EDITOR'S NOTE
Last week of the Fringe, second weekend of Heritage Open Days, and this time the free stuff is all in the middle of town: the Castle, the Guildhall, the Royal Grammar School's chained library and a row of century-old Dennis lorries parked on the High Street. Two things to know before you plan it. The trains to London are being rerouted all weekend, and Guildford Library is shut until Monday 21 — the detail on both is in Useful Updates.
FEATURED THIS WEEK
The town opens its doors — Heritage Open Days, second weekend
Heritage Open Days' second weekend is the town-centre one. Guildford Castle is free on Friday 18 and Saturday 19, with a "Shields Up!" activity for children and the climb to the top of the keep; the Guildhall opens with its stewards on Friday (12–4.30pm) and Saturday (10–4.30pm); and the Royal Grammar School shows off its Tudor schoolroom and chained library on Saturday. Also Saturday: pre-war Dennis vehicles outside Holy Trinity, 10am–4pm, including two cars from 1902 and 1909; the Treadwheel Crane on Town Wharf with its workings open, 10.30am–4pm (see Hidden Gem); free New Orleans jazz in the courtyard of Abbot's Hospital, 3–5pm; and heritage bus rides from the bus station, 10.30am–4pm, on old Guildford buses — a short loop of town on Saturday, a longer run to Watts Gallery and Shalford on Sunday. Watts Gallery is free again on Saturday and Sunday (10.30am–5pm). Sunday adds Henley Fort on The Mount, open one day a year (10.30am–3pm), the Albury Pigeon House and Hatchlands. Everything is free and almost nothing needs booking.
BEST FOR KIDS
Striking Comic Con, Surrey Sports Park, Saturday 19 September, 10am–4pm. Costumes, movie cars, a green-screen photo booth, PS5s and Switches to play, a costume competition and stalls selling everything from Star Wars to Pokémon. A quieter 9.30am entry is offered for anyone who needs it. Note the trains that day (below) if you have London friends coming. Tickets →
NEW THIS WEEK
Victoria's Secret is coming to The Friary. Surrey's first standalone store was announced on Wednesday: it will sit between Smiggle and Flying Tiger, the hoardings are already up, and the opening is "this autumn", date to be confirmed. Until now the nearest were Reading and Basingstoke.
HEADS UP
Trains to London are rerouted all weekend. On Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 September every line through Wimbledon is closed. Guildford–Waterloo trains that usually run that way are diverted and retimed, with some starting from Woking; the Cobham-line stoppers start from Surbiton on Saturday and go round via Epsom on Sunday, when buses also replace trains between Clapham Junction and Effingham Junction. Allow longer, and check the day before, not the day of.
👨👩👧 Things To Do
Kids & Family
History Detective at Guildford Museum — Quarry Street, Fri 18 (12–4.30pm) and Sat 19 September (10am–4.30pm). Free drop-in object-handling for ages 5+: work out what the everyday things were for when the museum was still a row of cottages. Then walk up to the Castle, also free both days.
The Smallest Sardine of the Seven Seas — The Stoke Pub, Stoke Road, Sat 19 September, 2pm. A mini pirate musical about a small fish finding her confidence; ages 4+, an hour long, £10/£8. The last family show of this year's Fringe. Tickets →
Heritage bus rides — from the bus station, Sat 19 and Sun 20 September, 10.30am–4pm. Free. A 1953 RF and, if it behaves, a Dennis Loline, doing a loop of town on Saturday and running out to Watts Gallery and Shalford on Sunday. Ask at the station for the stand: the listing says Bay 20, and that side of the station has been a building site since 1 September.
Miniature steam trains at Stoke Park — Guildford Model Engineering Society, off London Road, Sun 20 September, 2–5pm. Free entry with steam rides, garden railways and the indoor layout running, one day only for Heritage Open Days.
Pop Kids: The Big Neon Rave — The Boileroom, Sun 20 September, 1–3pm. A hosted 90-minute family rave with party dances, games, prizes and a special guest, from the crew that runs the family areas at Download and Victorious. Tickets →
Guildford Walkfest — free. Fri 18: "West Horsley without the Hills", 7km round the grounds of West Horsley Place, 10am, book with the Surrey Hills Society. Sat 19: "A Walk on the Wildside", an 11-mile circular from South Lane car park, Ash, 10.15am, with the Blackwater Valley rangers and Surrey Young Ramblers — all ages, but it is eleven miles.
