Woking Guide
Sean O'Conor
Woking is Surrey's largest, youngest and most diverse settlement as well as a popular London commuter town.
Lying 23 miles to the south-west of the capital and a major railway junction, Woking is home to more than 100,000 people and continues to grow thanks to its excellent connections.
Woking is home to McLaren cars and the World Wide Fund for Nature, was the birthplace of The Jam pop group and the setting for the opening chapters of sci-fi classic The War of the Worlds.
H.G. Wells is commemorated throughout the town.
Woking History
Woking lies on the River Wey, a tributary of the Thames, and has Bronze Age burial mounds dated to around 1500 B.C.
Recorded history begins with a Saxon settlement named after a leader called 'Wocc', whose tribe later founded Wokingham in Berkshire.
In the 8th century it was mentioned as Wochingas in a Papal document as well as in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The Norman church of St Peter is the town's oldest building and has one of England's oldest doors, featuring ironwork of Viking myths.
Woking borough has four Norman churches, a 12th century church and the ruins of Newark Priory, a 12th century Augustinian monastery.
Old Woking contains the Tudor ruins of Woking Palace, which hosted King Henry VII, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
Thomas Wolsey was staying there when he received news he would become a cardinal. The Wolsey Place shopping centre and the football club nickname The Cardinals commemorate this.
Also in Woking is the Tudor palace of Sutton Place. Built in 1541, it is famous for being the home of John Paul Getty, the then world's richest man, from 1959-'76.
The Tudor link continued when Hilary Mantel wrote her 2009 Booker Prize-winning novel Wolf Hall while living in Woking.
Pyrford Place, built in 1550 for the admiral of the Royal Navy, has a summer house visible from the Wey which belonged to Elizabethan poet John Donne.
1651 saw Woking joined to London by the Basingstoke Canal but the arrival of the railway in 1838 supercharged development.
The impetus of the new town was death: With graveyards full, the London Necropolis company bought up swathes of Surrey in 1854 and built a dedicated railway line. Modern Woking grew up on its spare land and the nation's first crematorium opened here in 1884.
The East came to Woking the same year in the form of the Oriental Institute and the nation's first mosque followed in 1889. It remains a multicultural town today with a notable Sicilian population.
In 1895 H.G. Wells moved to Woking, where he wrote sci-fi classics The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr Moreau and The War of the Worlds and published The Time Machine.
Chef Delia Smith, actor Peter Davison, comedian Harry Hill and wordsmith Susie Dent were all born here.
Nobel prizewinning novelist Kazuo Ishiguru went to school in Woking but the town's most famous son is probably the musician Paul Weller.
In 1992 the Peacocks Centre (Woking Shopping Centre) revived the town with a new mall, cinema and theatre.
Despite the Covid pandemic, in 2020 Woking welcomed much of Surrey County Council's operations to the town and opened a new cinema complex, Nova.
New towers are springing up. At 117 metres, Surrey's biggest town is now its most visible as well.
Woking Attractions
Jubilee Square is the centre, marked by the 1922 war memorial, Christ Church dating from 1887, Woking Library and The Peacocks.
This complex includes three levels of shops, a food hall, theatre and seven-screen cinema.
The New Victoria Theatre features West End productions and with 1300 seats is Surrey's largest.
Just visible from the square is the WWF Living Planet Centre. Opened by Sir David Attenborough in 2013, it has a free visitor centre but the architecture is an attraction in itself.
Opposite is modern Woking's other contemporary gem, the Lightbox, which boasts galleries and a free museum of local history.
Modern British collections include sculptures by Epstein, Hepworth and Paolozzi while touring exhibitions have featured Constable, Picasso and Turner.
Between the two centres are statues of England cricketers Alec and Eric Bedser, who lived here.
On the town side of the railway at 141 Maybury Road there is a blue plaque for H.G.Wells. A downloadable walk guides you around the sites in The War of the Worlds, including the sandpits on Horsell Common where the Martians landed.
A sculpture of the aliens' cylinder and a seven-metre tripod on Chobham Road make popular photo ops, as does a statue of Wells himself on nearby Wells Plaza.
On the other side of the tracks at the end of Oriental Road lies the Grade 1-listed Shah Jahan Mosque (1889), Britain's first, which is open to visitors.
Ten minutes' walk from here on Monument Road is the Muslim Burial Ground Peace Garden, built in 1915 as a tribute to the Indian servicemen of the British Army. It was renovated thanks to contributions from English Heritage and Paul Weller.
