In 2011 it had a population of 268 in 109 households clustered around three buildings, the church of St Thomas of Canterbury, The Queen's Head pub and the village hall.

Centred 4 miles (6 km) east of Guildford, the parish landscape on the lower slopes of the North Downs includes the 1,836-acre Ryde Farm Estate, Hatchlands Park, a National Trust estate, arable and livestock farmland, woodlands, High Clandon Vineyard and Clandon Regis Golf Club.

People settled here due to the availability of water that emerged where the high chalk downs meet the lower lying clay to the north.

Chertsey Abbey, a Benedictine foundation, was patron of East Clandon from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539.

The present Hatchlands House was built for him with the help of prize money from his victory over the French, and it was completed in 1758, only three years before the Admiral died.

According to the writings of Maurice Wiggin, Goodhart-Rendel was a tall, spare, upright figure making his daily round in the village dressed in his grey tweed suit and soft brown trilby shouting to his dogs in a real Grenadier's voice.

The TV series Catweazle was shot in East Clandon (on Home Farm), West Horsley and the surrounding area in summer 1969.