Appreciating the small and recherché

James Stevens Curl

SURREY IS NOT LARGE: before 1888 it included all London south of the Thames, but today, as much of it has been absorbed by the capital, it is just 40 miles wide and under 17 deep, with a population of around two million. As Ian Nairn, who co-authored the 1962 edition of Surrey with Nikolaus Pevsner, noted, no other English county has been so dominated by a neighbouring city. In the eighteenth century, the ties with London were generally gentle and beneficial, but the coming of the railways in the 1830s and 40s, and the extension of the Underground in the 1920s, caused an explosion of development — growth contained, to some extent, by the Green Belt, established just in time in 1938. The ebullient Roderick Gradidge regarded Surrey as…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, August - September 2023

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