Weller's native Stanley Road, the name of one of his albums, is in the centre beside the multicultural Walton Road, home to exotic food shops.
The Big Apple complex has a bowling alley, pool tables, LaserQuest and other games while outdoor fun can be had at Mr Mulligan's Pirate Golf, part of the public Hoebridge Golf Centre. Woking Swimming Pool, at the end of Woking Park, has flumes, wave machines and a 25 metre pool.
Woking has a world-class attraction in The Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley, the nation's most popular gardens after Kew with 1.2 million visitors in 2019. The 240 acre site has just had a £20 million refit and merits a day's visit.
Brookwood Cemetery, the nation's largest, contains entire churchyards relocated from London, the graves of famous people including John Singer Sargent and Zaha Hadid as well as the remains of a Saxon King of England, Edward the Martyr.
The military section includes 5,000 Commonwealth war dead and 3,600 American servicemen from the two world wars.
Woking is well-served by nature with the 355 acres of Horsell Common adjoining the town centre, the beautifully restored Basingstoke and Wey Navigation canals and miles of walking trails. The North Downs hills are less than half an hour away.
Just over the borough border is Mercedes-Benz World and the Museum of Brooklands, which includes classic cars and planes and the world's first motor racing circuit.
Woking Shopping
Central Woking has around 200 shops, clustered around the Peacocks and Wolsey Place shopping malls.
A large new Marks & Spencer is arriving in 2021 in Victoria Square. Other chains include Currys PC World, Next, Superdry, TKMaxx and Waterstones.
Harper's Photographic shop in Wolsey Place has been a local stalwart for almost a century.
Woking Hotels
The new 100 metre-high Hilton opened in 2021, to add to the existing large hotels in the centre - DoubleTree by Hilton, Premier Inn and Travelodge.
Addison House and the Woking Hotel are two smaller central options and Gorse Hill is an elegant Edwardian alternative, as is the Talbot Inn in Ripley, a coaching inn with 500 years of history.
There is a good selection of serviced apartments for staying in too.
See here for a listing of accommodation in Woking to suit all budgets.
Woking Pubs
Woking's oldest hostelry is The Sovereigns on Guildford Road, the first building after the railway came to town in 1838.
Other town centre pubs are the Herbert Wells, Junction Tap and O'Neill's. The Cellar Magneval by the station is a well-regarded wine bar.
Ten minutes' walk from the centre is The Wheatsheaf on Chobham Road, an Edwardian inn on the green which crops up in The War of the Worlds.
The Sands at Bleak House, facing Horsell Common on Chertsey Road, is mentioned in Alan Moore's graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
If you seek a gastropub, try the Inn at Maybury on Maybury Hill but if you only go to one bar in Woking visit The Anchor on Wisley Lane, beloved for its riverside setting.
Woking Eating
Beyond the expected options of Chinese, Indian and Italian, Woking also has French, Greek, Jamaican, Japanese, Korean, Lebanese, Malaysian, Mexican, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese restaurants.
There are several takeaways offering fish and chips, kebabs or pizzas as well as American chains.
There are Brazilian, Filipino, Nepalese, Nigerian, Polish and Ukrainian food shops. Market Walk just off Jubilee Square gives a little flavour, while there are restaurants on the Broadway, Chertsey Road, Commercial Way and the High Street.
Woking FC
Woking Football Club is the town's major sporting attraction.
The Cards play in England's fifth tier, the National League. They won the F.A. Amateur Cup in 1958 and the F.A. Trophy three times in the 1990s but have been on the radar for their F.A. Cup runs.
Their greatest adventure was in 1991 when they lost 0-1 away to Everton, five divisions above, in the 4th round, but they also reached the 3rd round in 1992, 1997 and 2019.
Their stadium has a 6,000 capacity and lies a mile south of the centre in the village of Kingfield.
Woking Access - Getting To Woking
The M25 motorway (Junction 11) , the M3 (Junction 3) and the A3 offer rapid road links to match the extensive rail services.
On an average weekday there are around 250 trains from Woking to London Waterloo and vice versa, taking as little as 23 minutes.
Woking is half an hour's drive from Heathrow Airport or 40 minutes by bus, one hour's drive or train ride from Gatwick and has direct rail links to Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Southampton and Weymouth.
Related Woking Resources
Map of Woking
Hotels in London
Book Hotels in London - Booking.com
Find Luxury Hotels in London - Booking.com
Budget Hotels in London - Booking.com
Find Hotels in England - Booking.com