East Horsley is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

in Surrey, England, 21 miles southwest of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, on the A246 between

Leatherhead Leatherhead is a town in the Mole Valley District of Surrey, England, about south of Central London. The settlement grew up beside a ford on the River Mole, from which its name is thought to derive. During the late Anglo-Saxon period, Leathe ...

and Guildford. Horsley and

Effingham Junction railway station Effingham Junction railway station is just north of the far northern border of the village of Effingham, closer to the centre of East Horsley, homes of which it borders, in Surrey, England. Although the station takes its name from the former s ...

s are on the New Guildford line to London Waterloo. The two-halves of ancient Horsley are similar in having substantial woodland and some chalky lower slopes, in the south, of the

North Downs The North Downs are a ridge of chalk hills in south east England that stretch from Farnham in Surrey to the White Cliffs of Dover in Kent. Much of the North Downs comprises two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs): the Surrey Hills a ...

History

;Manors East Horsley appears in

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

of 1086 as having two manors, listed under the chief manor's heading of ''Horslei''. This was held by Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury. Its domesday assets were: 3 hides and 1½

virgate The virgate, yardland, or yard of land ( la, virgāta was an English unit of land. Primarily a measure of tax assessment rather than area, the virgate was usually (but not always) reckoned as hide and notionally (but seldom exactly) equa ...

s; 8½ ploughs,

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (se ...

worth 50 hogs. It rendered £5 per year to its overlords. The Bishop's Manor in East Horsley seems to have belonged to the see of Exeter throughout the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

. Malden writing in 1911 associates closely the Domesday entry in Latin meaning 'Bishop Osborn of Exeter holds Woking' with this manor which his successors later held, since there is no trace of any land held by the Bishop of Exeter in Woking in pipe rolls,

Assize Rolls The courts of assize, or assizes (), were periodic courts held around England and Wales until 1972, when together with the quarter sessions they were abolished by the Courts Act 1971 and replaced by a single permanent Crown Court. The assizes ex ...

, feet of fines or the records of Lambeth Palace. ;Enclosure and development In 1792 an

Inclosure Act The Inclosure Acts, which use an archaic spelling of the word now usually spelt "enclosure", cover enclosure of open fields and common land in England and Wales, creating legal property rights to land previously held in common. Between 1604 and 1 ...

enabled William Currie MP to inclose most of Horsley Common at the northern end of the parish and the common fields and waste at the southern part, very much on the chalk. The parsonage and glebe were at the same time moved within the parish. The village is the site of

Horsley Towers Horsley Towers, East Horsley, Surrey, England is a country house dating from the 19th century. The house was designed by Charles Barry for the banker William Currie. The East Horsley estate was later sold to William King-Noel, 1st Earl of Lovelac ...

, a gothic mansion designed by Sir Charles Barry (later the architect of the

Houses of Parliament The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north ban ...

) for William Currie in place of an earlier building. Currie, a distiller and banker, had bought the property in 1784 and over the next 44 years made extensive changes to the village, including rebuilding most of its houses, establishing the school and restoring the church. After Currie's death in 1829, the property was acquired by the 1st Earl of Lovelace. It was the marital home of Ada, Lady Lovelace (the writer, mathematician and world's first computer programmer) and later Sir Thomas Sopwith, aviation pioneer. In 1971 it was used as a (Defence) Staff Training College and was placed in the second category of the

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

scheme of architecture as a Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. The buildings were used as a location for the film, ''

The Colour of Magic ''The Colour of Magic'' is a 1983 fantasy comedy novel by Terry Pratchett, and is the first book of the ''Discworld'' series. The first printing of the British edition consisted of only 506 copies. Pratchett has described it as "an attempt to ...

'', in 2008. It is currently in use as a hotel. William King, 1st Earl of Lovelace (1805-1893) constructed fifteen bridges, known as the Lovelace Bridges, on his estate to facilitate the transport of timber by horse-drawn carts. The bridges were built where the tracks crossed existing bridleways or roads. Ten bridges still exist. The 3rd Earl of Lovelace imposed restrictive covenants on most of his former fields when selling these to private developers in the early 20th century, leading to the overwhelming proportion of homes being detached; no minimum plot size is specified by these, and planning is controlled by

Guildford Borough Council Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, around southwest of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildfo ...

, subject to advice from the civil parish council.

