A Town Built on Reinvention
Woking rises from sandy Surrey soil just beyond London's sprawl, a place that has repeatedly transformed itself across centuries. From a Saxon settlement to a Victorian necropolis, from industrial centre to modern transit hub, it remains anchored by the River Wey and threaded through by the Basingstoke Canal. This is not a museum town frozen in time, but one where brick-built Victorian graves share space with 21st-century apartment towers, and where a literary alien invasion still haunts the imagination of anyone who walks its underpass.
What Remains: History and Architecture
The oldest Woking lies south of the modern town centre, around Old Woking village close to the River Wey. Here St Peter's Church preserves masonry from the 11th century, its tower embedded with Roman tiles scavenged from the ground beneath. The village grew organically around this church, its medieval street pattern still legible if you wander slowly. Beyond the town, in the fields off Carter's Lane, the ruins of Woking Palace mark where Henry VII's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, lived during her son's reign, before the palace ceased to be royal in 1620.
Elsewhere across the borough stand buildings of genuine rarity. Sutton Place, built around 1525 for Richard Weston, stands as one of England's earliest unfortified houses, a moment when the gentry began to feel safe enough to abandon castle walls. In Maybury, the Shah Jahan Mosque, constructed in 1889, holds a different distinction: it was the first purpose-built Muslim place of worship in the United Kingdom, commissioned by the Begum of Bhopal and designed by British architects working with the Oriental Institute. Its presence shaped the neighbourhoods around it—Maybury and Sheerwater still hold significant communities with roots on the Indian subcontinent, and the call to prayer carries across those streets.
The Cemeteries: Brookwood's Victorian Necropolis
West of Woking, between the villages of Brookwood and Pirbright, lies one of Britain's most extraordinary landscapes: Brookwood Cemetery, a Victorian necropolis of 220 acres opened in the mid-19th century to relieve the burden on London's churchyards. Funeral trains once ran daily from central London, carrying coffins and mourners; the cemetery now holds almost a quarter of a million graves.
Walking the pathways feels like moving through a map of Britain's religious and national diversity. The North Cemetery, traditionally the nonconformist side, holds segregated plots for Latvian and Swedish communities, Muslim grounds marked by golden domes and white geometric stones, and the only Zoroastrian burial ground in Europe. The South Cemetery, the Anglican side, preserves gothic vaults and Celtic crosses alongside a Serbian Orthodox cemetery and the monastic church of St Edward the Martyr, where a small community of True Orthodox monks still resides. Artists including John Singer Sargent, Evelyn De Morgan and William De Morgan lie here; the North Cemetery holds the architect Zaha Hadid.
Separate from the civilian cemetery stands Brookwood Military Cemetery, the largest war cemetery in the United Kingdom. It contains thousands of service personnel from Britain, the Commonwealth, and allied nations, with self-contained sections for individual countries. The American cemetery includes a neoclassical chapel that evokes Arlington, and represents the only American cemetery of the First World War in the British Isles.
Literature and Art: H. G. Wells and the Underpass Mural
H. G. Wells lived on Maybury Road while writing The War of the Worlds, and much of the novel unfolds in the Woking area. The town has claimed this literary connection visibly: an underpass features a mural depicting the alien invasion that Wells imagined occurring here. The Lightbox, a modern art gallery in the town centre with an attached restaurant, maintains a permanent free exhibition on the history of Woking and hosts changing exhibitions, many of them free to enter. Public art also punctuates the town centre, including a statue of Wells himself.
Walking and Outdoor Routes
Horsell Common, about a mile north of town, is the most popular local walking destination. Most visitors park along Shores Road and walk through the heathland; a footpath passes behind the McLaren complex and continues toward Fairoaks aerodrome. The car park by Monument Bridge sits adjacent to Bronze Age barrows, visible as earthworks among the gorse and bracken. Around 60 per cent of the borough lies within the Metropolitan Green Belt, which severely constrains new building but preserves these open spaces.
The Basingstoke Canal runs 32 miles through the heart of Woking, connecting to the River Wey Navigation. Beyond boat rides, the towpath supports cycling, fishing, and camping, with pubs scattered along its length. A visitor centre at Mytchett, further along, provides more context for exploring the waterway.
Getting Your Bearings
The modern town centre—almost entirely built in the 20th and 21st centuries—clusters around the railway station, which sits roughly 23 miles from central London. The Peacocks and Wolsey Place shopping centres adjoin Jubilee Square; Victoria Square, completed in 2022, introduces new high-rise residential blocks. This is a functional, contemporary shopping and transit hub rather than a historic high street, though The Lightbox and the nearby churches offer cultural counterweight. For a less standardised shopping experience, Guildford lies within easy reach.
Begin at St Peter's Church in Old Woking, then move north through the modern centre to The Lightbox. Visit the underpass mural and walk to the Shah Jahan Mosque in Maybury. Spend a day at Brookwood Cemetery with its layered stories of faith, nation, and memory. Walk Horsell Common in the morning light. In doing so, you will trace the shape of Woking itself: Saxon root, Victorian ambition, immigrant community, and modern reinvention all at once.