Surrey

Book excerpt: Surrey's architecture is a constantly surprising mix of the rural and urban with many of its most important buildings, such as the seventeenth-century Ham House, found amongst the outgrowth of London itself. The landscape gardens of Painshill and Claremont attest to Surrey's popularity in the eighteenth century and the county's enthusiasm for follies and remarkable garden buildings. More recent architecture includes notable early works by Lutyens, with gardens by Gertrude Jekyll, inspired by the rich stock of late medieval farmhouses and tile-hung cottages in the county's southern villages. Among interwar suburban housing there are some exceptional Modernist homes, such as The Homewood by Patrick Gwynne. Church architecture in Surrey includes work by all of the great names of the Gothic Revival; not least of its surprises is the luminous and spacious interior of Guildford Cathedral.