Geography

The settlement is 21 miles southwest of London, partly on the A246 between

and Guildford. As such it forms a cross between a

nucleated village A nucleated village, or clustered settlement, is one of the main types of settlement pattern. It is one of the terms used by geographers and landscape historians to classify settlements. It is most accurate with regard to planned settlements: its c ...

and

dispersed settlement A dispersed settlement, also known as a scattered settlement, is one of the main types of settlement patterns used by landscape historians to classify rural settlements found in England and other parts of the world. Typically, there are a numb ...

directly north of this road, with a wide array of medium-sized individual home plots typically of . Horsley and

s are on the New Guildford line in the parish (connected to London Waterloo and both have a line direct to

Epsom Epsom is the principal town of the Borough of Epsom and Ewell in Surrey, England, about south of central London. The town is first recorded as ''Ebesham'' in the 10th century and its name probably derives from that of a Saxon landowner. The ...

and

Sutton Sutton (''south settlement'' or ''south town'' in Old English) may refer to: Places United Kingdom England In alphabetical order by county: * Sutton, Bedfordshire * Sutton, Berkshire, a location * Sutton-in-the-Isle, Ely, Cambridgeshire * ...

). The village has the parade of shops and businesses of the two Horsleys (see

West Horsley West Horsley is a semi-rural village between Guildford and Leatherhead in Surrey, England. It lies on the A246, and south of the M25 and the A3. Its civil parish ascends to an ancient woodland Sheepleas Woods which are on the northern downsl ...

), Otherwise the two halves of ancient Horsley are similar in having substantial woodland and some chalky lower slopes, in the south, of the

.Grid square map

Ordnance survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...

website

Amenities

;Shops and businesses The main row of shops is near the western railway station on a local thoroughfare from the end of Forest Road towards Ockham, a small number of professions operate here, such as accountants, opticians and the NHS medical practice. A Legacy hotel is in the village. ;Christian centre The medieval church continues as part of a larger charitable organisation in the

Diocese of Guildford __NOTOC__ The Diocese of Guildford is a Church of England diocese covering eight and half of the eleven districts in Surrey, much of north-east Hampshire and a parish in Greater London. The cathedral is Guildford Cathedral and the bishop is the ...

and caters for Anglicanism, St Martin's. ;Theatre A village with a theatre (as does similarly sized

Godstone Godstone is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England, east of Reigate at the junction of the A22 and A25 roads, near the M25 motorway and the North Downs. Godstone railway station is separated from it by agricultural land. Blindley H ...

in the county), this is a well-equipped amateur production stage named the Nomad Theatre which is behind the smaller of East Horsley's two rows of shops, Bishopsmead Parade. Its construction was largely financed by National Lottery grants from Arts Council England. The theatre opened in October 1998 with a production of Dylan Thomas's ''

Under Milk Wood ''Under Milk Wood'' is a 1954 radio drama by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, commissioned by the BBC and later adapted for the stage. A film version, ''Under Milk Wood'' directed by Andrew Sinclair, was released in 1972, and another adaptation of ...

''.

Demography and housing

East Horsley had 1,343

detached homes A stand-alone house (also called a single-detached dwelling, detached residence or detached house) is a free-standing residential building. It is sometimes referred to as a single-family home, as opposed to a multi-family residential dwellin ...

(of which 1,309 were inhabited) and fewer than 183 of any other dwelling types at the 2011 census, and a high proportion of business-owners and directors, accordingly it was deemed Britain's "richest village" by ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' in 2011 and again in 2015. The average level of accommodation in the region composed of detached houses was 28%, the average that was apartments was 22.6%. The proportion of households in East Horsley who owned their home outright was 19.3% above the regional average. The proportion who owned their home with a loan was 0.3% greater than the regional average; providing overall a lower proportion than average of rented residential property relative to the average in Surrey, the district and the country.

Politics

Local government is administered by

and

Surrey County Council Surrey County Council is the county council administering certain services in the non-metropolitan county of Surrey in England. The council is composed of 81 elected councillors, and in all but one election since 1965 the Conservative Party has ...

. At

, one of the 81 representatives represents the area within the ''Horsleys'' division.Electoral Divisions
Surrey County Council. Retrieved 6 November 2013 At

the ward of the borough is deemed appropriate to be best represented under the current constitution by three councillors.Your local councillors

. Retrieved 20 November 2013 East Horsley is in

Mole Valley Mole Valley is a local government district in Surrey, England. Its council is based in Dorking. The other town in the district is Leatherhead. The largest villages are Ashtead, Fetcham and Great Bookham, in the northern third of the district. ...

. At the elections since its inception a

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...

has won it.

Neighbouring areas

Neighbouring areas are:

Notes and references

;Notes ;References {{authority control Villages in Surrey Borough of Guildford Civil parishes in Surrey