4 May: Surrey Day

Today is Surrey Day. Here are ten things you might not know about the county in South East England which borders Kent to the east, East Sussex to the southeast, West Sussex to the south, Hampshire to the west, Berkshire to the northwest, and Greater London to the northeast.

1. The name Surrey derives from an old Saxon word for “Southern Region” as it was once the southernmost part of the Middle Saxon kingdom (whose name lives on in Middlesex).
2. There has been one Duke of Surrey. His name was Thomas Holland and he was given the title by Richard II in 1397. However, two years later, Richard II was ousted by Henry IV who took the title away. Holland and some of his relatives tried to get Richard re-instated but ended up being executed. There hasn’t been a Duke of Surrey since.
3. In times gone by Surrey was a dangerous place to travel in, because two famous highwaypersons operated here. One was Mary Frith, aka Moll Cutpurse, one of the few highwaywomen on record (most famous for stealing £250 from Sir Thomas Fairfax, Commander-in-Chief of the Parliamentarian armed forces, who chased after her and captured her, letting her go after she paid a fine of £2,000) and the other was William Davies, aka The Golden Farmer, who terrorised the Bagshot Heath area for 40 years.
4. It has a couple of notable Windmills. Outwood Windmill is the oldest working windmill in England, built by Thomas Budgen in 1665; the rather inappropriately named Tadworth New Mill is one of the oldest in England, too, although it hasn’t worked since 1902; and Reigate Heath Windmill which ceased operation as a windmill in 1862 and was turned into a church, making it the only consecrated windmill in the world.
5. According to legend, there was once a Dragon living in West Clandon, which used to block the roads. A soldier who’d been sentenced to death for desertion agreed to fight the dragon. He duly did and killed it. Today, there’s a chalk dragon on a nearby hillside, which was created for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. It’s only visible from an embankment on the A426 at West Clandon.
6. 22.4% of the county is covered in woodlands. The national average is just 11.8% making Surrey the most wooded county in England. It’s also home to the oldest natural woodland, at Box Hill.
7. The county has inspired many authors to set some of their novels in the area. Charles Dickens wrote Pickwick Papers while staying in Dorking, and based some of the characters on people he met during his stay. H.G. Wells was living in Surrey when he wrote War of the Worlds, and had the Martians land on Horsell Common, near his home. Jane Austen was staying with her cousin in Great Bookham when she started writing Emma. Benjamin Disraeli, although best known for being Prime Minister, was also a novelist and wrote some of his novel Coningsby while staying at a mansion near Dorking.
8. There is allegedly a treacle mine near Chobham. That story started after an army of 8,129 men gathered there in 1852 to be inspected by Queen Victoria before going off to the Crimean War. It’s said they buried their treacle supply there, and left it behind.
9. Surrey is the location for the annual Swan Upping ceremony which is an annual census of the Swan population for the monarch. This dates back to the 15^th century but the monarch hadn’t attended for 350 years. Queen Elizabeth II decided to put this right in 2009 and showed up for the ceremony.
10. Places you might want to visit in Surrey include the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty; Clandon Park House, a National Trust property damaged by fire in 2015, now being restored, and which also has in its grounds a Maori meeting house, one of only three to be found outside New Zealand. It was bought by the 4^th Earl of Onslow, who had it shipped to England and restored after it was half buried by a volcanic eruption in 1886. People who took shelter in the building survived. There’s Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was signed, Guildford Cathedral, Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventures and a Royal Horticultural Society garden at Wisley.

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