Windlesham is a geographically-large village in the Surrey Heath borough of Surrey, England, approximately south west of central London. Its name derives from the Windle Brook, which runs south of the village into Chobham, and the common suffix 'ham', the Old English word for 'homestead'. The village of Windlesham has a population of around 4,000, while the civil parish of Windlesham has a population of 17,000 and includes the much larger neighbouring villages of Bagshot and Lightwater.
Windlesham Arboretum, which covers an area of approximately , is on the south side of the M3 motorway. Access to the motorway is via Junction 3. The nearest railway stations are Sunningdale and Bagshot, with Sunningdale offering the most frequent services for London Waterloo on the Waterloo–Reading line.
History
thumb|upright=1.2|left|A typical long line of Victorian houses close to the village centre. [[The Brickmakers Arms is visible.]]
The neighbourhood has yielded bronze implements, now in the Archaeological Society's Museum, Guildford, and a number of Neolithic flints.
Windlesham was once a small community within Windsor Great Park, built as a remote farming settlement around undulating heath, similar to Sunninghill. At Ribs Down in the north in private Updown Court (now called Oakwood) and adjoining gardens, land reaches 99 metres above sea level with a minimum descent (notch/col) of 31 metres, ranking 35th of 36 Surrey hills listed in the national hill-climbing database and the tallest private hill in Surrey.
This corner of the county appears, from absence of notice in the Domesday Book of 1086, to have been very sparsely inhabited. Of Windlesham, Malden wrote: