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Market town in Surrey, England
the market town in Surrey

The basic plan of the town centre has not changed since medieval times (and may be Anglo Saxon in origin). The main streets (the High Street, West Street and South Street) meet at Pump Corner, forming a " Y " shape. Together, West Street and the High Street run approximately west–east, paralleling the Pipp Brook, a tributary of the Mole, which runs to the north of the centre. The town is surrounded by the Metropolitan Green Belt (which also covers the Glory Wood) and is bordered on three sides by the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Several Sites of Special Scientific Interest are close by, including the Mole Gap to Reigate Escarpment, immediately to the north. The National Trust owns several properties in the area, including Box Hill, Leith Hill Tower and Polesden Lacey.

The rock strata on which Dorking sits, belong primarily to the Lower Greensand Group. This group is multilayered and includes the sandy Hythe Beds, the clayey Sandgate Beds and the quartz rich Folkestone Beds. The lower greensand was deposited in the early Cretaceous, most likely in a shallow sea with low oxygen levels. Over the subsequent 50 million years, other strata were deposited on top of the Lower Greensand, including Gault clay, Upper Greensand and the chalk of the North and South Downs. Following the Cretaceous, the sea covering the south of England began to retreat and the land was pushed higher. The Weald (the area covering modern day south Surrey, south Kent, north Sussex and east Hampshire) was lifted by the same geological processes that created the Alps, resulting in an anticline which stretched across the English Channel to the Artois region of northern France. Initially an island, this dome like structure was drained by the ancestors of the rivers which today cut through the North and South Downs, including the Mole. The dome was eroded away over the course of the Cenozoic, exposing the strata beneath and resulting in the escarpments of the Downs and the Greensand Ridge. In Dorking, the dividing line between the Lower Greensand and Gault clay is marked by the course of the Pipp Brook. In the south of the town, the Hythe Beds take the form of iron rich, soft, fine grained sandstone, whereas the Sandgate Beds have a more loamy composition. The quartz rich Folkestone Beds have a lower iron content, and contain veins of silver sand and rose coloured ferruginous sand. Running along the north bank of the Pipp Brook (with a width of around ) is the outcrop of Gault, a blue black shaly clay, beyond which is a narrow band of Upper Greensand, a hard, grey mica rich sandstone. In the extreme north west of the town, the marly Lower Chalk was quarried for lime production until the early 20th century. Ammonite fossils are found in the north of the town, including Stoliczkia, Callihoplites, Acanthoceras and Euomphaloceras species in the Lower Chalk and Puzosia species in the Upper Greensand. Foraminifera fossils have been found in the Hythe Beds adjacent to the Horsham road, to the west of Tower Hill.

The earliest evidence of human activity in Dorking comes from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods and includes flint tools and flakes found during construction development in South Street. During the rebuilding of the Waitrose supermarket in South Street in 2013, charred hazelnut shells, radiocarbon dated to between 8625 and 8465 BCE, were discovered. A ring ditch containing two ceramic urns, was also found. Other ditches identified during the same excavation may indicate the presence of a Bronze Age field system, although the date of these later earthworks is less certain. and on Box Hill (to the northeast).

There is thought to have been a settlement at Dorking in Roman times, although its size and extent are unclear. Coins from the reigns of Hadrian (117–138 AD), Commodus (180–192) and Claudius Gothicus (214–270), as well as tiles and pottery fragments, have been found in the town. and is thought to have run through Dorking. A posting station is thought to have been located in the area and sites have been proposed in the town centre, at Pixham

