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Uncover the rich history of Elmbridge with our latest online exhibitions
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Composer Joseph Haydn, during a visit to Oatlands House in 1791
This online exhibition explores the history of Oatlands Palace through the ages. This large site has witnessed significant periods of history as a royal palace and a country home, before being demolished in the 1600s. In time, it was replaced with another grand estate, seeing use as a First World War hospital and most recently as a hotel.
Coloured print on board of the "Birds eye view of the Palace of Oatlands in Surrey", from a drawing which belonged to Richard Gough, Esq. and which appears to have been made about the time of Elizabeth I.
Oatlands Palace was originally built for King Henry VIII in 1537. Although it was a notable new addition to the Tudor king’s plethora of royal dwellings at the time, much of the stone used to construct this great royal residence actually dated back to the Norman era. In 1110, the great blocks had first featured in the impressive Chertsey Abbey building. When Henry’s landmark break with Rome and Reformation began in the 1530s, the old Abbey, among many others across England, fell victim to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and its stone was swiftly transported to Oatlands.
The Palace stood in the middle of Weybridge and witnessed many important historical events. The Palace enlarged his hunting estate known as the Honour of Hampton Court. This estate extended from Hampton Court Palace out to Oatlands in Weybridge and down to Nonsuch Palace near Ewell, also now lost. It provided additional space near Henry VIII’s main residence at Hampton Court. At its largest, the palace covered 14 acres of land and housed many servants, courtiers and government officials.
Henry had intended the palace to be the residence of his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, who he married in 1540. The union, however, was very short-lived, and it is thought that Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, at Oatlands chapel later that same year. Later in the Tudor period, Oatlands was the palace Queen Mary retreated to after her phantom pregnancy, and the young Princess Elizabeth, born in 1533 just before the palace was built, avoided plague by escaping to Oatlands. After being crowned Queen in 1558, she became a keen huntswoman, and hunted deer in the park her father had created here.
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. 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.
The Palace was created on the site of the Rede family home, Oatlands Manor. The family were wealthy London goldsmiths who had moved to the countryside. Oatlands Manor would have been a grand house, even before being made into a palace, and we know it included a moat. When William Rede died, the family were evicted to make way for the Palace, despite his widow’s pleas that ‘It will be great undoing if I continue not your tenant at Otelands’.
A huge illustrated sheet of parchment to John Rede from Henry VIII outlined the plans for the king’s acquisition of Oatlands. It specified that the land would be taken in return for some of the treasures attained from the king’s Dissolution of the Monasteries.
The grand palace was initially built with 3 main adjoining courtyards and was typically Tudor in its style, with similarities to Hampton Court just a few miles further down the river Thames. It had a small moat, but was quite unique thanks to the fact that it was not styled with any other obvious ‘mock-castle’ features as was the fashion of the time.
John Tradescant the Elder (d.1638), was appointed ‘Keeper of His Majesty’s Gardens’ at Oatlands Palace by Henrietta Maria, King Charles I’s consort.
John Tradescant the Younger (d.1662) followed in his father’s footsteps after enrolling at King’s School in Canterbury. He became Keeper of His Majesty’s Gardens, Vines and Silkworms at Oatlands Palace, ‘in place of John Tradescant, his father, deceased.’ The Tradescants were also well-known as plant collectors, bringing back many new varieties to Britain. The fruit opposite, known as the ‘Tradescant Cherry’ was one such find, and they also introduced the Tulip Tree and Michaelmas Daisy to Britain.
This illustrated black and white engraving is of ‘Henry Scott, Gardener at Weybridge in Surrey’. Scott worked at Oatlands Palace Gardens in the 1750s, and attempted to grow Pineapples there. The remains of pine pits were discovered in the foundations of the Palace in later years, and were mistakenly initially thought to have been the work of John Tradescant around 100 years earlier.
The illustration opposite was designed by Henry Scott, drawn by W. Wales and engraved by F Vivares. It was first published October 1754.
This black and white photograph shows the Duchess of York’s Dog Cemetery in the grounds of the Oatlands Estate.
Black and white photograph of the Duchess of York’s Dog Cemetery in the grounds of the Oatlands Estate, c.1900.
The Duchess Frederica Charlotte Ulrica Catherina had married Frederick, the Duke of York – the second son of King George III – in 1791. She took up permanent residency at Oatlands after becoming estranged from her husband. The Duchess had an amiable, intelligent, and charitable nature, but one passion in particular overshadowed all others: her love of animals.
With her marriage to the Duke remaining childless, Frederica instead doted on a huge and ever-expanding family of pets. Indeed, it was a love which was well-known and recorded at the time.
The uniformly arranged slabs in the grounds of Oatlands Park are hardly distinguishable from the manicured lawn where they lay. The only feature which highlights their presence is a small green sign, reading “Duchess of York’s Dog Cemetery, Circa 1790 – 1815”. Although the cemetery has been moved as the years have progressed, ultimately it was here, in the grounds of her treasured home, that the Duchess laid her much-loved companions – ‘Satan’ included – to rest.
From 1762-7, the Duke of Newcastle oversaw the construction of an elaborate Grotto in the grounds to the west of Oatlands House. Joseph Lane and his son, who specialised in grotto-building in England and had worked on the famous Painshill Grotto in nearby Cobham, later added elaborate internal decorations such as shells, stones, imitation stalactites and crystals to the walls and ceilings, and stained glass in the windows. The structure was relatively large, consisting of four internal spaces connected by passageways. There was even a ‘gambling room’ and a tiled cold bath which was fed by a spring. In Elmbridge Museum’s collection, the imitation statue of Venus de Medici which stood at the top of this bath structure is preserved, having been donated in 1920.
Black and white print entitled “The Grotto at Oatlands, near Weybridge”, the seat of the Duke of Newcastle. It shows the lake in front of the Grotto.
Outside, the structure was covered with decayed lava stone, with a swan pool just outside the entrance and the Duchess of York’s dog cemetery nearby. Contemporary records reveal that the Duke and Duchess of York regularly entertained guests in the enchanting building in the early 1800s.
By 1944, the Grotto was reported to be in bad condition, partly thanks to visitors who would pick decorations off the elaborately decorated walls. Having stood for nearly 200 years, it was sadly demolished in 1948 by the Ministry of Works, having been declared unsafe.
The interior of the Oatlands Grotto, showing the Upper Chamber with chairs, and shells mounted on legs to form tables.
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.
Delve into the history of Ogilvy's Apothecary by discovering our Object in Focus, where you can find out how one small jar contained an essential to Tudor sickness and health.
Take a look at the Tudor ointment jar
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