parliament in its own right, but freeholders within the borough boundaries could, nevertheless, vote for the county division if they did not qualify for a vote in the borough.)

On its abolition in 1885, West Surrey was divided between four new single-member constituencies, providing the whole electorate for the North-Western or Chertsey division of Surrey and part of the South-Western or Guildford, Mid or Epsom and South-Eastern or Reigate divisions.

Members of Parliament

Election results

References

• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "S" (part 6)
• F W S Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1832-1885 (2nd edition, Aldershot: Parliamentary Research Services, 1989)
• Frederic A Youngs, jr, Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, Vol II (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991)