Southeast of the urban centre of Guilford, in amongst the swathes of natural pastoral landscapes in the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), is the small village of Albury. The civil parish consists of the village itself and three nearby hamlets: Albury Heath, Farley Green, Little London, and Brook. Due to its beautiful landscapes and vast amounts of land, this area’s property market is dominated by large country manor houses with significant acerage, and on the other end of the scale, holiday mobile homes!

Albury is featured in the 1086 Domesday Book survey for William the Conquerer as ‘Eldeberie’. There is significant evidence to suggest that Albury was recorded even earlier, with references to a closely similar name in Anglo-Saxon documents dating from 933 and 1062, although this is up for debate. But the earliest human activity recorded in the local area goes far beyond the Saxons, with flints, axes, and scrapers dating from the Mesolithic! In the 1960s, archaeologists uncovered a Bronze Age settlement to the north of Albury!

In 1939, following excavations by previous teams of archaeologists, Lowther and Goodchild excavated the site of a Romano-Celtic temple in Farley Heath! This temple is of huge historical importance, as the findings point to its original use and significance in the early interaction between the Roman Empire and England. Including the finds were a Celtic priest’s sceptre, British and Roman coins, as well as Roman pottery!

Due to its rural nature and firm protections with the AONB, development has been altogether slow over time in Albury. In the recent Guildford Borough Local Plan, the borough’s council has not considered the parish of Albury as a site for potential housing and commercial development, owing to its unique characteristics and natural landscape. However, there has been a boom in the market for mobile holiday homes particularly located in the Edgeley Holiday Park, with various developments and new-build holiday homes on the market! Outside of this, there are currently vast country manors on the market currently, often with asking prices in excess of £1.7 million!