Student accommodation in Egham

Royal Holloway belongs to the University of London and sits nineteen miles outside it, in Surrey. Its campus is at Egham on the edge of Windsor Great Park, built around a Victorian pile modelled on a French chateau, and the nearest thing to a city is Staines a few miles east. Students here get a University of London degree, a genuinely rural campus and a train into Waterloo, but they do not get London on the doorstep, and anybody budgeting for zone 2 rents and zone 2 nightlife should know that first.

Englefield Green is the village beside the campus and the obvious first choice, a few minutes from teaching with a pub, a shop and Windsor Great Park at the end of the road. Egham itself sits below the hill with the railway station, a high street and most of the purpose-built rooms. Staines-upon-Thames is three miles east and much the larger town, with the shops, the cinema and the cheaper supply, connected by frequent buses and trains. Virginia Water is south, expensive and leafy, next to the lake. Old Windsor and Wraysbury are north towards the river, villages with little supply. Addlestone and Chertsey are south east, better value and a train or bus away.