Woking

Woking is a town and borough in north-west Surrey, England, around 23 miles (36 km) from central London. It appears in Domesday Book as Wochinges, and the earliest evidence of human activity is from the Palaeolithic, but the modern town was established in the mid-1860s when the London Necropolis Company began to sell surplus land around the railway station for development. The Borough of Woking covers 64 square kilometres and had a population of 103,900 in 2021, and about 60 percent of it is protected by the Metropolitan Green Belt. Landmarks include the ruins of Woking Palace, a royal residence of Henry VII and Henry VIII, and the Shah Jahan Mosque of 1889, the first purpose-built Muslim place of worship in the United Kingdom. H. G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds while living in the town.