Wedding Photographer Surrey Hills — Box Hill, Leith Hill, Denbies Vineyard and the North Downs Way
The Surrey Hills AONB is the largest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the South East and the most topographically varied landscape within an hour of London — a 303-square-kilometre AONB of the North Downs’ chalk escarpment, the Greensand Ridge and the Weald clay whose highest points at Leith Hill (294 metres, the highest point in South East England) and Box Hill’s chalk spur provide panoramic portrait landscapes visible to the coast on clear days, while the AONB’s interior contains Denbies wine estate’s 265 acres of Surrey vineyard, the medieval sandstone lanes of Shere and Albury and the North Downs Way National Trail. For Surrey Hills wedding photography, this landscape provides portrait environments of chalk downland, ancient beech woodland and English vineyard of quite exceptional variety within very limited travel distances.
Box Hill, the Mole Gap and the Chalk Downland Escarpment
Box Hill — the National Trust’s chalk-and-box-tree spur at the North Downs’ escarpment above the Mole Gap, with the summit at 224 metres providing views north-east to London’s glass towers (visible on clear days) and south to the Weald’s farmland — provides Surrey’s most celebrated and most dramatic portrait landscape destination: the chalk grassland’s National Nature Reserve, the ancient box woodland’s dark yew-and-box canopy and the stepped chalk quarry faces provide portrait compositions of chalk downland of considerable textural and tonal variety. The Mole Gap below Box Hill — where the River Mole cuts north through the chalk escarpment by an ancient underfit valley — provides waterside chalk river portrait settings. The North Downs Way runs along the summit ridge providing walking portrait positions.
Leith Hill Tower, Denbies Vineyard and the Greensand Ridge
Leith Hill — the Greensand Ridge’s highest point at 294 metres above Holmbury St Mary, with the Gothic tower of Richard Hull (1765, raised 1796 to bring the artificial summit above 1000 feet) on the summit and the panoramic views south to Brighton and the Channel coast visible on clear days — provides Surrey’s most dramatic hilltop portrait destination with the additional vertical element of the tower’s Gothic silhouette. Denbies Wine Estate — the 265-acre Surrey vineyard above Dorking, one of England’s largest wine estates, with the vine rows’ summer green and autumn gold, the cellar door building and the North Downs escarpment above — provides a specific vineyard portrait setting of English wine country character. The medieval lane-pattern of the Lower Greensand’s sandstone villages provides intimate rural portrait settings.