Although the name Dorking implies a settlement that was well established by the time of the Norman conquest, archaeological evidence of Saxon activity in the town centre is limited to pottery sherds. and at Vincent Lane (to the west). In 1817, the so called "Dorking Hoard" of around 700 silver pennies, dating from the mid 8th to the late 9th centuries, was found near the source of the Pipp Brook on the northern slopes of Leith Hill. refn|The hoard was discovered by a ploughman working at Winterfold Hanger. The coins were contained in a fragile wooden box, buried beneath the ground. The find included pennies from the reigns of Æthelwulf of Wessex (839–858), Æthelberht of Wessex (860–866), Beornwulf of Mercia (823–826), Burgred of Mercia (852–874) and several other monarchs. Around a third of the coins were donated to the British Museum. and may have been part of a large royal estate centred on Leatherhead. In around 1087, William II granted the manor of Dorking to Willam de Warenne, the first Earl of Surrey, whose descendants have held the lordship almost continuously until the present day. The dukedom was restored to the family in 1660, following the accession of Charles II. As the status of the de Warennes and their descendants increased, they became less interested in the town. In the 14th and 15th centuries, prominent local families (including the Sondes and the Goodwyns) were able to buy the leases on some of the lordship lands. One such area was the Deepdene, first mentioned in a court roll of 1399. This woodland was held by several tenants, before being inherited in 1652 by Charles Howard, the fourth son of the 15th Earl of Arundel, in whose family it remained until 1790. The estate was expanded by successive owners, including the Anglo Dutch banker Thomas Hope and his eldest son Henry Thomas Hope, who commissioned William Atkinson to remodel the main house as a "sumptuous High Renaissance palazzo". Unlike the neighbouring towns of Guildford and Reigate, Dorking was never granted a Borough Charter and remained under the control of the Lord of the Manor throughout the Middle Ages. There was little change in local government structure over the subsequent three centuries, until the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 transferred responsibility for poor relief to the Poor Law Commission, whose local powers were delegated to the newly formed poor law union in 1836. refn|The Dorking Union was responsible in for poor relief in the parish of Dorking (which included Holmwood, Westcott and Coldharbour) and also the parishes of Abinger, Capel, Effingham, Mickleham, Newdigate, Ockley and Wootton. A local board of health (LBH) was established in Dorking in 1881 to administer infrastructure including roads, street lighting and drainage. The LBH organised the first regular domestic refuse collection and, by mid 1888, had created a new sewerage system (including a treatment works at Pixham). The Local Government Act 1888 transferred many administrative responsibilities to the newly formed Surrey County Council and was followed by an 1894 Act that created the Dorking Urban District Council (UDC). refn|Pippbrook House is a Grade II* listed building.

Following the end of Roman rule in Britain, there appears to have been no systematic planning of transport infrastructure in the local area for over a millennium. During Saxon times, the section of Stane Street between Dorking and Ockley was bypassed by the longer route via Coldharbour and the upper surface of the Roman road was most likely quarried to provide stone for local building projects. Two routes linked the town to London, the first via the Mole crossing at Burford Bridge to Leatherhead and the second, the "Winter Road", climbed the south facing scarp slope of Box Hill from Boxhurst and ran northeastwards to meet the London Brighton road at Tadworth. In contrast, although several schemes were proposed to make the Mole navigable, none were enacted and transport links to Dorking remained poor. As a result, the local economy began to suffer and the town declined through the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The cost of the voyage from Portsmouth to Montreal for 61 recipients of poor relief was paid by private donations, however the emigrants also received an allowance for food and clothing from parish funds. Although many were young, single men aged 14–20, a few families also joined the group. The Chart Downs estate to the southeast of the town was built between 1948 and 1952. in the late 1950s and 1960s, Dorking UDC constructed the Goodwyns estate on land compulsorily purchased from Howard Martineau, a major local benefactor to the town. The initial designs were by Clifford Culpin and the project was subsequently developed by William Ryder, who was responsible for the erection of the Wenlock Edge and Linden Lea tower blocks.

