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A final way in which the British Empire reveals itself is in Elmbridge’s landscape. Although not always obvious, the vast fortunes and wealth generated by individuals involved in activities across the British Empire was often invested in the landscape, establishing itself in the form of buildings, statues and monuments across the entire country - including our own borough.
Claremont House in Esher is one of the most prominent of these places, with the majority of the building which can be seen today built from the colonial wealth of Lord Robert Clive in the 18th Century. A ‘nabob’ of Britain’s East India Company, he amassed a fortune from his activities in India, aggressively expanding British-controlled territory across the country.
The strong bonds to empire in historic houses and monuments such as this one, as well as subtler links in places which have been influenced by or more casually connected to empire, are often ignored. Outlined below are a few of these places across Elmbridge which present themselves through objects, prints and photographs in our collection.
David Olusoga OBE is professor of Public History at the University of Manchester. He writes regularly for BBC History Magazine and The Guardian, and presents BBC history documentaries Black and British, and A House Through Time.
Sharon Heal is Director of the Museums Association. She writes regularly about culture and museums, and is also a board member of the Museum of Homelessness.
This is a pen and ink sketch of Claremont from 1868, by the artist Robert Taylor Pritchett who lived in Esher. Claremont is one of the most prominent stately homes in Elmbridge’s landscape, and the building which can still be seen today has strong links to the British Empire. It was originally built for Lord Robert Clive of India, a hugely rich nabob of the British East India Company and one of the founders of Britain’s Indian Empire. He suppressed people across the country with the capture of new land and amassed a huge amount of money while doing so. Clive is reputed to have spent over £100,000 of his vast fortune on rebuilding the house and gardens. However, he died the year that the house was finished, in 1774.
“All over the English countryside, Palladian mansions were springing up, financed in many cases by the wealth obtained through British expansion into the Atlantic world and (increasingly) into India… If empire, by this time, was central to the domestic world of Britain itself, this did not preclude the judicious turning of a host of blind eyes… especially those who were using imperial wealth to climb the British social ladder, it was perhaps better not to see, not to know, not to hear.” Kirsten Mckenzie, Britain: Ruling the Waves (Age of Empires).
Kirsten Mckenzie is Professor of History at the University of Sydney. She specialises in imperial history and the links between Britain and Australia, with publications including Imperial Underworld: An Escaped Convict and the Transformation of the British Colonial Order.
Michael Wood is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester. He is also a journalist and broadcaster, presenting over 100 history documentaries since the 1970s, including The Story of England, The Story of China and The Story of India.
Dan Jones is a historian, journalist, and presenter, best known for his work on medieval Britain and the Crusades including The Plantagenets, The Hollow Crown and a variety of Channel 5 documentaries.
Marina Amaral is an artist who specialises in digital colourisation of black and white images. She has collaborated with a number of museums and heritage institutions, including English Heritage and Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, and is the founder of the Faces of Auschwitz project.
Michael Sassoon, Siegfried Sassoon (the First World War poet) and Hamo Sassoon as children, with Alfred Ezra (b.1861, d.1895), the son of Sassoon David Sassoon, photographed in 1894.
A photograph of the outside of Ashley Park House, Walton-on-Thames, taken in the early 1900s when it was home to the Sassoon family.
The seven children of Joseph and Louise Sassoon photographed outside Ashley Park c. 1897. They are (left-right) Mozelle, Missy, Freddy, Arthur, Totts, Teddy and David.
Pictured to the left are various Sassoon family photographs taken at Ashley Park. The Sassoon family moved to Walton after David Sassoon purchased the Ashley Park Estate in the 1860s. David Sassoon was born in Bombay, then under British control, in 1832. He was part of a huge trading family, and his father (also David) had amassed wealth through his involvement in the opium and cotton trades. David Sassoon continued this tradition, and later used his wealth to move to England with his wife, settling at the luxurious Ashley Park in Walton. The estate and house were sold for re-development in 1923. Subsequently, the house was demolished and the grounds built over.
“The opium was produced in British India and was smuggled into China by (mainly) British merchants. Beijing had prohibited the import, cultivation and smoking of opium since 1800, as it was well aware that the drug was doing tremendous damage to its economy as well as to the population.” Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China.
Jung Chang is a writer and historian. She has published a number of books on modern China, including Mao: The Unknown Story. Her 1991 historical autobiography Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China sold over 10 million copies worldwide.
Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) was a British author and critic. His work often examines the themes of class, colonialism, sexism and social injustice. As well as A Passage to India (1924), he is famous for the novels A Room With a View (1908) and Howards End (1910), both of which have been portrayed in film.
