Half a century after it was created, Waverley Borough Council is set to disappear in the latest shake-up of local government.

The authority is to be absorbed into the new West Surrey council, alongside Guildford, Woking, Spelthorne, Runnymede and Surrey Heath.

The change, billed as a move towards greater efficiency, will erase one of Surrey’s most evocative council names. Waverley will join the ranks of once-familiar authorities, including Avon, Middlesex, Westmorland, Cleveland and Humberside, consigned to history by earlier reorganisations.

Waverley’s name was chosen in the early 1970s as the new district took shape under the Local Government Act 1972, a sweeping reform by Ted Heath’s Conservative government that replaced hundreds of small boroughs, rural districts and urban councils with larger, more “rational” units.

In Surrey, that meant Farnham, Godalming and Haslemere urban districts, together with Hambledon Rural District, were merged into a single new authority. Each had its own distinct character and identity, so a unifying name was needed.

The answer lay in the Wey Valley: Waverley Abbey, founded in 1128 by Cistercian monks, the first of their order in England. The name offered both geography and gravitas, and, for the literary minded, an echo of Sir Walter Scott’s 1814 novel Waverley.

In 1973, the shadow district council invited suggestions. Options included South West Surrey, Wey Valley and even Blackdown, the last referring to the hill above Haslemere, not to be confused with the Blackdown Hills on the A303 in Somerset.

Waverley won out as concise, distinctive and acceptable to all. And as the abbey lay roughly halfway between Godalming and Farnham, it was an apt and unifying choice for the new district.

The Department of the Environment approved the name, and on April 1, 1974, Waverley District Council formally came into being.

A decade later, Queen Elizabeth II granted it borough status by Royal Charter, elevating the chair to Mayor of Waverley, a distinction that has lasted 40 years, with Cllr Penny Rivers likely to be the last to hold the title.

When the local government reorganisation finally comes into effect in 2027, it will mark the end of a council but not, one hopes, the end of a name that has come to define this corner of Surrey.