The first mention of a church at Dorking occurs in Domesday Book of 1086. The Priory also acquired the right to appoint the town's priest. It is unclear where in the town the Domesday church was located. It appears to have been replaced at some point during the 12th century (possibly by Isabel de Warenne) by a large cruciform building with a central tower. In the late 14th century a clerestory and two side aisles were added to the nave. The so called Intermediate Church was constructed in 1835–1837. It had a square tower, topped with an octagonal spire, and could seat around 1800 worshippers. Its floor level was approximately higher than that of the church it replaced, allowing the base of the medieval nave to become a crypt. In 1868–1877, the Intermediate Church was rebuilt into the present St Martin's Church, designed in the Decorated Gothic style by the architect Henry Woodyer. The spire of the current church was dedicated as a memorial to Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (who had died in 1873) and in 1905–1911 the Lady chapel was added. A daughter church to St Martin's, designed by Edwin Lutyens and dedicated to St Mary, was opened at Pixham in 1903. In the two centuries following the passing of the 1558 Act of Uniformity, many inhabitants of Dorking embraced more extreme forms of protestantism and by 1676, the parish (which had a total population of around 1500) contained 200 nonconformists. In 1620, six residents, including Williams Mullins (a cobbler) and his daughter Priscilla, joined the Mayflower to establish a Separatist colony in the New World. refn|William Mullins, his wife Alice, daughter Priscilla and son Joseph lived at 58–61 West Street with their apprentice, Robert Carter. All five travelled together on the Mayflower. Mullins' house is the only surviving home of a Pilgrim Father in England. The sixth Dorking resident to join the Pilgrims was Peter Browne. Christopher Feake, the Fifth Monarchist and independent minister, lived in the town (allegedly under a false identity) following The Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. He may have incited some of the more radical residents to violence. Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe and a committed Presbyterian throughout his life, was educated in Dorking for five years, c. 1669–74. He attended a school in Pixham Lane run by Revd James Fisher a non conformist who had been ejected as Rector of Fetcham. The present United Reformed Church in West Street, designed by the architect William Hopperton, was built for the group by William Shearburn in 1834. John Wesley visited Dorking a total of nineteen times between 1764 and 1789. He opened a Methodist chapel in the town in 1777. A new church with a spire was built in South Street in 1900, however this building was sold and demolished in 1974. Since 1973, Dorking Methodists have held services at St Martin's. Although England had become a predominantly Protestant country during the Reformation, the families of the Earls of Arundel and Dukes of Norfolk remained Catholic. A mosque was established in Hart Road in 2006. From 1984 the building had been used as a meeting room for the Plymouth Brethren and was a synagogue for a time, before being acquired by the Dorking Muslim Community Association.

In late 1914, Dorking became a garrison town. Empty houses were requisitioned and from January 1915 around 4000 troops were accommodated including those from the London Scottish regiment, the Civil Service Rifles and the Queen's Westminster Rifles. Many local residents were recruited to the Surrey Yeomanry, which (until mid 1915) was stationed at Deepdene House and at the Public Hall in West Street. Although he was aged over 40 at the start of the war, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps, one unit of which was based in the town. Empty houses in the town also provided billets for soldiers during World War II and over 3000 school children were evacuated to the Dorking area in September 1939. A local refugee committee (led by Vaughan Williams and the novelist E. M. Forster) was established to find accommodation for refugees fleeing Nazi persecution and also to support long resident German and Czech nationals in applications to Home Office tribunals to remain at liberty in the UK. At the start of the war, the fortified GHQ Line B was constructed directly to the north of Dorking. This defensive line ran along the North Downs from Farnham via Guildford, before following the River Mole to Horley. The banks of the Mole were fortified with anti tank obstacles, pillboxes and gun emplacements and an anti tank ditch was dug from west to east across Bradley Farm (now Denbies Wine Estate). The town itself was a Class "A" nodal point and from August 1940 the 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade (part of the VII Corps) was assigned to its defence. Pippbrook House (the then offices of the Dorking UDC) became a mobilisation centre and housed an ARP post as well as the local branch of the Women's Voluntary Service. After the war, at least two Covenanter tanks were buried at Bradley Farm. The first was excavated and restored in 1977 and is now on display at The Tank Museum at Bovington in Dorset. A second was excavated in 2017 for the archaeology programme WW2 Treasure Hunters, presented by the musician Suggs on the TV channel HISTORY. The tank was displayed at the vineyard for six months, before being removed for restoration.

