Surrey, right beside London, is England's most wooded county
Just south-west of London's sprawl, Surrey has trees over 22.4 percent of its land, nearly double England's 11.8 percent average, and its Surrey Heath district reached 41 percent in 2020. Its name comes from the Old English for southern region, a clue to its origins on the edge of a Saxon realm.
A chalk ridge, the North Downs, splits the county. North of it lies flat, crowded land in the Thames basin, including towns like Staines-upon-Thames and Epsom that merge into Greater London. To the south are the sandstone Surrey Hills, broad heaths such as Frensham Common and the Low Weald. The rivers Wey and Mole cut through the chalk on their way to the Thames, and the Wey is the longest Thames tributary above London. Leith Hill near Dorking, at 295 metres, is the second-highest point in south-eastern England, beaten only by Walbury Hill in West Berkshire at 297.
An estimated 1,248,649 people lived across its 1,663 square kilometres in 2024; Woking is the biggest town, followed by Guildford. Because farming is not intensive, commons, bridleways and the North Downs Way make it a place for walkers and horse riders. The Met Office station at Wisley has logged extremes from minus 15.1 °C in January 1982 to 37.8 °C in August 2003, and held the UK's July record from 2006 until 2015. Oddly, the county council sat outside Surrey itself from 1965, when Kingston joined Greater London, until moving to Reigate in 2021.
Its early history is turbulent. The Atrebates tribe probably held most of the area before the Romans, and after their defeat by the Catuvellauni around AD 42, their exiled king Verica appealed to Rome, which invaded the following year. Saxons settled the area in the fifth and sixth centuries, leaving tribal names echoed in Godalming and Woking.
Once the southern part of a possible Middle Saxon territory, Surrey became a frontier fought over by Kent, Essex, Sussex, Wessex and Mercia. Offa of Mercia held it by 784, until Egbert of Wessex seized it in 825 after the Battle of Ellandun. In 851 a Danish fleet of about 350 ships sacked Canterbury and London and crossed into Surrey, only to be crushed by King Æthelwulf's West Saxons at the Battle of Aclea.
Source: Surrey
