Albury Old Saxon Church

The parish of Albury, only thirty miles southwest of London, sits along the Tillingbourne Valley in the middle of the Surrey Hills AONB. The Church and the village were recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086, where the village was referred to as Eldeberie.

The Old Parish Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul used to be the central focus of the original village of Albury, before it was moved half a mile to the west; its history and present isolation are closely linked to the owners of the Albury Park Mansion.

The stone building dates from Saxon times with many changes and alterations throughout the centuries.

The graveyard is also a very interesting wildlife area and abounds in a profusion of rare wildflowers.

The ancient church stands in a quiet, rural, and peaceful location, set amongst trees and parkland, some distance from other buildings and the nearest road.

The church, now vested in The Churches Conservation Trust, is always open to visitors. Fresh flowers and the day-to-day management are organized by The Friends of Albury Old Saxon Church.

The Recent History of the Church

Up until 1782, this ancient Saxon church was in the center of the village of Albury, but when the estate came into the possession of the Honourable William Clement Finch R.N., he enclosed the village green, which formerly came up to the south and west walls of the churchyard, annexed the northeast corner of the churchyard itself to form part of the grounds of the mansion, and embarked on such harassment of the Albury villagers that most of them moved away to Weston Street, a hamlet about half a mile to the west (now called Albury). This harassing process was continued by a later owner, Charles Wall, so that by the time Henry Drummond came to acquire the estate from Wall in 1819, there was little left of the original village save its parish church and the village inn.

The church was by now in a very poor state of repair, and the churchyard too small for the growing population. In 1839, Henry Drummond applied to the Bishop of Winchester for permission to build for the parish a new church at Weston Street (Albury) and to close the old church. That permission having been obtained, no time was lost; before the end of that same year, work had begun on the building of the present Albury parish church, and Pugin (then a young man of 27) had been brought in to design the Mortuary Chapel for the Drummond family within the old church.

When Henry Drummond died in 1860, the estate passed to his daughter Louisa. It was her marriage in 1845 to Lord Lovaine, afterwards 6th Duke of Northumberland, that led to the Albury Estate passing later into the hands of the Percy family in 1890, on the death of Lady Lovaine as Duchess of Northumberland.

In 1974, the church became vested in the Redundant Churches Fund, which was subsequently renamed the Churches Conservation Trust in 1994. Under the local patronage of the Duke of Northumberland in 1974, the Albury Friends was formed as a group of volunteers to look after the day-to-day management of the church, organizing the daily security, the regular floral arrangements, general cleaning, any small repairs/maintenance needs, and also organizing regular fundraising events. The Friends of Albury Old Saxon Church became a registered charity in 2016 to enable more significant autonomous conservation/restoration projects to be undertaken.