Dorking is in the Mole Valley parliamentary constituency, which has been represented in the House of Commons since 1997 by Sir Paul Beresford (Conservative). Kenneth Baker served as the local MP from 1983 to 1997 and was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Baker of Dorking in 1997.

Dorking does not have a Town Council, however stakeholder engagement in local decision making is conducted through a number of bodies, including the Dorking Town Forum.

Dorking is twinned with Gouvieux (Oise, France), Güglingen (Baden Württemberg, Germany) and Sinalunga (Tuscany, Italy).

In the 2011 Census, the combined population of the Dorking North and South wards was 11,158. Dorking South ward excludes North Holmwood and the Goodwyns estate.

Until the early 18th century, local residents obtained drinking water either directly from the Pipp Brook or from wells. In 1735, a pump was installed to lift water from a spring on the site of Archway Place, which was then distributed via wooden pipes made from bored tree trunks. Local dissatisfaction over the charges levied for the supply, prompted the vestry to reopen a well in the town centre and to install a hand pump there in 1780. refn|The location of the hand pump in the town centre, installed in 1780, is unclear, but it thought to be at Pump Corner at the intersection of the High Street, West Street and South Street. The Dorking Water Company (DWC) was formally established in 1869, following the passing of the Dorking Water Act 1869. The company dug a well on Harrow Road East from where water was transferred by a steam driven pump to a reservoir on Tower Hill. In 1902, a new pumping station was built on Station Road and, in 1919, the old one was converted to housing. The second pumphouse was replaced by a new works with boreholes on Beech Close in 1939. The Local Board of Health created the first sewerage system in Dorking and opened the treatment works at Pixham on the River Mole in 1888. Four years later, some 1360 houses (around 92% of the town) had been connected, necessitating an extensive rebuilding of the works in 1893. An electricity generating station was opened in 1903 in Station Road, close to the town gasworks. Initially it was capable of generating 180 kW of power, but by the time of its closure in 1939, its installed capacity was 1 MW. Under the Electricity (Supply) Act 1926, Dorking was connected to the National Grid, initially to a 33 kV supply ring, which linked the town to Croydon, Epsom, Leatherhead and Reigate. In 1939, the ring was connected to the Wimbledon Woking main via a 132 kV substation at Leatherhead. This force became part of the Surrey Constabulary on its creation in 1851. A combined police station and magistrates' court complex was opened at the east end of the High Street in 1894 and the police station relocated to Moores Road in 1938. Purpose built magistrates courts were opened adjacent to Pippbrook House in 1979 and closed in 2010. A volunteer fire brigade was formed in 1870. Initially based at South Street, it moved to the Public Hall at the west end of West Street in 1881. In 2021, the fire authority for Dorking is Surrey County Council and the statutory fire service is Surrey Fire and Rescue Service. Dorking Ambulance Station is run by the South East Coast Ambulance Service.

Dorking Cottage Hospital, opened in 1871 in South Terrace, was the first hospital in the town. It was merged in 1948 with the adjacent County Hospital, which had evolved from the Union Workhouse and Poor Law Infirmary, to form Dorking General Hospital. Since 2004, Dorking Hospital has been run as a community hospital by a consortium of local GP groups that provides Outpatient Services for the local area. The nearest accident & emergency departments are at Epsom Hospital and East Surrey Hospital As of 2020, there are GP practices on Reigate Road and South Street.

The A24 London Worthing and the A25 Guildford Sevenoaks roads intersect at Deepdene Roundabout on the eastern side of Dorking. The one way system in the town centre was introduced in 1968.

The Epsom Horsham and Guildford Reigate railway lines cross to the northeast of Dorking, but there is now no physical connection between the two. and stations are managed by Great Western Railway and are served by trains to via and to via .

