Web design in Horley, built to win local work.

Horley is older than its commuter-town appearance suggests. The manor was once held by the Benedictine abbey at Chertsey, and in the Domesday Book of 1086 it fell within the hundred of Cherchefelle, the name that later became Reigate. It later became the property of Christ’s Hospital in London, and an old manor map shows the town as three hamlets set around a huge open common, one near St Bartholomew’s Church, one by the River Mole and one at Horley Row, where some of the oldest buildings still stand. About a mile east lie the overgrown but well-preserved earthworks of Thunderfield Castle, a twelfth-century motte and bailey. The common was enclosed in 1816, turnpikes brought the London to Brighton coaches through, and the railway arrived in 1841, though the town grew slowly until its population doubled after 1950 as a dormitory town for London commuters. For a few years from 1904 it even had its own carmaker, the Horley Motor and Engineering Company on Balcombe Road, whose vehicles were sold as the Horley and the No Name.

There is a quirk of the map worth knowing. The 1972 local government changes moved Horley, Charlwood and Gatwick into West Sussex, but strong local opposition led to the Charlwood and Horley Act 1974, which returned Horley and Charlwood to Surrey while the airport stayed in Sussex. So Horley is firmly a Surrey town, right on the county line. Robert Baden-Powell, who founded the Scout movement, was briefly a resident. That kind of specific, true detail is what makes a website read as genuinely local, and it is what we build into your copy and your Google Business Profile so you show up when someone nearby searches for what you do.

Also covering: Redhill, Reigate, Charlwood, Salfords, Smallfield, Gatwick and the surrounding villages.