Adults · Date Night
The Other Side of Murder — Yvonne Arnaud, Tue 15 to Sat 19 September. Rufus Hound as a TV medium whose cosy family dinner acquires a pregnant lover, a Gilbert-and-Sullivan-obsessed mother-in-law and some ghosts. Susie Blake and Carla Mendonça alongside; from the people behind Murder at Midnight. Promoted from last week's looking-ahead line. Tickets →
Robert Harris: Augustus, Agrippa and the Birth of the Roman Empire — G Live, Tue 15 September. The Conclave and Precipice novelist on his new book. From £37. Tickets →
Ward Thomas: Celebrating 10 Years of Cartwheels — G Live, Wed 16 September. The Hampshire sisters play the album that opened the door for British country-pop, with The Wandering Hearts in support. From £38.50. Tickets →
In Juliet's Garden — Clandon Wood, Thu 17 and Fri 18 September, 7.30pm. Five of Shakespeare's heroines compare complaints in Juliet's garden in Verona and wait to see if the Bard turns up; the Herald Players' fourth Fringe outing with it, in a nature reserve, with a bar. £15. Tickets →
Phil Wang: Uh Oh — G Live, Fri 18 September. From £31.50, selling fast. Tickets →
Norman Jay MBE — The Boileroom, Fri 18 September, doors 7pm. The Good Times sound-system man and KISS FM co-founder, rare groove and everything either side of it, in a room the size of his Carnival bus. Tickets →
Hejira: Celebrating Joni Mitchell — Guildford Jazz's Friday headline show is sold out, so that's one for the calendar only.
Weekend Events
Eric Idle: Idle in Provence — G Live, Sat 19 September. The Python on the fifty years since he bought a crumbling farmhouse in the south of France to escape the Python circus and got more chaos, not less. From £31. Tickets →
Martin Kemp: Back to the 80s — Guildford Cathedral, Sat 19 September, 7.30–11pm. The Spandau Ballet bassist DJs Duran Duran, George Michael, Madonna and, presumably, "Gold" under Maufe's roof. Tickets →
Fringe closing night — The Back Room of The Star Inn, Sat 19 September: Pandora: The Musical at 5pm (£12) and the Guildford Gag House Comedy Club at 8pm (£17.50) to send the festival off. Tickets →
A Celebration of Nirvana: 35 Years of Nevermind — The Boileroom, Sat 19 September, doors 7pm. The tribute band Nirvanah play the whole album. Tickets →
New Orleans jazz at Abbot's Hospital — Sat 19 September, 3–5pm. The Alvar Tree Frogs, a six-piece, in the courtyard of the 1619 almshouse at the top of the High Street. Free, no booking, part of the Jazz & Soul Festival and Heritage Open Days at once.
5 Mistakes That Changed History — Yvonne Arnaud, Sun 20 September. Historian-comedian Paul Coulter's Edinburgh sell-out: five people, five errors, one changed world. Limited availability. Tickets →
Henley Fort — The Mount, Sun 20 September, 10.30am–3pm. The Victorian mobilisation-centre fort that is now an outdoor education centre opens for its one public day of the year, with re-enactors, a stirrup pump to try, and the trig point. Free; parking is scarce, so walk up from town.
Looking ahead: Thompson Twins' Tom Bailey and Blancmange share a bill at G Live on Mon 21; the Iain Ballamy Quartet play the Pavilion and Li Jin Hao is at G Live on Wed 23; Halifax on the High Street closes on Thu 24; and Sat 26 brings The Real Thing's 50th-anniversary tour to G Live, Grace Petrie to Holy Trinity and the Surrey Police Band's Night at the Proms.
🏙️ What's New in Guildford
Victoria's Secret is opening in The Friary. Announced on Wednesday: Surrey's first standalone store, in the unit between Smiggle and Flying Tiger, opening "this autumn" with the date still to come. The nearest branches until now have been Reading, Basingstoke and Oxford Street.
