[4] Holmbury Hill with its Iron Age settlements in the parishes of Shere, Guildford borough and Abinger, Mole Valley borough Holmbury St Mary for early British settlers would have been a more suitable, accessible settlement than the denser woodland of this area.

[5] A Roman road NNW to SSE just west of the village centre runs from Rowhook over the Sussex border where it met with England's south Stane Street (stone street) between London and Chichester the other end point is not clear however it was traced in the reign of Victoria by James Park Harrison (1816–1901)[6][7] and the Rapley Roman villa's remains are west of the village: interesting discoveries include a tile-kiln discovered and excavated in 1836 and from the villa itself in the 1960s, fragments of a glass goblet and an unusual vase decorated with a 'Mural Crown'.

"When King John was at Guildford and Knepp Castle in West Sussex on the same day, 21 January 1215, in winter when unmade ways were foul, he very probably used the Roman road.

Historian H. E. Malden commented of the village in 1911, nothing shows the backwardness of the Weald more than the absolute disuse and forgetting (and abandonment) of these lines of through passage.

The wealth of the area can also be seen in the many fine timber-framed houses dating from this medieval and Tudor period, however reliance on coal and the work of the Industrial Revolution later led to neglect, poverty, highwaymen and smuggling exacerbated by the less well trodden transportation connections.

[5] As shown by the list of prominent Victorian and twentieth century figures, the wood nestled physical geography of the area has led to home building among wealthy individuals in the parish.

[14] The East window behind the altar in the church was commissioned from Archibald Keightley Nicholson as a memorial window for Captain William Ralph Frecheville who was executed after capture 9 January 1920 aged 24, in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, whilst serving as part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.