Route 32 from Dorking to Guildford via Shere and to Redhill via Earlswood is run by Compass Bus. Route 93 from Dorking to Horsham via Goodwyns and Holmwood Park is run by Metrobus on behalf of Surrey County Council. Route 465 from Dorking to Kingston upon Thames via Leatherhead is run by London United. Routes 21 (Epsom – Dorking – Crawley) and 22 (Shere – Dorking – Crawley) are run by Metrobus.

National Cycle Route 22 passes through the town centre and the Surrey Cycleway runs to the east.

The Greensand Way, a long distance footpath from Haslemere, Surrey to Hamstreet, Kent, passes through the south of Dorking. The route approaches the town centre from the east, passing over The Nower, then crossing the junction between South Street and Horsham Road. It climbs through the Glory Wood, before crossing Deepdene Terrace. The North Downs Way, between Farnham and Dover, passes approximately to the north of Dorking. Dorking station is the southern terminus of the Mole Gap Trail, which starts at .

There are five primary schools in Dorking, the oldest of which is Powell Corderoy School. It was founded in 1816 as The Dorking British School, and its original premises were in West Street; but twenty years later it moved to North Street. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the school had expanded and the funds for a new building in Norfolk Road were raised by Edith Corderoy and Mr T. Powell. The new site was opened in 1898 and the school adopted its present name in 1906. The school moved to its current location in Longfield Road in 1968. however there is thought to have been a school located in the transepts of the parish church as early as the 17th century. The National School was moved from the grounds of the church to West Street in 1862. St Paul's Primary School was founded in 1860. St Paul's School was designed by the architect, Thomas Allom, and admitted its first pupils in March 1860. The infants department opened in 1872 and, from that year, the school educated children aged from 5 to 13. Today, St Paul's is a Church of England Voluntary Aided Primary School and educates children from the ages of 5 to 11. St Joseph's Catholic Primary School was founded in 1873 by Augusta Fitzalan Howard, Duchess of Norfolk. The first premises were in Falkland Grove adjacent to St Joseph's Church. The school was run by nuns of the Servite Order from 1887 to 1970, when it moved to its present site in Norfolk Road, which had been vacated by Powell Corderoy School. St John's Primary School was founded in 1955 on the Goodwyns housing estate to the south of the town. It was known as The Redlands Junior School until August 1999. New Lodge School, a private prep school formed in 2002 from the merger of Stanway School and Nower Lodge School, closed in 2007.

The Ashcombe School is a coeducational secondary school, north of the town centre. It traces its origins to the Dorking High School for Boys, founded in 1884, and the St Martin's High School for Girls, opened in 1903. In 1976 it became a mixed comprehensive school and was renamed the Priory School in 1996.

The Dorking Group of Artists, established in 1947, exhibits locally twice a year, in Betchworth and at Denbies. The Arts Society Dorking promotes local art appreciation and the preservation of the town's artistic heritage.

The three day Leith Hill Musical Festival for local, amateur choral societies, founded in 1905, takes place at the Dorking Halls each year. Ralph Vaughan Williams was the Festival Conductor until 1953, a post currently held by Jonathan Willcocks. Each day features a different group (or division) of choirs, which compete against each other in the morning and then combine to give a concert in the evening. Following the tradition established by Vaughan Williams, the Messiah by Handel and the St Matthew and St John Passions by J. S. Bach are frequently performed. After the death of Vaughan Williams in 1958, the festival committee commissioned David McFall to design a bronze bas relief likeness of the composer: one cast was placed in St Martin's Church and another in the Dorking Halls.

Strawberry Studios South was opened in 1976, in a former cinema in South Street, by Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart of the band 10cc. They recorded the album, Deceptive Bends there. Other artists also worked at the Studios, including Paul McCartney, who recorded part of "Ebony and Ivory" (a duet with Stevie Wonder) there. The English rock band, The Cure, recorded at Rhino Studios at Pippbrook Mill.

A football game was played annually in Dorking on Shrove Tuesday between two teams representing the eastern and western halves of the town. The match began at 2pm outside the gates to St Martin's Church and lasted until 6pm. After a particularly riotous game in 1897, the local magistrates declared that the tradition was in breach of the Highway Act 1835 and 50 participants were fined. Arrests were also made after local townsfolk attempted to stage the match in 1898, 1899 and 1903. The local newspaper declared the custom extinct in 1907.

