Surrey
Surrey has a population of approximately 1.1 million people. Its largest town is Guildford, with a population of 77,057 (2011 census); Woking is second with 62,796. They are followed by Ewell with 39,994 people and Camberley with 30,155. Towns of between 25,000 and 30,000 inhabitants are Ashford, Epsom, Farnham, Staines and Redhill. Guildford is the historic county town, although the county administration was moved to Newington in 1791 and to Kingston upon Thames in 1893. The county council's headquarters have been outside the county's boundaries since 1 April 1965, when Kingston and other areas were included within Greater London by the London Government Act 1963.
List of places of worship in Epsom and Ewell
Epsom and Ewell is the smallest of Surrey's 11 local government districts: it covers approximately . The population was estimated at 68,000 in 2004, but the 2011 Census revealed that more than 75,000 people lived in the borough. The largest places are the town of Ewell, which originated in the Roman era, and neighbouring Epsom—a fashionable spa town in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its early growth was encouraged by the discovery of Epsom Salts in 1618 and the founding of The Derby horse race in 1779. Extensive suburban development followed the opening of railway lines in the mid-19th century, and in the interwar the Worcester Park and Stoneleigh areas were laid out on farmland. Further growth came in the 1990s when five 19th- and early-20th-century psychiatric hospitals at Horton, Epsom were demolished and replaced with housing.
Ewell developed from 70 around a bend in Stane Street, a major Roman road. It was Surrey's largest settlement by 150 . Land in the area was later within the royal demesne or—in the case of the manor of Fitznells, documented as early as 675—owned by Chertsey Abbey. Its ancient parish church, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, was replaced by a new church within the same churchyard in 1848, but the 15th-century tower survives from the earlier building. Land in the Epsom area was granted to Chertsey Abbey in 727, and the manor of Epsom still belonged to it at the time of the Domesday survey in 1086. At that time there were two churches in Epsom, "but all trace of one has disappeared"; the other, the much rebuilt St Martin's Church, is still the town's parish church. Cuddington, a medieval village near Ewell with its own church, was demolished in the 16th century to allow Nonsuch Palace and its associated parks to be built. The parish name is still in use today, and a new church was built in the Worcester Park suburb in the north of the district. Other Anglican churches were provided throughout the Victorian era and into the 20th century as the population grew: Christ Church, St Barnabas' and St John's in Epsom, All Saints at West Ewell, St John the Baptist's Church at Stoneleigh (1939), St Stephen-on-the-Downs at Langley Vale (1961) and St Paul's at Howell Hill, between Ewell and Cheam (1989).
Benedictine monks from a chapel in nearby Cheam were responsible for Roman Catholic worshippers between the early 19th century and 1859, when the priest of the Croydon Catholic Mission founded a Mass centre in a house near Epsom railway station. A permanent church was built between 1861 and 1865 and was rebuilt on the same site in 1930 and 1961 as congregations grew. This was in turn replaced by a new church on a much larger site in 1999–2001. The Worcester Park area became a separate parish in 1906; its church, St Matthias, founded St Clement's Church at Ewell as a Mass centre in 1937. It was parished four years later and the present church building was erected in 1962.