Wedding Photographer Surrey — Polesden Lacey, Box Hill and the Surrey Hills AONB
Surrey is England’s most prosperous home county and the county immediately south of London whose Surrey Hills AONB — 303 square kilometres of the North Downs’ chalk escarpment, greensand ridge and Weald clay running from Farnham in the west to Oxted in the east — provides a surprisingly wild and beautiful landscape of beech hanger woodland, chalk grassland and clay farmland of the Weald within forty minutes of London Victoria. For Surrey wedding photography, the county’s most celebrated portrait settings concentrate in the Surrey Hills AONB: Polesden Lacey’s Edwardian country house and rose garden, Box Hill’s chalk escarpment summit at 224 metres, Leith Hill’s greensand ridge tower at 294 metres (the highest point in south-east England), the vineyards of Denbies above Dorking and the medieval sandstone villages of Shere and Albury.
Polesden Lacey, Painshill and the Edwardian Country Houses
Polesden Lacey — the National Trust Edwardian country house of 1906 near Great Bookham, remodelled for the society hostess Mrs Ronald Greville with the walled rose garden, the East and West terraces’ formal gardens and the Surrey Hills AONB valley views from the house’s south-facing terraces — provides Surrey’s most celebrated country house and garden portrait setting: the long Edwardian house facade above the southern terrace, the walled rose garden’s climbing roses and the views to Ranmore Common above provide portrait compositions of Edwardian country house garden character. Painshill Park — the 18th-century landscape garden at Cobham — provides an additional Surrey country house portrait setting.
Box Hill, the North Downs and the Medieval Sandstone Villages
Box Hill — the chalk and box-tree covered spur of the North Downs escarpment above the Mole Gap at Dorking, with the National Trust summit at 224 metres providing views north to the City’s glass towers visible on clear days and south to the Weald’s green fields — provides Surrey’s most celebrated hilltop portrait destination: the chalk grassland’s open summit, the ancient box woodland’s dark evergreen character and the Mole valley below create portrait compositions of chalk downland escarpment character. The sandstone villages of the Lower Greensand belt south of Box Hill — Shere’s Norman church and ford, Abinger Hammer’s clock and Holmbury St Mary’s Iron Age fort — provide portrait settings of Surrey medieval village character.