The house names of Surrey tell a sad story

If you want to understand Surrey, look at the house names. Keepers’ Copse, Meadow View, Weavers, Highfields…

What do all these names have in common? They describe something rural that used to be there before it was destroyed to make way for the house named after it.

Surrey is where London will one day join Guildford and Woking, making the outer banlieues of our capital city very nice indeed, but obviously destroying the countryside that makes Surrey nice in the process. So not all that nice, in fact.

For now, it amuses me to drive along the lanes of chintzy villages in prime commuter belt, grimacing at the names of the houses.

It is as if the ghost of rural south-east England is laughing from the slate plaques of small mansions, over-extended bungalows and mock Georgian flats, with their over-manicured gardens and grass verges mowed flat.

No doubt the people who first inhabited these homes were proud of their names. They felt no irony about living at Highfields, where there was now one less field, for they looked around themselves and saw lots of countryside left.

The inhabitants of Meadow View were unperturbed by living on the graveyard of a meadow, because they still looked out on a meadow.

As for the owners of Weavers, they took pride in their two knocked-together workers’ cottages, newly renovated, resplendent with poured concrete floors, a show Aga and bifold patio doors.

All these good people joined the local residents’ association and objected to any further development near them, of course. But once they were there, it was no use.

A few years later, the meadow that gave its name to Meadow View was bulldozed, despite vociferous objections from those who understandably wished to pull the ladder up now they had climbed to the top of the Surrey property heap, and a sweeping tarmac driveway led to a black and white mock Tudor affair called The Firs.