The Surrey village overrun with festive film fanatics

Thanks to hit Christmas movies, Shere has seen an influx of tourists – but while visitors are welcome, their cars are not, says Gavin Haines

The window seat in the White Horse is ruined and it’s all Jude Law’s fault. Since he sat there in 2006, eyeballing Cameron Diaz for a scene in the Baileys-sweet romcom The Holiday, film fans have flocked to the pub to park their own derrieres on the now-devastated leather. It is a pilgrimage of sorts, a homage to the Christmas flick that is back on the box.

I joined them last week, taking the once-hourly bus from Guildford to chocolate-box Shere, the village it was filmed in. The morning mist still clung to the surrounding Surrey Hills as two woollen-clad women ordered G&Ts at the bar. Inspired by their pre-noon indulgence, I ordered a pint.

“We get international tourists every day,” said Josh Cooper, the pub’s assistant manager, over the crackle of the open fire. “A lot of Americans, but also Australians, South Africans. People from all over.”

For The Holiday? “A lot of them, yeah. But for the pubs, too, and the Surrey Hills – it’s so quintessentially English around here.”

He’s not kidding. I looked out the window at the old village stocks, the fairy lights in the trees, the crooked houses, the crumbling church, the rolling hills. No wonder the Americans love it. This is gift-shop England. Exactly how the old world should look.

But there were no Yanks. I prowled the pub looking for some but found none. I did collar some Colombians, though. “This village fits the idyllic image we have of England back home,” cooed Sebastian Montez, a Latin American gone native with his Last of the Summer Wine flat cap.

Montez, a writer who relocated to London, was showing some friends from the motherland around. “I said to them ‘You’ve got to see this place’”. And what did they think, his friends? “Very beautiful,” they nodded, politely.

Indeed. But like the pub’s threadbare chair, patience is wearing thin in Shere due to the large number of visitors descending on the village. Or so the tabloids reckon. One report suggested residents were at “war” with tourists.

Nonsense, claimed the locals I spoke to along the high street, which is lined with tearooms, gift shops and Tudor houses that overhang the pavements.

“I love to see tourists here, I think it’s good for our wellbeing seeing people out and about,” said resident Caroline Goddard. “To be honest, we probably wouldn’t have these shops and tearooms if it wasn’t for them, so you won’t hear me nimbying.”

Shere certainly has a gentle buzz about it – and how many English villages can you say that about these days? Many places its size would struggle to support one pub, but Shere has two – the White Horse and the William Bray, both of which are open before noon.

“There’s loads going on, it’s a proper village,” said Goddard. “We have a cinema club twice a month in the village hall, pilates, stream bathing in winter, all kinds of wacky stuff. If you want a busy village, this is the place to be.”

However, in that very English way there is discontent about parking; a sense that, while tourists are welcome, their cars aren’t.

“That’s where the issue lies,” said Goddard. “Some people who don’t have parking are getting irate. There’s a lot of inconsiderate parking going on, too. I’ve had tourists park on my drive.”

It’s not just tourists either. One local man, a long-time resident who wished to remain nameless, pointed a finger at recent “incomers” – outsiders who have bought into the chocolate-box dream and brought their his-and-hers Range Rovers along for the ride. Most of which, of course, have never seen mud. Not here, in Surrey.

SUVs notwithstanding, Shere was making me come over all nostalgic. Something about the babbling brook, the cosy tearooms, the Christmas lights, the jolly locals. It has been featured in films, of course, mostly the schmaltzy ones, such as Bridget Jones’s Diary and Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Film crews love it here for the same reason everyone else does – because it is close to London but

I looked out at the village stocks, the fairy lights in the trees, the crooked houses, the church. No wonder Americans love it

a world away. You can live out the rural dream and still commute to the city (as another of The Holiday’s protagonists – Iris, a columnist for The Telegraph played by Kate Winslet – does).

Before heading back to the city, I had a cuppa in Hilly’s Teashop, where the tea is served loose leaf, in bone china and with an hourglass timer so you know when it is steeped. A proper brew. Like Shere itself, there was something quietly grounding about the ritual of taking tea this way. A sense of occasion. Of tradition. Not for the first time that day, I found myself leaning into the cliché of it all, giving in to old English nostalgia. Well, it is nearly Christmas, after all.

ii Josh Cooper, assistant manager of the White Horse pub iHilly’s Teashop, where the tea is loose leaf and served in bone china hResident Caroline Goddard, who really doesn’t mind tourists

gShere perfection: visitors cross Middle Street, in the village that ‘sits in a fold of the Surrey Hills’ hCameron Diaz in the 2006 film The Holiday, some of which was shot in Shere