Its civil parish is Wotton, a geographically large village with a small population west of Dorking.
Its central belt is a road separating a very long, natural grass and wildflower meadow.
On its northern edge are Tanners Hatch Youth Hostel and further, across a wooded vale, Polesden Lacey.
The North Downs Way National Trail, a long-distance path that runs from Farnham to Dover, via Canterbury, crosses the common.
For fifty years the route of the Tanners Hatch Marathon, a thirty-mile challenge walk, crossed the common.