The Bishop's Manor in East Horsley seems to have belonged to the see of Exeter throughout the Middle Ages. 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, feet of fines or the records of Lambeth Palace.[3]
The village is the site of Horsley Towers, a gothic mansion designed by Sir Charles Barry (later the architect of the Houses of Parliament) 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.[3]
Ada, Lady Lovelace (writer, mathematician, and what we might call today a "computer programmer") lived at Horsley Towers[4]The 1st Earl of Lovelace's Mausoleum in the churchyard of Martin's Church, East Horsley
After Currie's death in 1829, the property was acquired by the 1st Earl of Lovelace (1805–1893). It was the marital home of Ada, Lady Lovelace (the writer, mathematician and what today we would call a "computer programmer"). The 1st Earl of Lovelace had fifteen bridges, known as the Lovelace Bridges, constructed 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.
In the early 1900s, the 3rd Earl of Lovelace applied restrictive covenants on most of his former fields when selling these to private developers, leading to the overwhelming proportion of homes being detached. No minimum plot size is specified, and planning is controlled by Guildford Borough Council, subject to advice from the local Horsley council.
The village has the parade of shops and businesses of the two Horsleys (see West Horsley), Otherwise the two halves of ancient Horsley are similar in having substantial woodland and some chalky lower slopes, in the south, of the North Downs.[5]
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.[6]
A village with a theatre (as does similarly sized Godstone in the county), this is a well-equipped amateur production stage named the Nomad Theatre[8] 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.
Demography and housing
East Horsley had 1,343 detached homes (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 in 2011[9] and again in 2015.[10]
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.
2011 Economic groups – National Statistics Socio-economic Classification
Output area
Higher Managerial, Administrative and Professional Occupations
Lower Managerial, Administrative and Professional Occupations
At Surrey County Council, one of the 81 representatives represents the area within the Horsleys division.[11]
At Guildford Borough Council the ward of the borough is deemed appropriate to be best represented under the current constitution by three councillors.[12]
^ abcH.E. Malden, ed. (1911). "Parishes: East Horsley". A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 3. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 22 November 2013.
