BBC Radio Surrey<\/a>: “The sculpture is as close as I could get it, based on the text from The War of the Worlds.”<\/p>\nHe completed the work between January and April 1998.<\/p>\n
“It was just this mad two months of just going crazy welding these tubes and pipes and working everything out,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This was before I had any kind of computer design software.<\/p>\n
“It was really rulers tape measures, spirit levels, plumblines, and maths.”<\/p>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/c84033a031cc767ab4fb84372eea2c1c.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
A bacteria panel beneath The Martian [Alexa Rusakoff\/BBC]<\/p>\n
In the novel, the Martians crush all human military efforts to stop them, but they do not conquer the Earth.<\/p>\n
They die after becoming infected by bacteria, to which they have zero immunity.<\/p>\n
To honour Earth’s smallest creatures who save the world, Condron inlayed metal panels into the walkway along Crown Passage depicting different bacteria.<\/p>\n
Britain’s first purpose-built mosque<\/p>\n
Screened from the road by trees and buildings, a piece of national history stands off Oriental Road.<\/p>\n
The Shah Jahan Mosque is Britain’s first purpose-built mosque, and a symbol of international and inter-faith collaboration.<\/p>\n
Founded by Prof Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner, a Hungarian from a Jewish family, the Mosque was built for the students of his Oriental Institute of Learning.<\/p>\n
Manager of the mosque Mohammad Habib said it was built as a place of worship for Muslim students coming to study there.<\/p>\n
William Isaac Chambers, the Guildford architect who designed the mosque, was a Christian and had never designed a Mosque before.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/9df7ea19afa0830353bd45350b67100d.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
The Shah Jahan Mosque was Britain’s first purpose-built mosque [Alexa Rusakoff\/BBC]<\/p>\n
The building of the mosque was funded by the Begum of Bhopal, Princess Shah Jahan, and is named after her.<\/p>\n
“I think the story of the mosque sends out a really strong positive message \u2013 you have people from three different countries, three different religions, they’re all working together,” Habib said.<\/p>\n
Graves ‘from paupers to notables’<\/p>\n
At the time of its consecration in 1854, Brookwood Cemetery was the largest cemetery in the world.<\/p>\n
It no longer holds the top spot but remains the largest in the UK and is a site brimming with “hidden treasures”.<\/p>\n
Kim Lowe, chairwoman of the Brookwood Cemetery Society, said: “Our hidden treasures could be measured by the wonderful memorials we have, what you can find behind some of our mausoleum doors when we open them up.<\/p>\n
“And then there’s the history of the people who are buried here, from paupers to notables.”<\/p>\n
Brookwood is the final resting place of many well-known figures, from actors to the infamous.<\/p>\n
They include the Pre-Raphaelite artist Evelyn De Morgan, victims in the Thames Torso Murders of the late 1880s and portrait painter John Singer Sargent.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/224beb56f745da30ed7d816701675d03.jpeg\"\/)
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Brookwood Military Cemetery was previously the largest cemetery in the world [Commonwealth War Graves Commission]<\/p>\n
There is also a large military section, maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.<\/p>\n
Soldiers from Australia and India are resting near German fighter pilots and Italian prisoners of war, and all graves are cared for with equal reverence.<\/p>\n
Megan Maltby is head of public engagement, and a font of knowledge about the graves here.<\/p>\n
“All of these individuals that had probably never heard of Surrey before they embarked on these missions overseas,” she said.<\/p>\n
“[They] have ended up in this little corner of Brookwood.”<\/p>\n
More on this storyRelated Internet Links<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Surrey Day 2026 will explore some of the county’s hidden treasures. The annual day, a celebration of life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[241195,49,48,242876,242877,242874,242878,242873,242879,242875,87674,18555],"class_list":["post-655492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-bbc-radio-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dame-maggie-aderin","tag-hg-wells","tag-hidden-treasures","tag-martian-tripod","tag-michael-condron","tag-purpose-built","tag-shah-jahan","tag-surrey","tag-war-of-the-worlds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}