Founded 1918 | Number of members 1 | |
Created from South Western (Guildford) Division of Surrey Replaced by Guildford, South West Surrey | ||
Farnham was a parliamentary constituency in Surrey, England that returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1918 until it was abolished for the 1983 general election. It was largely replaced by the new constituency of South West Surrey, though parts had already broken away to form Surrey Heath.
Contents
During its 65-year lifetime it was represented by three Conservatives successively.
Boundaries
The constituency took its name from the town of Farnham and included a number of other towns and a large rural area. The boundaries were altered at each redistribution of parliamentary seats, reflecting the increase in population of the area and thus the splitting of Western Surrey (or Guildford) into South West Surrey or Guildford and North West Surrey, followed by South West Surrey, most of Surrey Heath, and Guildford covering this part of Surrey, the arrangement by 1983.
1918–1950
The constituency was created by the Representation of the People Act 1918 as one of seven divisions of the parliamentary county of Surrey, and was defined in terms of the county districts existing at that date:
The rural district of Farnham (based on the Hundred before it), a small part of the Guildford Rural District which was the civil parish of Pirbright, and the urban districts of Farnham, Frimley (including Camberley), Windlesham, and Woking.
1950–1983
Constituencies throughout Great Britain were redrawn by the Representation of the People Act 1948, with new seats first contested at the 1950 general election.
Rural Surrey had ten county constituencies and Farnham County Constituency was defined as comprising:
Godalming and Haslemere had previously formed part of the Guildford constituency. Woking, Windlesham and Pirbright were transferred to the new seat of Woking. The constituency was unaltered at the next redistribution that took place prior to the general election of February 1974.
Elections in the 1910s
Elections in the 1930s
General Election 1939/40
Another General Election was required to take place before the end of 1940. The political parties had been making preparations for an election to take place and by the Autumn of 1939, the following candidates had been selected;