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Places to stay in Guildford
Guildford, the county town of Surrey, is a small market town in Southern England, halfway between London and Portsmouth. Surrey, unlike many other English counties, cannot be traced back to an ancient kingdom. Surrey, was first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as Suthrige, the Southern District of Middlesex, the land of the Middle Saxons. Guildford, the town of the ford, is located in a gap in the North Downs where the River Wey breaks through the hills. An ancient trackway followed the North Downs and descended to a ford a little to the south of the town centre. This route was in use as late as the 18th century. The trackway can still be found, deeply cut into the hillside. At the place of crossing a small chalk spring flows into the River Wey. The Saxons established a site on the east of the river, which later grew into a larger site on the west bank of the river around the site of St Mary's Church. The Guildford pub bombing by the Provisional IRA in 1974 killed five people including four off-duty soldiers from the local barracks. The subsequently arrested suspects became known as the Guildford Four.
