Cranleigh, Surrey, England, United Kingdom

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Cranleigh is a village and civil parish, about 8 miles (13 km) south-east of Guildford in Surrey, England. It lies on a minor road east of the A281, which links Guildford with Horsham. It is in the north-west corner of the Weald, a large remnant forest, the main local remnant being Winterfold Forest directly north-west on the northern Greensand Ridge.

History Partly on the Greensand Ridge, where it rises to 700 feet (210 m) at Winterfold Hill, but mainly on the clay and sandstone Lower Weald, Cranleigh has little of prehistoric or Roman interest, whereas just across the east border Wykehurst and Rapley Farms have Roman buildings and Roman Tile Kilns – in the parish of Ewhurst. A spur of the Roman road between London and Chichester runs north west to Guildford past nearby Farley Heath in Farley Green, a temple site. Cranleigh was not mentioned in the Domesday Book, at that time being part of the manor of Shere.

The Anglican parish church of St Nicolas dates the first building on its site from around 1170, and the building was in its present form by the mid-14th century. It was extensively restored in 1847. The church has a gargoyle, on a pillar inside the church, which is said to have inspired Lewis Carroll, who lived in Guildford, to create the Cheshire Cat. With the growth of the village, a "daughter" church, St Andrew's, opened at the west end of the village in 1900 but it closed some sixty years later. The parish is in the Diocese of Guildford.

The 16th century Boy & Donkey pub, on Knowle Road outside the village, was taken over in the mid-19th century by Hodgsons of Kingston, later Courage, and remained in business until the early 1990s. It was sold to Morland of Abingdon who later closed it. The building was converted into a private home.

Oliver Cromwell visited Knowle House in 1657, his soldiers being billeted in houses in the village.

Post Industrial Revolution Growth came due to improvements in transport; in 1813 the Wey and Arun Canal was authorised. Three years later it opened, passing a few miles to the west of the village. This route linked London (via the Thames and the Wey) with Littlehampton (via the Arun). However, the canal traffic was completely eclipsed by the Horsham to Guildford railway which opened in 1865, and the canal fell into disuse. A turnpike road was also built between Guildford and Horsham, assent for the project being given in 1818. The opening is commemorated by an obelisk at the junction of the roads to Horsham and to Ewhurst. The Prince Regent used the route when travelling between Windsor and Brighton, the distances to which are given on the plaque on the obelisk.

Three people played a major part in the development of the village during the 19th century: Reverend John Henry Sapte, Dr Albert Napper and Stephen Rowland. Sapte arrived in Cranleigh in 1846 as the rector. He played a major role in setting up the National School in 1847 and Cranleigh School in 1865. He was appointed Archdeacon of Surrey and remained in the village until his death in 1906.

Together with Napper, Sapte set up the first cottage hospital in the country in 1859. It has survived many attempts to close it, through fundraising by the local community. However it lost its beds for in-patients in May 2006.

Stephen Rowland was a resident who had a major role in the development of the infrastructure of the village. He formed the Cranleigh Gas Company in 1876, and arranged for a mains water supply in 1886. In 1894 he laid out an estate between the Horsham and Ewhurst Roads, building New Park Road, Avenue Road, Mead Road, Mount Road and Bridge Road. He also set up a grocery store. His name is commemorated in that of Rowland Road.

The cricket field has been used for that purpose since 1843. Cranleigh Lawn Tennis Tournament was held there in August from 1922 until 1998, when it moved to the grounds of Cranleigh School.

David Mann's department store opened in 1887. The store closed in October, 2021 and the business went into liquidation. A distinctive row of maple trees which lines the High Street between the cricket field and the Rowland Road junction was planted in 1890, and not by Canadian servicemen in World War I as is widely believed.

Cranleigh's Village Hall opened in 1933.

The Regal Cinema opened on 30 October 1936. It survived for over sixty years, finally closing on 14 March 2002. The site is now occupied by a block of flats.

During World War II (1939-1945) Winterfold House near Cranleigh was requisitioned by the British Government and used by SOE Special Operations Executive, as a training school designated STS 4 and later STS 7 as the location of the Student Assessment Board. Its primary use during the war was to whittle out those not suited to undercover work and begin initial training for those that progressed. Amongst the many recruits that attended Winterfold included Muriel Byck, Andrée Borrel, Denise Bloch, Noor Inyat Khan (Nora Baker) – a descendant of Indian Muslim royalty and Violette Szabo GC. A film Carve Her Name with Pride was made in 1958 about Szabo's wartime life in the SOE. In November 2011, a Memorial to the SOE was unveiled at Winterfold House, Surrey, initiated by British military historian, writer and author Paul McCue and others. The unveiling was attended by Tania Szabó, the daughter of Violette Szabo, together with representatives from the US, Dutch and French embassies and the Canadian High Commission.

During the later part of World War II, on 27 August 1944, the infants school was hit by a V-1 flying bomb and demolished, as was the stained glass east window of the nearby St. Nicolas Church. This occurred early on a Sunday morning, and the school was empty. The only casualty was the Rector, who was in his garden not far away and was injured. Another flying bomb hit the gasholder on the Common, destroying both the structure and a nearby cottage, whose occupant was killed.

Geography Cranleigh village is 7.7 miles (12.4 km) south-east of the county town of Surrey, Guildford, and 6.2 miles (10.0 km) ESE of Godalming, which is the administrative centre of the borough of Waverley. In the centre of the civil parish are the greatest number of buildings, fanning out in many side roads and on the high street. Cranleigh Waters also known as the Cranleigh Water, drains the village, before flowing to Shalford where it joins the River Wey, specifically in the small, formerly marsh-like locality of Peasmarsh, which still has water meadows lining the bank itself. Winterfold Forest, a remaining higher part of the forest that occupies the north-east is on the Greensand Ridge, which can be explored using in places roads or by the long-distance path, the Greensand Way.

Rowly Rowly is a neighbourhood 0.8 miles (1.3 km) NNW of the edge of the contiguous suburban part of Cranleigh that architecturally contains three Grade II listed buildings. 
Three surrounding farms have listed farmhouses, and one of these has a listed granary. Rowly is separated from Cranleigh by Manfield Park and Hollyhocks House.

Baynards Baynards to the south is separated by a green buffer including the lake, Vachery Pond. It consists of fewer than 20 buildings. Reached by Knowle Lane, a rural road leading off of the high street, which is dotted with houses, the settlement lies east of that lane along another lane, Baynards Road. No other neighbourhoods or localities of importance exist in the civil parish as a whole.

Economy Despite losing the rail link, Cranleigh has prospered both as a satellite of Guildford, and as a service and light engineering centre in its own right. Furthermore, it is a retail centre for the surrounding smaller villages. The resident population of the area decreased by 2.0% in the ten years to 2001. In January 2007, Cranleigh Parish Council received a grant of arms.

Cranley Hotel is in a large Victorian house which is a listed building. Nurseries for plant for sale and food provide a significant source of local employment.

Cranleigh's High Street has seen a rise in large corporate shops in recent years, such as Co-op, Peacocks, Superdrug, and WH Smith. There are three supermarkets and two national banks, and various other shops.