Guildford Library is closed, and the register office is moving in. All services stopped on 20 August for a refurbishment that gives the children's library a full makeover, adds accessible toilets and builds four meeting rooms upstairs. A click-and-collect service — returns, reservations and the hand-picked "Ready Reads" bags — starts on Monday 21 September, with full reopening expected by the end of October. Every current loan has been extended to 10 November, so nothing is overdue. Rhymetime, Storytime and the Poetry Hub have decamped to the Yvonne Arnaud in the meantime. Part of the building is being converted into Surrey's registration office: Artington House on the Portsmouth Road, where Peter Sellers married Britt Ekland in 1964, closes as the register office in November.
West Surrey Council has chosen its first chief executive. Susan Halliwell, currently chief executive of Bracknell Forest, was put forward as the preferred candidate after a national search and went to an extraordinary meeting of the shadow authority on Thursday for confirmation. She would lead the new council, which takes over from Guildford Borough and Surrey County on 1 April 2027 — a timetable Surrey is keeping to even though the government paused reorganisation in other counties this week after legal challenges.
McDonald's wants to deliver all night. Having been refused 24-hour opening for its Friary Street restaurant in July, on anti-social-behaviour grounds, the chain has come back with a narrower ask: keep the doors on the current hours (6am–12.30am in store, 2.15am for takeaway) but run deliveries 24/7. The application is open for comment on the council's planning portal.
Don't swim at St Catherine's for now. Tests by the Water Rangers found E. coli at 2.4 times the safe guideline at the St Catherine's bathing spot in August. The Rangers say the source doesn't look like sewage this time, which is its own kind of unsettling; the practical advice is the same either way.
Still to come: Halifax on the High Street closes on 24 September.
🚧 Useful Guildford Updates
Trains — a diverted weekend. On Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 September engineering work closes every line through Wimbledon. Long-distance trains between Guildford and Waterloo that normally run that way are diverted and retimed, with some Portsmouth-line services starting back from Woking; on Saturday, buses replace trains between Clapham Junction and Surbiton. Sunday is messier: the via-Cobham line is diverted through Epsom, buses also run between Clapham Junction and Effingham Junction, and some trains pick up an extra stop at Worplesdon. Nothing on the SWR calendar touches Guildford Monday to Friday, and the North Downs line to Redhill and Gatwick has no closure listed for the coverage week — this Sunday's Guildford–Gatwick buses are the 13th, not the 20th. Check before you travel →
Buses — the Onslow Street stops are out. Since 3 September the temporary stops in the Onslow Street bus lane have been out of use for emergency UK Power Networks work, and Surrey County Council has not given a reopening date. Passengers for the 18, 46, 65 and 91 should use stand 2 inside the Friary bus station until further notice. The rest of phase one stands as it was: Commercial Road stands closed, stands 3 to 15 in use, Merrow-side routes from the North Street stops by the library. Stand-by-stand list →
Roads — one night through town. The A3 southbound is closed between Stoke and the Hog's Back on Wednesday 16 September, 9pm to 6am, for survey work, which puts the diversion through the gyratory. The southbound Ockham exit slip at the M25 end closes nightly Monday to Wednesday (10pm–5.30am), and the northbound resurfacing programme south of Guildford (Hazel Grove/Griggs Green to Thursley, and the Longmoor slips) runs 9pm–6am each night. National Highways' rolling seven-day report only reaches Wednesday; Thursday to Sunday is published on Tuesday. The permanent lane closure on the west side of Dennis Roundabout and the footpath diversion via Woodenbridge footbridge stay until December. Closure report →
Planning — a quiet week, honestly. Around forty-five applications were validated and about fifty decided in the week beginning 31 August, and almost all of them were extensions, trees and conditions. Two worth a line. The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre wants to strip and replace its roof, add insulation and put solar panels and plant on top, with a listed-building consent alongside (refs 26/P/01174 and 01175). And Wisley Airfield has lodged its next reserved-matters application: phase seven, the "sustainable movement corridor", a principal mobility hub, a green street, the school service road and the links towards Bridge End Farm — the transport spine for the new town. Also in: Surrey County Council consulting on extensions to Ash Grange Nursery and Primary School. Nothing of consequence was decided.
