Did you know?

• The Omen was filmed at Guildford Cathedral.

• The largest vineyard in the United Kingdom, Denbies is located in Dorking.

• Lewis Carroll is buried in The Mount Cemetery in Guildford town centre.  He died on 14 January 1896, aged 66.

• Eric Clapton was born in the village of Ripley.

• PG Wodehouse was born  in 1881 at 1 Vale Place, Epsom Road  Guildford and was christened at St Nicolas church (his mother was visiting friends in Guildford when she unexpectedly gave birth).  He lived here for 2 weeks.

• HG Wells wrote War of the Worlds whilst he was living in Woking.

• Guildford is the centre of UK Space Industry – designing and manufacturing small satellites with over 20 launches since the early 1980’s www.sstl.co.uk.

• Beatrix Potter had a holiday home in the Surrey Hills hamlet of Woodcote.

• EH Shepherd “the Man who drew Pooh” lived in Guildford when drawing this famous bear.  He left the original pictures to the University of Surrey.

• The church of Albury Mansion was used for filming one of the weddings of “Four Weddings and a Funeral”.

• Dennis Cars, originally based at the Rodborough Buildings, Guildford  was probably the first purpose built car factory in the country.  The Dennis name can still be seen on Fire Engines around the UK today.

• Barnes-Wallis designed his “bouncing bomb”, made famous during the Dambuster Raids of World War II, whilst living in Effingham.

• Guildford’s most famous son was a former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot, who built Abbots Hospital Alms House as a gift to the people of Guildford.

• Alan Turing, who broke the Enigma Code during World War 2, lived at 22 Ennismore Avenue, Guildford. There is a statue of him in the main square at the University of Surrey. There is a blue plaque on his parents house at 22, Ennismore Avenue, Guildford.

• Boris Karloff was cremated at Guildford Crematorium. He died 2nd February 1969 in Midhurst West Sussex (emphysema)

• Shere is one of the backdrops for the 2006 film “The Holiday” starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet and Jude Law.

• The Pilgrims’ Way, the historic religious trail, passes through Surrey.

• Guildford Castle was the only royal castle ever to be built in Surrey.

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes novels, lived at a house called Undershaw on the A3 in Hindhead and wrote his novel ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles while living there from 1897 to 1907. The house was a hotel and restaurant until 2004, but is now in a state of disrepair.

• Admiral Sir James Stirling – the founding father of Western Australia married a girl from Guildford and was buried here.

• Guildford has the best Sundial of Great Britain as voted by the British Sundial Society in 2005.The winner of the ‘best sundial made in Britain by a professional maker’ award for 2005 is the sculpture by Joanna Migdal in Millmead’s Westnye Gardens.

• A mathematician called William Oughtred 1575 – 1660 lived at Shalford then took a living at the rectory in Albury.  He was initially an astronomer who worked with John Napier who invented logarithms. William Oughtred invented the slide rule in 1622.  In 1660 he was buried in Albury old church which is part of the Albury estate and there is a memorial plaque in the church.   

• Brookwood cementry on Woking is the largest cementy in the United Kingdom

• Playwright  George Bernard Shaw lived at a house called ‘Blen Cathra’ in Hindhead, Surrey, now St. Edmund’s

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