Dorking F. C. was formed in 1880 and moved to Meadowbank in 1956. The stadium was condemned as unsafe in 2013 and for the next three years, the club shared grounds, first at Horley and then Westhumble. Dorking F. C. closed in 2017. Dorking Wanderers F. C. was founded in 1999. The team played its home games at Westhumble for ten seasons from 2007, before moving to the refurbished Meadowbank Stadium in July 2018.

Dorking rugby football club was founded in 1921. Initially its home matches were played at Meadowbank, but it moved the following year to Pixham. In 1972 the club relocated to the Big Field at Brockham as tenants of the National Trust, which had acquired the field in 1966. In the 2019–20 season, the 1st XV played in the London and South East Premier division. Notable former players include Elliot Daly, George Kruis and Kay Wilson. Walker's contribution to motorsport and to Dorking was celebrated on the centenary of his birth in October 2018 with a parade of classic cars through the town centre.

Dorking Cycling Club was founded in 1877 and by the 1890s was organising camps for amateur cyclists from across the south east of England. The club was refounded in 2011 and organises a programme of weekly rides for members.

Dorking and Mole Valley Athletics Club is based at Pixham Sports Ground. They host the annual Dorking Ten road race starting from Brockham Green. The weekly Mole Valley Parkrun has taken place at Denbies Wine Estate since March 2018. The vineyard also hosts the annual Run Bacchus marathon. The annual UK Wife Carrying Race takes place at The Nower.

Denbies Wine Estate, to the north of Dorking, is one of the largest wine producers in the UK. The vineyard, which covers some , was first planted in 1986 on the site of Bradley Farm, part of the Denbies estate. The winery and visitor centre were opened in 1993.

The caves in South Street are thought to have been excavated in four distinct phases. Firstly, three wells, the largest of which has the date 1672 inscribed on its wall, were sunk vertically from Butter Hill above. The upper level, a network of four caverns which intersects the wells, was dug in the late 17th or early 18th centuries. These caves are linked by a staircase to the lowest level, a circular chamber which may have been used by religious dissenters, approximately below ground level. In Victorian times, the larger caverns were adapted for use as wine cellars. The current entrance to the caves dates from 1921.

Cotmandene is a area of common land to the east of the town centre (the name is thought to mean the heath of the poor cottages). During the Middle Ages it was used by commoners to graze pigs. and were given endowments in 1718 and 1831. They were rebuilt in 1848 and again in 1961. A painting entitled A Cricket Match on Cotmandene, Dorking by the artist James Canter, dating to around 1770, is now held by the Marylebone Cricket Club. In the 19th century, a funfair took place at the same time as the Ascension Day livestock fair in the town centre. In 1897, to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, Henry Fitzalan Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk (who was lord of the manor of Dorking) gave Cotmandene to the Urban District Council (UDC) on the condition that it was "to remain a perpetual ornament and pleasure to the town". The grounds include a mausoleum in which owners Thomas Hope and Henry Thomas Hope are buried.

The Glory Wood (the highest point in Dorking) is an area of primarily deciduous woodland to the southeast of the town centre. The southern part is known as "Devil's Den" and contains mainly oak with an area of coppiced sweet chestnut. The Glory Wood was promised to the town in 1927 by Lord Francis Hope, on the condition that it was not to be built upon. The land was to have been transferred to the UDC in July 1929, however Hope withheld the gift until 1934, in protest at the published route of the Dorking Bypass through the Deepdene estate.

Meadowbank is a park on the north side of the Pipp Brook. In medieval times, it was part of the lordship lands and later became part of the Denbies estate. By the start of the 20th century, it was the grounds of large private house (also called "Meadowbank"). The house and grounds were purchased by Dorking UDC in 1926, with the intention of building 150 council houses, however owing to financial constraints, the Council instead decided to sell the western third for development. The Parkway estate was completed in 1935. Dorking Wanderers F. C. moved to the refurbished ground in 2018.

