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Uncover the rich history of Elmbridge with our latest online exhibitions
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Explore the latest news and find out what's on this month
Explore our learning offer for schools, families and community groups
Uncover the rich history of Elmbridge with our latest online exhibitions
Want to discover more about your local area?
Composer Joseph Haydn, during a visit to Oatlands House in 1791
Black and white print on card of a drawing for a ‘Design for a Gateway at Oatlands by Inigo Jones’.
Both Queen Anne of Denmark and Henrietta Maria (wives of James VI and I and Charles I respectively) made improvements to Oatlands Palace. Queen Anne commissioned Inigo Jones to design the Great Gate from the garden into the Oatlands Park grounds. She was also responsible for ‘the makinge of a new brick wall … to enclose her majesties vineyard at Otelands’.
Upon the ascension of Charles I to the throne, his wife Henrietta Maria also used the Palace as a country retreat, and John Tradescant was employed by her to work in the Palace Gardens – you can find out more about this further down the page.
Charles I was briefly imprisoned at Oatlands during the English Civil War, when the palace was surrounded by Parliamentarian territory across most of Surrey, and had been used to station Oliver Cromwell’s troops. After Charles’s trial and execution in January 1649, the palace fell out of favour. It was sold to Robert Turbridge for £4000, and then demolished by him to fund the Republican army. Some of the bricks were even used in the construction of the Weybridge canal.
Watercolour of Oatlands House with lawn in front, during the occupation by the Duke of York.
When Charles II returned to the throne in 1660 as part of the Restoration following the long Interregnum, the Oatlands estate reverted to the Crown and the land was leased to a succession of noblemen. It was the Seventh Earl of Lincoln who eventually built Oatlands House in the 1720s, 500 metres east of the original Palace site. The Ninth Earl of Lincoln went on to transform the grounds of Oatlands House. A Temple of Vesta was added and Inigo Jones’ Palace gate became a folly (a building constructed for decoration). Later, a gothic grotto was built. This contained several rooms lined with stones, shells and stalactites.
In 1789, the Duke Frederick Augustus of York bought Oatlands House and moved in with his wife. The Duchess was an eccentric lady and surrounded herself and the estate with a menagerie of animals. Although the house sadly burned down in 1794, it was rebuilt in the popular Gothic style of the period.
The Duke and Duchess had an unhappy marriage and the Duchess lived most of her life alone at Oatlands with her menagerie of animals, which you can find out more about After her death in 1820, the Oatlands estate was sold off. The area which once formed the middle and outer courts of Oatlands Palace became a commercial market garden.
Black and white postcard of Oatlands Park Hotel, showing the curved drive to the porticoed entrance with New Zealand soldiers sitting and standing outside, October 1915.
Henry Holland’s 1794 design of the Oatlands House for the Duke of York was drastically reconstructed in 1827 for its new owner, Edward Ball Hughes.
Later, in 1846, the Oatlands Estate was broken up into lots and sold at public auction for development to James Watts Peppercorne. He redeveloped Oatlands House into the South Western Hotel in 1856. The new large west wing added at this time, including the stock brick Italianate design, was a radical alteration and extension of the 1827 house, and the hotel is now Grade II Listed.
By this time the London and South Western Railway made the Weybridge area accessible to London, and the hotel attracted visitors from far and wide who had come to admire the 18th century follies.
During the First World War, the hotel was requisitioned for injured New Zealander soldiers, specifically ‘medical & tuberculosis cases and limbless men’. Additional space was needed due to overcrowding at Mount Felix Hospital just up the road, situated next to Walton Bridge.
At the war’s end, the hotel reopened in 1919. It has welcomed many guests over the years, including famous names such as Emile Zola, Anthony Trollope and Edward Lear. It is now known as Oatlands Park Hotel, and traces of its rich history can still be seen in the hotel and its extensive grounds.
Although Oatlands Palace no longer stands, there are a number of remains across Weybridge which provide hints of its existence. Explore some of them below.
The Tudor archway is the only part of Oatlands Palace which remains above ground. Situated in Tudor Walk, there is now a blue plaque on the side of the brick wall denoting its significance. Before the 1980s, the archway was bricked up, but it was opened in 1985 as part of the redevelopment of the surrounding area.
The only remaining Tudor archway of the original Oatlands Palace building, now standing in Tudor Walk.
A number of road names in the vicinity of the Tudor archway and the Oatlands Park Hotel reflect the former presence of the royal palace and mansion. These include:
Tudor Walk; Grotto Road; West Palace Gardens; Palace Drive; Oatlands Close; Rede Court; Oatlands Drive; Duchess Court; Old Palace Road; Catherine Howard Court; Oatlands Mere; York Road; Oatlands Chase.
West Palace Gardens, Weybridge.
Tudor Walk, Weybridge.
Grotto Road, Weybridge.
From the Tudor period onwards, a series of underground tunnels and chambers have existed underneath the site of the old palace. Some of these were for sewage and some led around the former moat. There are many which remain from when the Palace was built during the 1500s, as well as later additions from the estate’s conversion into a mansion. Numerous photos of the tunnels are kept in Elmbridge Museum’s collection. These tunnels gave rise to a tradition of local tales of “passages leading to Hampton Court”.
1920s black and white photograph of the interior of the Great Culvert which was inserted into the moat of Oatlands Palace.
Plan and elevations of Underground drains and chambers on the site of Oatlands Palace.