COMING UP THIS WEEK
Mon 14 Sep: Vince Taylor: Punk to Pension Plan (7.30pm) and What Now? (9pm), The Star Inn · Singalonga Pub Quiz, The Fallen Angel, 8pm · A3 Ockham exit slip closed overnight
Tue 15 Sep: The Other Side of Murder opens, Yvonne Arnaud (to Sat) · Robert Harris, G Live · Little Notes autumn term starts, Yvonne Arnaud · Vocation, The Star Inn, 7.30pm
Wed 16 Sep: Ward Thomas, G Live · Space Planet Mission (improvised sci-fi), The Star Inn, 9pm · Youth Theatre taster (13–16), Yvonne Arnaud · A3 southbound Stoke–Hog's Back closed 9pm–6am
Thu 17 Sep: In Juliet's Garden, Clandon Wood, 7.30pm · Buckets of Blood (7.30pm) and Jack Barry (9pm), The Star Inn · 80s karaoke, The Fallen Angel, 8pm
Fri 18 Sep: Guildford Castle and Guildhall free, 12pm · History Detective, Museum, 12pm · Rebecca Holton exhibition tours, Guildford House, 12.30 and 1.30pm · Walkfest at West Horsley Place, 10am · Phil Wang, G Live · Norman Jay, The Boileroom · In Juliet's Garden, Clandon Wood, 7.30pm
Sat 19 Sep: Castle, Guildhall, RGS chained library, Treadwheel Crane, Dennis vehicles, heritage bus rides, Watts Gallery — all free · Comic Con, Surrey Sports Park, 10am · Smallest Sardine, The Stoke, 2pm · Jazz at Abbot's Hospital, 3pm · Eric Idle, G Live · Martin Kemp, Cathedral, 7.30pm · Fringe closing night, The Star Inn · Nirvanah, The Boileroom · Wimbledon lines closed
Sun 20 Sep: Heritage bus to Watts and Shalford, 10.30am · Henley Fort, 10.30am · Pop Kids rave, The Boileroom, 1pm · Stoke Park steam trains, 2pm · Watts Gallery free · 5 Mistakes That Changed History, Yvonne Arnaud · Wimbledon lines closed; Cobham line via Epsom
HIDDEN GEM OF THE WEEK
The Treadwheel Crane, Town Wharf. Walk down Millbrook past the Yvonne Arnaud, cross to the river, and there is a small timber-and-tile shed with a wheel inside it eighteen feet across. It is a crane, probably late seventeenth century, from the first decades after the Wey Navigation opened in 1653 and turned Guildford into an inland port. To lift a load off a barge — timber, corn, gunpowder from Chilworth — men climbed inside the wheel and walked, like hamsters, and the jib swung it onto the wharf. It is believed to be the last working example of its kind in the country, it is Grade II* listed and a scheduled monument, and most people walk past it on the way to the boathouse without a second look. Normally you can only peer in through the bars. On Saturday 19 September, 10.30am–4pm, for Heritage Open Days, the doors are open and you can see the workings up close — and the "Everyday Histories" theme this year was more or less written for a machine powered by men walking in circles. Free, no booking.
The Treadwheel Crane, Guildford © Tim Sheerman-Chase, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
WEATHER THIS WEEK
A warm start. Monday is the pick of the week at 25°C, dry all day with barely a breeze and a mild 16°C night to follow. Tuesday cools to 21°C, with a 10–20% chance of a shower first thing and gusts to about 23mph in the afternoon, then clearing. Wednesday is 19°C and bone dry, but it starts at 11°C — the first properly cool morning of the autumn, so the school run wants a coat.
From Thursday — and that is the whole Heritage Open Days weekend, the heritage bus rides, the jazz in Abbot's Hospital courtyard, the steam trains at Stoke Park and Comic Con's queue outside Surrey Sports Park — the forecast is beyond reliable range at the time of writing. Check again on Thursday before you commit to a day outdoors.
Forecast from the Met Office Guildford page, retrieved just before midnight on Thursday 10 September (Met Office update 10.06pm).
👀 WORTH KNOWING
Chilworth station has a new mural, by the people who catch the train from it. The waiting shelter on platform 2 now carries artwork by children from Tillingbourne Junior School, printed on vinyl and installed by GWR's North Downs Line staff. Every year group took part in a workshop run by the Southeast Communities Rail Partnership, and the brief was the wildlife around the station — the plants, birds and insects of Blackheath and the old Gunpowder Mills site we sent you to last week. It replaces an earlier panel that had been damaged. If you took our advice and walked the mills, this is the platform you came home from.
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