The Nower is an area of open grassland, which rises above Dorking to the west of the town centre. Together with the adjacent Milton Heath, it forms a nature reserve owned by Mole Valley District Council

The Nower was given to the town in 1931 by Charles Barclay, the owner of the Bury Hill estate, although it had been accessible to visitors since Victorian times. Views over Dorking may be enjoyed from "The Temple", which dates from the early 19th century.

Dorking Cemetery was opened in 1855 on farmland that had been purchased from the Deepdene estate. Two chapels were built for funeral services, one for Anglicans (with a rectangular floor plan) and one (with an octagonal floor plan) for non conformists. Both were designed by Henry Clutton and were constructed from flint with stone dressings. An entrance lodge on Reigate Road was also provided. Originally the area of the cemetery was , but was enlarged to between 1884 and 1923. and Victoria Cross recipient Charles Graham Robertson are among those buried there. The cemetery also contains 61 Commonwealth war graves of military personnel from the First and Second World Wars.

The Art Deco Dorking Halls building, designed by the architect Percy W. Meredith for the Leith Hill Musical Festival (LHMF), was opened in 1931. The Grand Hall was intended to be used for performances of the Passions by J. S. Bach, but two smaller halls (the Masonic and Martineau) were also constructed as part of the same complex. During World War II, the building was used by the Meat Marketing Board and the Army, and it was then sold to Dorking UDC. A major refurbishment was undertaken by Mole Valley District Council between 1994 and 1997. The Martineau Hall houses the Premier Cinema. The house and surrounding were bought by the UDC in December 1930, for use as administrative offices. The UDC's successor, MVDC, opened purpose built offices in the grounds in 1984, which enabled the local public library to move into the space vacated. The library relocated to St Martin's Walk in the town centre in 2012.

The first building to be recorded on the site of the White Horse Hotel was granted to the Knights Templar by John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey, in around 1287. When the Templars were suppressed in 1308 by order of Pope Clement V, the property was confiscated and passed to the Knights of the Order of St John. For much of the late medieval period, it was known as the "Cross House" and in the 16th century it was the residence of the parish priest. The property became an inn around 1750 (by which time it was known as "The White Horse"), a few years before the opening of the Epsom to Horsham turnpike road. Famous guests have included Charles Dickens who wrote his novel The Pickwick Papers, whilst resident in the mid 1830s. Further additions were made to the hotel in the 19th century, which is protected today by a Grade II listing.]] The galvanised metal sculpture of a Dorking cockerel by the artist Peter Parkinson was erected on the Deepdene roundabout in 2007. The statue pays homage to the historical importance of the town's poultry market. The cockerel is a frequent target of yarn bombing and can be seen dressed in hats, scarves and other items of clothing. The two statues outside the Dorking Halls were designed by William Fawke. The statue of architect and master builder Thomas Cubitt was installed in 1995. The statue of Ralph Vaughan Williams was donated by Sir Adrian White and was unveiled in 2001. There are two sculptures by the artist Lucy Quinnell in the town: the first, a metal arch commemorating the writer and philosopher Grant Allen, was installed at the entrance to Allen Court in 2013; the second, depicting the Mayflower sailing westwards towards the New World, was commissioned by Mole Valley District Council and was unveiled in West Street in 2021.

The town war memorial, in South Street, was dedicated in 1921 "in memory of Dorking men who fell in the Great War". Designed by the architect Thomas Braddock, it was constructed from dressed Portland stone. The memorial was modified in 1945 to commemorate those who had died in World War II, with the addition of the wings at each side. At the base, a verse from 1 Samuel is inscribed: "They were a wall unto us both by night and by day." The names of 264 people who died in the two conflicts (both military personnel and civilians) are recorded, including seven women. The memorial is protected by a Grade II listing. The dedication plaque is preserved at Dorking Museum.|group=note