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The name was changed from Cranley to avoid confusion with Crawley in Sussex in the 19th century.  Some evidence of the old name is apparent though, perhaps the most notable being the Cranley Hotel standing on the west end of the High Street.  

St Nicholas' Church to the east of the High Street is built in the style of a Wealden cruciform. It is thought by some that the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat came from the carving in the church of a  grinning feline. The cottage hospital occupies a 16th century building part half-timbered.  Cranleigh School, a public school founded as the Surrey County School for farmers' sons and opened in 1865, occupies a Tudor style quadrangle by Woodyer in parkland on rising ground north of the town.  The ground rises steadily north of the school to the steep scarp of the greensand range.  At the foot of the hill is Alderbrook an early Norman Shaw house of 1881.  

Cranleigh was an old centre of the iron industry and southeast off the Rudgwick Road is Vachery Pond a favourite resort of anglers, almost surrounded by woods.  This fed the short-lived Wey and Arun Canal which connected to the Thames and to the south to the English Channel at Littlehampton.  The top level of the Canal was always short of water and soon foundered financially, parts can be seen west of Cranleigh and in the woods west of Alfold.

The great estates of Baynards and Knowle are on the outskirts of the village. Baynards was built, in countryside which is still fairly remote, by Sir George More of Loseley some time after 1587.   The house he built seems to have been very much like a brick and stone edition of Loseley, (see Littleton in Guildford Borough) but has suffered much alteration.   The style throughout is brick and stone Tudor.  There are various lodges around the estate and a big block of cottages to the south beside the disused Baynards Station, which retains a charming air of being private rather than public property now lying on a bridlepath.

Cranleigh was as remote as any Wealden village until the trains came in 1865.  They brought a prosperity that has lasted to this day and has indeed outlived the railway.     

In the medical field, Cranleigh was a pioneer back in 1859 when it opened the first cottage hospital in England.   The Village Hospital was founded by Albert Napper, a surgeon in the village, who had the support of the rector Archeacon John Sapte.  The necessity for such an establishment might have been prompted by an emergency when Mr Napper had to amputate a man's leg on the kitchen table of a cottage.  As a result, the rector who served the parish for 60 years offered Mr Napper a cottage, free of rent, and soon there were six beds and an operating room available for use.