George Cubitt, owner and resident of the estate abutting to the east, Denbies Vineyard Estate, commissioned George Gilbert Scott to design St. Barnabas Church, which was completed in 1859.[2][3] The church is designated with a Grade II* listing; Cubitt is buried to the east of the chancel.[4] It has several other notable burials including Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, who died in 1965.
The north and south sides are wooded and sloped. Its central belt is a road separating a very long, natural grass and wildflower meadow. On its northern edge are Tanners Hatch Youth Hostel and further, across a wooded vale, Polesden Lacey.
The North Downs Way National Trail, a long-distance path that runs from Farnham to Dover, via Canterbury, crosses the common.
For fifty years the route of the Tanners Hatch Marathon, a thirty-mile challenge walk, crossed the common. It began in 1960, and was so-called because the first few marathons started and finished at Tanner's Hatch Youth Hostel.[5]