How do I consult the Surrey Historic Environment Record?

Historic Environment Record office: February 2023 update

The Surrey Historic Environment Record (HER) wishes to make its customers aware that, as a consequence of moving to a new office base at Quadrant Court in Woking in early 2021 and subsequent periods of restricted access to it, not all of the HER's office-based resources (published materials and physical archive) are readily retrievable. We encourage you to contact the HER with any enquiry you may have but ask that you bear in mind that some resources remain boxed up and so it take a lot longer than we would like to provide a full response to your request. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

To contact the HER please use the online enquiry form or email: her@surreycc.gov.uk. Postal enquiries continue to be accepted but, owing to limited staff presence in the HER office base, responses to them are likely to be less rapid than if submitted online or by email. Our contact page provides more information.

Enquiries to the Surrey Historic Environment Record (HER) are welcome, either by email or online enquiry form. The record is managed by the Historic Environment Planning team and is based at Quadrant Court, Woking.

The HER is a computerised database, as well as a reference library containing a range of publications and unpublished material, which are available for consultation by appointment. Resources available to researchers include:

  • The main HER electronic database, allowing rapid searches to be made by geographical area, historical period, types of site or find, and many other criteria.
  • Thousands of unpublished archaeological contractors and consultants fieldwork reports (also known as "grey literature").
  • Local journals and publications.
  • Information on Scheduled Monuments within Surrey.
  • Ordnance Survey 1:10,000 maps covering the whole area of Surrey, marked with original Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) locations and areas of archaeological interest, plus copies of other historical maps.

A completed, signed enquiry form must be received by the HER before any request for information can be answered. An online form is available via the link below. Please be as specific as possible about the information you require when completing the form. Any supporting files (plans, shapefiles) should be sent separately via email to her@surreycc.gov.uk; please attach the files directly to the email as the HER is unable to receive zip files and other compressed files.

Submit an HER enquiry request online

There is no charge for using the HER unless the data are being collected for commercial purposes. For public research, educational or personal interest purposes, a charge may be applied in circumstances when the requirement is of a scale that will take members of the HER team more than two hours to complete.

The HER guidelines for users provide more information about the terms and conditions of use of HER data.

Summary versions of most HER data are also available to search online via the Exploring Surrey's Past website.