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Surrey Leasing

Did You Know? .

Many famous musicians call Surrey home, including Kenney Jones from the Who, Brian May and Roger Taylor from Queen, while Freddie Mercury is buried in Woking’s Brookwood Cemetery. The original band members of Genesis all attended Charterhouse School in Godalming and guitar legend Eric Clapton, who was born in Ripley, now lives in Ewhurst.

In 1540, King Henry VIII annulled his marriage to Anne of Cleves. Anne's family didn't want her back, so Henry was left with the problem of what to do with her. Then he hit on the idea of making her his 'sister' and building Oatlands Palace for her in Weybridge, Surrey.

There has only been one Duke of Surrey, Thomas Holland, who lived in the 1300s, and he came to such a sticky end that nobody seems to have wanted to follow him in the title.

 An annual fair was held around St Catherine's Chapel, just south of Guildford in Surrey, from 1308 to 1914, and was painted by the artist JMW Turner. The chapel fell into ruins about the time of the Reformation, but locals kept it patched up as a scenic ruin and landmark.

These days, Benjamin Disraeli is best known as a British Prime Minister, but back in the 1840s his fame was as a novelist. His political novel Coningsby was planned and partly written while he was staying with his friend Henry Hope at Deepdene, a now-demolished mansion that stood on the eastern edge of Dorking in Surrey.

Jane Austen's novel Emma was begun while the novelist was staying with her married cousin Cassandra Cooke in Great Bookham in Surrey. Jane Austen was a frequent visitor, staying with Cassandra on more than one occasion for some weeks at a time.

Surrey is covered by 22.4% of woodland, making it the most wooded county in England. The national average stands at 11.8% so this is nearly double that amount! The oldest untouched area of natural woodland in the UK is also located on Box Hill.

Surrey is renowned for inspiring some of England's most influential writers; Jane Austen spent holidays at Great Bookham with Box Hill providing the setting for the picnic scene in Emma, while Sherlock Holmes creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, resided in Hindhead for 10 years and EM Foster in Abinger Hammer for over 20 years