EDITOR'S NOTE
The festivals have packed up and the town gets on with autumn. It is a proper theatre week: the West End's Choir of Man pitches its pub in the Yvonne Arnaud for five nights, G Live has something on every evening from Tom Bailey on Monday to Big Dunc on Sunday, and Saturday is stacked - a free family open day at G Live, Grace Petrie in Holy Trinity, the Real Thing at fifty, Springsteen by candlelight and the Police Band's Proms. Two practical things: the A3 southbound through town is shut overnight on Monday and Tuesday, and on Sunday the Ascot line is buses. Both in Useful Updates. And, quietly, Guildford is getting a town council.
FEATURED THIS WEEK
The Choir of Man
Yvonne Arnaud, Tuesday 22 to Saturday 26 September. The Olivier-nominated West End hit on its first UK tour: nine men, a working pub set with a real bar, and a set list that runs from Queen and Paul Simon to Adele, Sia and Avicii, played live by the cast. Tap, poetry, a lot of harmony, a bit of crying. Age guidance 10+, 1hr 50 with interval. Evenings 7.30pm (Friday 4pm and 8pm), matinees Wednesday and Saturday at 2.30pm; Thursday's show is audio-described. From £42, concessions from £18. Tickets →
BEST FOR KIDS
Connect at G Live, Saturday 26 September, 10am–1pm. The venue's free community open day, autumn edition: face painting, balloon modelling, mindfulness stone-making with Guildford Craft Collective, a board-games café run by Wayfarers of Godalming and local stalls through the building, plus bookable free workshops - Baby Boogie, yoga, aerobics, a skipping session, a family improv comedy hour at noon in the Bellerby Studio, and the backstage tours, which are already selling fast. Free; reserve online or turn up. Book free places →
NEW THIS WEEK
Padel is coming to the Lido - if the council says yes. Plans lodged with the borough would put two covered doubles padel courts on the footprint of the old Burrito Loco café at the back of Guildford Lido, in a 25m-square hall with lighting tucked under the canopy. Players would use the Lido's changing rooms and café; the courts would run alongside the pool, which is now open year-round. The application went in at the start of July and is still awaiting a decision.
HEADS UP
The A3 through Guildford is closed southbound on Monday and Tuesday nights. Stoke to the Hog's Back, 9pm to 6am on Monday 21 and again on Tuesday 22 September, for survey work - the diversion is through the gyratory. The northbound resurfacing south of town runs the same nights. And on Sunday 27 the Guildford–Ascot line is buses all day. Details below.
👨👩👧 Things To Do
Kids & Family
Short Stories, Tall Tales: Adventures of an Ugly Duckling - Mill Studio, Yvonne Arnaud, Tue 22 September, 11.30am and 1.30pm. Hannah Summers' immersive storytelling for 0–4s: Tully the duck goes over the hill to find out where the river goes. 45 minutes; £14 for an adult and a child, extra tickets £8, babies under six months free. Tickets →
Guildford Library click-and-collect starts Monday 21 - the refurbishment continues, but from Monday you can return books, pick up reservations and grab a hand-picked "Ready Reads" bag from the door. Every current loan has been extended to 10 November. Rhymetime and Storytime are still at the Yvonne Arnaud until the full reopening at the end of October.
Connect at G Live - Sat 26 September, 10am–1pm. The free open day above. Book the family improv (12pm), Baby Boogie and backstage tour slots in advance; the rest is walk-in.
Walkfest: Shalford and its railway - Fri 25 September, 10.30am, meet at Shalford station. Local historian David Rose and the Southeast Community Rail Partnership on a two-and-a-half-hour walk past the Chantries, the house Phil Collins once lived in and a lot of North Downs Line history. Free, and there is free rail travel to Shalford if you ask; book by emailing [email protected].
Ripley Museum: In the Footsteps of the Priors - Ripley Village Hall courtyard, Sat 26 September, 10am–noon. The Send & Ripley History Society's new exhibition on the villages' lost and surviving places of worship, with finds from Newark Priory on loan from Guildford Museum and the society's model of the priory. Free; Saturday mornings only.
