Character
Claygate has its own parish council. Apart from a street overlap to Esher, Claygate is surrounded by woodlands and open countryside, including Claygate Common, Princes Covert, Winney Hill, Surbiton Golf Course, Telegraph Hill, Littleworth Common and Arbrook Common. Much of the intervening farmland is used for grazing ponies, but there are two active farms. The Rythe is a small river running through Claygate, and as an important drainage channel has been implicated in issues of flooding in the village. A major flood alleviation scheme was initiated in 2002.
Many of Claygate's residents commute to the capital using the direct train service from Claygate railway station; the journey to central London takes 29 minutes. Claygate is also very close to the M25 and Kingston-upon-Thames. Constrained by the green belt, this has resulted in Claygate being subject to extensive in-fill and back-garden development.
Claygate is in the Parliamentary constituency of Esher and Walton, which is seen as a relatively safe seat for the Conservative Party. Local government is administered by Elmbridge Borough Council and Claygate has three representative seats on the council, two of which are Liberal Democrat and one a Conservative.
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Famous quotes containing the word character:
“When needs and means become abstract in quality, abstraction is also a character of the reciprocal relation of individuals to one another. This abstract character, universality, is the character of being recognized and is the moment which makes concrete, i.e. social, the isolated and abstract needs and their ways and means of satisfaction.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Innocence is lovely in the child, because in harmony with its nature; but our path in life is not backward but onward, and virtue can never be the offspring of mere innocence. If we are to progress in the knowledge of good, we must also progress in the knowledge of evil. Every experience of evil brings its own temptation and according to the degree in which the evil is recognized and the temptations resisted, will be the value of the character into which the individual will develop.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?”
—Henry James (1843–1916)