Hinterland

A politicised new Pevsner proves that there’s more to Surrey than village greens and stockbrokers

Last November, my colleague Christopher Howse wrote an excellent piece on his native Leatherhead, and how the latest edition of Pevsner’s Buildings of England on Surrey (Yale, £45) was less rude about this harmless town than the first. The new volume, updated after more than 50 years by editor Charles O’Brien, is indeed more objective, detailed and comprehensive. It argues that it’s distinctly unfair to give Surrey such short shrift – architecturally and aesthetically.

There are, in fact, significant antiquities. The charming town of Farnham has Georgian buildings and sympathetic Victorian work.

St Andrew’s, the largest parish church in the county, evolved from a Saxon monastery of the

7th century – although the guide deplores the extensive restoration, which has erased much of its past. But Stoke d’Abernon has something of national significance that the restorers preserved: the awesome monumental brass of the second Sir John d’Abernon, more than lifesize at 6ft 6in long, is the oldest in England, dating from 1327. A memorial equally spectacular is of Sir Robert Clayton, a late-17thcentury MP and Lord Mayor of London, and his wife, in the church at Bletchingley – one of the finest pieces of sculpture of Queen Anne’s reign. Among its intricate details is a small baby, whose parents hoped to meet again in the afterlife.

The guide is exceptional about Guildford, whose broad high street it describes as “classic” of the salubrious home counties. It also salutes some fine buildings, notably the Guildhall of 1683, which the guide calls “the epitome of Restoration panache”, with its turret and ornate projecting clock. The 20th century left a notable legacy here, too: Maufe’s cathedral, built of local bricks, begun in 1936 but not finished for 30 years, is deeply impressive, perhaps more inside with its austere, highceilinged white-washed walls than out. The guide describes Maufe’s style as “sweet-tempered, undramatic, curvilinear Gothic”.

Surrey’s comparative prosperity has resulted in numerous highly individual buildings, such as Crossland’s Royal Holloway College at Egham, an 1880s Loire château on the A30, while Woking has a mosque of 1889 in Mughal style, the first purpose-built one in the country, by Chambers. Surrey is also a county of central-casting village greens, surrounded by 16th- and 17th-century cottages and inns, such as at Brockham and Abinger Hammer. And, of course, this is Lutyens country: he built sublime arts and crafts houses at

Munstead Wood, Tigbourne Court at Witley, and Goddards at Abinger.

An unresolved question concerns Clandon Park near Guildford, the only major work by the Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni, built in the 1730s and gutted by fire in

2015. The guide points out that the fortune that built it came from slavery, which can be viewed either as relevant historical information or as a regrettable departure into politicising this excellent series. The National Trust has no plans to restore it, just an inferior scheme to conserve it as a ruin. It’s not good enough, and whether the decision is linked to the house’s origins is another story.

g See you later: detail from the spectular Clayton memorial in Bletchingley