Adults · Date Night
The Choir of Man - Yvonne Arnaud, Tue 22 to Sat 26 September. The featured show above; Friday has a 4pm as well as an 8pm, so it works for an early one. Tickets →
Thompson Twins' Tom Bailey + Blancmange - G Live, Mon 21 September. Two of the great synth-pop survivors on one bill: "Hold Me Now", "Doctor! Doctor!", "Living on the Ceiling". From £37, selling fast. Tickets →
Suzannah Lipscomb & Kate Williams: To Kill a Queen - G Live, Wed 23 September. Two historians work backwards from the axe at Fotheringhay to ask how Elizabeth I came to sign her cousin's death warrant - Cecil's spies, the Babington Plot, Mary's embroidery. From £28.80. Tickets →
Iain Ballamy Quartet - Guildford Pavilion, Woodbridge Road, Wed 23 September, 8pm. The Jazz & Soul Festival's midweek headliner: the ECM saxophonist with guitarist Rob Luft, who played on his Riversphere album (the Guardian's jazz album of the month in January). Pre-gig curry from Shahi Tandoori if you book it. Tickets →
Li Jin Hao: Falling From a Moon - G Live, Wed 23 September. The same night as the historians, in the smaller room; from £19.50 and selling fast. Tickets →
CK Gospel Choir - St Nicolas' Church, Bury Street, Fri 25 September, 7.45pm. The choir that has backed Rod Stewart, Beverley Knight and Alfie Boe, with its own rhythm section, in the church at the bottom of the High Street - part of the Jazz & Soul Festival and of St Nicolas' 150th-birthday year. Tickets →
Charlie Baker: Go Get It - G Live, Fri 25 September, from £22.50. The same night G Live's other room has The ELO Show and the Cathedral has Meat Loaf by Candlelight, so the Stag Hill car park will be busy.
Weekend Events
Grace Petrie - Holy Trinity Church, High Street, Sat 26 September, doors 7pm. The Boileroom takes over the church for the folk-protest songwriter of "Black Tie"; fifteen years in and still the most urgent voice on the circuit. Tickets →
Legends of Vinyl: The Real Thing, George McCrae and Gonzalez - G Live, Sat 26 September. The Real Thing's 50th-anniversary tour — "You to Me Are Everything", "Can't Get By Without You" - with "Rock Your Baby" and "Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet" on the same bill. From £36.50. Tickets →
The Music of Bruce Springsteen by Candlelight - Guildford Cathedral, Sat 26 September, 7.30pm. A live band and a cast of vocalists doing Born in the USA to The River under a few hundred candles; café and bar from 6pm. Tickets →
Surrey Police Band: A Night at the Proms - Normandy Village Hall, Sat 26 September, 7pm. The annual flag-waving finale, with free parking, free programme, free tea and cake and a licensed bar. £12, under-16s £5, under-5s free. Tickets →
Emily Windham Quartet - Rogues Bar, Epsom Road, Sat 26 September, 8pm. Acoustic soul and jazz from the RADA-trained singer and her quartet; free, just turn up. Also Saturday at G Live: Welsh comic Morgan Rees: What a Bummer, from £25.50.
Brian Bilston: How to Lay an Egg with a Horse Inside - Yvonne Arnaud, Sun 27 September. The "poet laureate of Twitter" live; limited availability. Tickets →
An Audience with Duncan Ferguson - G Live, Sun 27 September. Big Dunc, unscripted, on Everton, Rangers, prison and burglars. From £42.25.
Looking ahead: Twelve Angry Men opens at the Yvonne Arnaud on Tue 29; the Jazz & Soul Festival closes with a free jam on Tue 29; and the Guildford Festival of the Arts runs 1–4 October, with Gus Casely-Hayford in conversation at the Yvonne Arnaud on Fri 2 and Watts Gallery taking part from Thu 1.
