The Village
The 2001 census population of Virginia Water was 6,113. Many of the village's houses are large detached homes situated on the private Wentworth Estate home of the famous Wentworth Club which has four golf courses. The Ryder Cup was first played there. It is also home to the headquarters of the PGA European Tour, the world's second-richest professional golf tour (after the PGA Tour in the US). The estate reached the headlines in 1998 when General Augusto Pinochet was kept under house arrest in one of its houses prior to his extradition. Sarah, Duchess of York is a former royal resident. Many entertainment personalities also have or have had homes on the estate including Chris Squire, Sir Elton John, songwriter Bernie Taupin, Diana Dors, Russ Abbot, Cliff Richard and Sir Bruce Forsyth. Golfers who have or have had homes on the estate include Sir Nick Faldo, European Ryder Cup captain Bernard Gallacher, Sam Torrance, Sandy Lyle, Ernie Els and Thomas Bjørn. Ex-formula 1 team owner Eddie Jordan and boxer Prince Naseem Naseem Hamed also live on the Estate. The author and traveller Bill Bryson spent his early married life in the village. Paul Pindar, Chief Executive of Capita lives there.
Edward VIII was a resident of nearby Fort Belvedere.
Virginia Water is also home to many London commuters. It is close to the M25, M4 and M3 motorways. The village has a four track railway station in the middle of the village on the line between London Waterloo, Weybridge and Reading. Heathrow Airport is located eight miles to the north-east. The village has two rows of shops, although many inhabitants travel to the nearby towns of Staines-upon-Thames, Ascot and Windsor for shopping. The towns of Egham, Englefield Green and Old Windsor are nearby. Holloway Sanatorium, an asylum for the mentally ill, where the writer Bill Bryson worked upon first settling in England was located near to the village but closed in the 1980s and was converted to private accommodation.
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Famous quotes containing the word village:
“Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homoeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The next forenoon we went to Oldtown.... The Indian is said to cultivate the vices rather than the virtues of the white man. Yet this village was cleaner than I expected, far cleaner than such Irish villages as I have seen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)