Attraction in Surrey

Chessington World of Adventures in Surrey is one of Britain's leading family theme parks and zoo, a large complex that combines a safari-themed zoo with a substantial selection of rides and attractions designed for families with children of all ages. The park offers a range of experiences from gentle animal encounters and mild rides for young children to more substantial roller coasters and family attractions for older visitors, making it one of the most versatile theme park destinations in the southeast. The zoo component of Chessington houses a wide range of animals including big cats, primates, sea lions, gorillas and many other species in themed habitat zones that provide both visitor enjoyment and zoo-standard animal welfare facilities. The sea life centre within the park adds a marine dimension to the animal exhibits and the combination of land and marine wildlife creates a comprehensive animal encounter experience for families with young children for whom the animals are as important as the rides. The theme park rides range from the Vampire roller coaster and the Tomb Blaster dark ride to the gentler Tiger Rock water ride and the Dragon's Fury spinning coaster, providing a broad range of thrill levels suitable for the wide age range of families that the park targets. The location in the leafy Surrey countryside provides a pleasant setting and the proximity to London makes Chessington one of the most accessible major theme parks in the southeast.

Hampton Court Palace on the Thames near Kingston is one of the greatest and most historically resonant royal palaces in England, a complex of buildings spanning five centuries from the Tudor masterpiece built by Cardinal Wolsey and expanded by Henry VIII to the baroque state apartments added by William III and Mary II at the end of the seventeenth century. The juxtaposition of Tudor and baroque architecture within a single working palace is unique in England and makes Hampton Court an architectural experience of exceptional variety and richness. Cardinal Wolsey began building Hampton Court in 1515 as an expression of his enormous personal wealth and political power, creating a palace of such luxury that Henry VIII demanded it from him in 1528 when its magnificence became an embarrassment to the crown. Henry's subsequent development of the complex, adding the magnificent Great Hall, the enormous kitchens capable of feeding a court of over six hundred people twice daily, and the tennis court, created the principal Tudor royal residence in England. Every Tudor monarch used Hampton Court and the palace's association with the full drama of Tudor history, from the births and deaths of royal children to the honeymoons of successive queens, gives it an historical depth matched by no other royal building in England. William III and Mary II commissioned Christopher Wren to rebuild the Tudor state apartments in the baroque style, adding the south and east wings with their grand state rooms decorated by Verrio's painted ceilings, Gibbons's carved woodwork and the finest Dutch and Flemish paintings of the royal collection. The combination of the Tudor and baroque ranges around the successive courtyards creates a building of remarkable historical layering. The gardens include the famous maze of 1690, the Great Vine of 1769, the formal Privy Garden and the Wilderness, and the Thames frontage provides an exceptional setting for the whole complex.

Petworth House in West Sussex is one of the finest and most important country houses in England, a late seventeenth-century mansion in a great deer park whose collection of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts is of national importance and includes one of the finest groups of works by J M W Turner in the world. The National Trust manages the house and park, and the combination of the extraordinary art collection, the atmospheric house interiors and Capability Brown's park landscape makes Petworth one of the most rewarding country house visits in southern England. The house was rebuilt in its current form between 1688 and 1696 by the sixth Duke of Somerset, the west front's long facade of Caen and Petworth stone among the most distinguished seventeenth-century domestic elevations in the country. The interior was progressively enriched by successive owners, reaching its greatest elaboration under the third Earl of Egremont in the early nineteenth century, who transformed Petworth into one of the great artistic households of the Regency period and whose patronage of Turner produced the series of paintings depicting the park, the house and the interior rooms that are the crown of the collection. Turner stayed at Petworth repeatedly between 1809 and 1837 as the guest of Lord Egremont and the nineteen oil paintings and over one hundred sketches he made there constitute the most concentrated body of his work associated with any single place. The paintings range from the grand landscape compositions depicting the park at sunrise and sunset to the intimate interior views of rooms and figures, including the luminous sketches of the library and the great staircase, that are among the most free and personal works Turner produced. The deer park, landscaped by Capability Brown, is one of the finest of his surviving works and the view of the house across the lake is one of the defining images of the English landscape garden tradition.

RHS Wisley Garden in Surrey is the flagship garden of the Royal Horticultural Society, a 240-acre garden of exceptional quality and variety that serves as both the society's primary demonstration and research garden and as one of the most visited gardens in Britain. The garden encompasses a remarkable range of garden styles and plant collections, from the formal walled garden and glasshouses to the naturalistic wildflower meadows, the rock garden, the Battleston Hill rhododendron walks and the great glasshouse opened in 2007, providing a comprehensive survey of horticultural excellence that attracts gardeners of all levels of expertise. The garden's origins lie in the sixty-acre estate given to the RHS in 1903 by Sir Thomas Hanbury, and its subsequent development under a succession of RHS directors has added progressively to both the collections and the designed landscape. The Trial Gardens, where the RHS assesses new plant varieties for the Award of Garden Merit, provide an annual display of the finest and most innovative plant breeding, and the results of these trials inform the advice on plant selection that the RHS provides to gardeners across the country. The new Welcome Building opened in 2021 and the ongoing development of the garden's infrastructure has provided visitor facilities that match the quality of the garden itself. The seasonal programme at Wisley, from the spring flower shows through the summer displays to the autumn colour and the winter floral displays in the glasshouses, provides a different and equally rewarding experience in every season. The proximity of Wisley to the M25 makes it one of the most accessible major gardens in southern England, and the combination of the horticultural excellence, the plant sales and the seasonal displays makes it one of the most visited paying attractions in the southeast.

Thorpe Park near Chertsey in Surrey is one of the leading theme parks in Britain, specialising in high-intensity thrill rides including several of the fastest and most extreme roller coasters available in the country. The park attracts approximately 1.5 million visitors annually and is positioned firmly at the thrill-seeking end of the British theme park spectrum, suited to older children and adults rather than a family-with-young-children demographic. The ride collection includes Stealth, a hydraulically launched coaster reaching 80 mph in 1.8 seconds, and Saw: The Ride, styled after the horror film franchise, among the most intensive experiences available. The park sits on a former gravel pit and some of the lakes created by the extraction are incorporated into the water attractions and setting. The Fright Nights Halloween seasonal events have become one of the most popular seasonal theme park events in Britain, attracting large numbers of visitors during October. The location in the Thames Valley provides reasonable accessibility from London and the southeast, and the combination of the park with the nearby Windsor Great Park and Windsor Castle provides the framework for a multi-day family visit to this part of Surrey.