🏙️ What's New in Guildford
Guildford is getting a town council - and a bill for it. On Tuesday the West Surrey Shadow Council's executive accepted Guildford Borough's recommendation to create a town council for the urban area when the borough is abolished next April. Households in the town wards will pay an estimated £69 a year extra for a budget of about £2 million, with the first elections next May. The borough's own consultation had gone narrowly against it (1,507 to 1,486, on a six per cent turnout), and the debate was mostly carried by councillors from outside Guildford; borough leader Julia McShane, who voted against it in March, was absent. Cllr Vanessa King's case: without it, urban Guildford's 70,000 residents lose their only dedicated tier of representation.
Padel at the Lido. Two covered courts on the site of the old Burrito Loco, with lighting under the canopy and a noise assessment that says the neighbours will be fine. Submitted in July, undecided; the callout above has the detail.
Halifax closes on Thursday. The High Street branch shuts for good on Thursday 24 September, a day after Woking's, as the Halifax brand is folded into Lloyds. Accounts, sort codes and cards carry on as before; the counter does not.
Susan Halliwell is confirmed as West Surrey's first chief executive. The Bracknell Forest chief was appointed by the shadow council after last week's meeting, on a salary of £236,485, beating nine other applicants. She hopes to start "in the coming months"; the new council takes over on 1 April 2027.
Still to come: Victoria's Secret at The Friary - hoardings up, opening "this autumn", date still unannounced.
🚧 Useful Guildford Updates
Roads - two nights through town, and a Tuesday for the M25. The A3 southbound is closed between Stoke and the Hog's Back on Monday 21 and Tuesday 22 September, 9pm to 6am, for survey works - the third such closure in a fortnight - which sends the diversion round the gyratory. The northbound carriageway is also shut both nights further south (Hazel Grove to Milford, and the Longmoor slips), and on Tuesday night the M25 anti-clockwise is closed between junctions 11 and 10, 10pm to 5.30am, which is the Wisley end of any late drive back from Heathrow. National Highways' rolling report only reaches Tuesday at the time of writing; Wednesday onwards is published on Monday. Closure report →
Trains — clear until Sunday. Nothing on the South Western Railway calendar touches Guildford from Monday to Saturday, and there is no engineering work anywhere on the network on Saturday 26 - but the Twickenham rugby that afternoon thins out the Cobham line (the xx03 from Waterloo and xx34 from Guildford do not run between about 11am and 8pm) and knocks hourly gaps into the Farnham and Ascot services. Then on Sunday 27 September all lines between Brookwood and Aldershot are closed: buses replace trains between Guildford and Ascot via Ash, Wanborough and Aldershot all day, and nothing runs Woking–Ascot. The North Downs line to Redhill and Gatwick is open all week; on Sunday its trains leave Reading up to five minutes late while CrossCountry is diverted. Check before you travel →
Buses - the bus station works continue. Phase one of the Friary bus station refurbishment carries on: Commercial Road stands closed, stands 3 to 15 in use, Merrow-side routes from North Street. Last week's emergency closure of the temporary Onslow Street stops (routes 18, 46, 65 and 91 from stand 2 inside the station) had no end date when we last checked; look at the stop before you wait at it.
Planning - another quiet week, with two shop signals. Forty-three applications were validated and thirty-four decided in the week beginning 7 September, and nearly all of them were extensions, trees and conditions. Two worth noting. 66 High Street has applied for an internal refit and new fascia and projecting signage (ref 26/P/01127) - the usual first sign of a new tenant, though the applicant is a private name rather than a chain. And McDonald's 24-hour-deliveries application for Friary Street, which we flagged last week, is now formally on the register (26/P/01210) and open for comment. Elsewhere: a pair of semis to replace a house in Jacobs Well, a one-pitch Gypsy and Traveller site proposed off the Guildford Road at Normandy, and more condition paperwork on Wisley Airfield. Nothing of consequence was decided.
