Booker's Tower

Booker’s Tower stands four storeys high on Beech Lane, west of Guildford town centre. Its octagonal shape rises in the 19th-century Gothic style, built from Bargate stone with ashlar and brick dressings. The tower was commissioned by Charles Booker, then mayor of Guildford, to remember his two sons who died at fifteen. It was finished in 1839 by local builder John Mason. The opening in 1840 marked the marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert with bells, cannons and fireworks. The tower later became a scientific post for John Rand Capron, a Victorian scientist from Guildford. He used it to watch astronomical events and is believed to have tested lightning experiments there. In 1927 the council nearly pulled it down but saved it the next year under Borough Surveyor J. W. Hipwood. During the Second World War it served as an air-raid observation post. Two restorations in 1984 and 2014 kept the structure standing. Visitors find the tower beside Mount Cemetery, where Lewis Carroll is buried. The Gothic lines rise above Beech Lane on high ground, offering views across the town. Though the interior is closed, the exterior shows the careful stonework and brick details. The octagonal form and four storeys give a clear sense of its 19th-century design. The tower remains a quiet monument, watched over by the cemetery’s yews and headstones.