COMING UP THIS WEEK
Mon 21 Sep: Library click-and-collect starts · Tom Bailey + Blancmange, G Live · As It Is, The Boileroom, 7pm · A3 southbound Stoke–Hog's Back closed 9pm–6am
Tue 22 Sep: Choir of Man opens, Yvonne Arnaud (to Sat) · Ugly Duckling, Mill Studio, 11.30am & 1.30pm · WORD spoken-word night, The Boileroom, 7pm · Little Notes autumn term starts · A3 southbound closed again 9pm–6am; M25 anti-clockwise J11–J10 closed 10pm–5.30am
Wed 23 Sep: To Kill a Queen and Li Jin Hao, G Live · Iain Ballamy Quartet, Pavilion, 8pm · Choir of Man matinee 2.30pm · Youth Theatre autumn term, Yvonne Arnaud
Thu 24 Sep: Halifax High Street closes · Motown: How Sweet It Is and Hellfire Comedy Club, G Live · Choir of Man audio-described, 7.30pm (touch tour 5.30pm) · Junkoactive Wasteman, The Boileroom
Fri 25 Sep: Walkfest Shalford walk, 10.30am · CK Gospel Choir, St Nicolas', 7.45pm · Charlie Baker and The ELO Show, G Live · Meat Loaf by Candlelight, Cathedral · The Jacques, The Boileroom · Choir of Man 4pm & 8pm
Sat 26 Sep: Connect at G Live, free, 10am–1pm · Ripley Museum, 10am–noon · Grace Petrie, Holy Trinity · Legends of Vinyl and Morgan Rees, G Live · Springsteen by Candlelight, Cathedral, 7.30pm · Police Band Proms, Normandy, 7pm · Emily Windham, Rogues, 8pm (free) · Eminem tribute, The Boileroom · Twickenham rugby thins the Cobham line
Sun 27 Sep: Brian Bilston, Yvonne Arnaud · Duncan Ferguson, G Live · Guildford–Ascot line: buses all day
HIDDEN GEM OF THE WEEK
The Watts Cemetery Chapel, Compton. Most people who go to Watts Gallery never walk the five minutes up Down Lane to the village cemetery, and the ones who do tend to stand very still for a while. The chapel is Mary Watts's, not her famous husband's: she designed it in 1895, taught seventy-odd villagers to model clay in evening classes, and had them make every terracotta panel, angel and Celtic knot on the outside by hand - a Home Arts project that turned a Surrey village into a workshop for nine years. The building is a red-brick Greek cross with a Romanesque doorway, art nouveau on top of Celtic on top of Egyptian, and it is Grade I listed. The inside is the surprise: a dim, gilded, wraparound frieze of angels in gesso and paint, which the photographs never quite manage. G.F. Watts is buried in the cloister just outside. It is still a working chapel, it is free, and it is open every day, 10am–5pm - separate hours from the gallery, so you can do it on a Sunday afternoon without a ticket, and the gallery café is next door for afterwards.
Watts Cemetery Chapel, Compton © Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
WEATHER THIS WEEK
A warm, still start. Monday is the best day of the week at 24°C, dry all day, with barely 5mph of wind - the kind of afternoon the Lido is still open for. Tuesday is 22°C, mostly dry (a 10% chance of a shower mid-morning), with a light southerly and a warm 16°C night before it. Wednesday holds at 21°C, but the wind swings round to the north and the morning starts at 13°C - the first day you might want a jacket for the Walkfest crowd or the walk down Woodbridge Road to the Pavilion.
From Thursday - which takes in the Shalford walk on Friday and the whole of Saturday, with its open day at G Live, the Proms at Normandy and the queue for candles at the Cathedral - 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 after 4am on Thursday 17 September (Met Office update 2am).
👀 WORTH KNOWING
A pub garden in Gomshall is the best in the borough. The Compasses Inn took Guildford in Bloom's Best in Competition award this week — hanging baskets and barrel planters across the front, a walkway over the brook to a garden with a planter at almost every table, all kept alive through the summer's heat by staff watering from the stream. Bar manager Lynda Cook said she could not believe how many people had stopped to photograph it. Also honoured: David Knapp's wildlife garden in Puttenham, "every inch dedicated to providing for wildlife, not people", and Bee Friends' five acres of ancient woodland at Worplesdon, which runs free sessions for schools and uniformed groups. The Compasses is on the A25 at Gomshall, and the garden is still in flower.
Know someone who'd enjoy this?
Published by Getbrief, a trading name of RJP Group Ltd