Oatlands, Weybridge, Surrey, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

An 18th-century informal landscape created from an earlier formal design incorporating the river terrace of the Thames within a Tudor deer park.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Oatlands Park lies on the north side of the A3050, Oatlands Drive, about one kilometre east of Weybridge town centre and about 1.5km south of the River Thames. The registered site of 22 hectares comprises two hectares of formal gardens and pleasure grounds, with 10 hectares of parkland to the south and adjoining the artificial 10-hectare Broad Water to the north. The tree-fringed Broad Water lies at the southern edge of the Thames floodplain, the land rising to the south to the river terrrace on which is situated the house and grounds. The Oatlands Park Hotel is situated in the centre of the east side of the site, at the edge of the higher land before it slopes steeply to the Broad Water. On the opposite side of the lake is flat agricultural land, divided by drainage channels and trackways. To the east and west of the site are late 20th-century housing estates. The southern area of the site is enclosed by ornamental two-metre high black metal railings dividing the parkland from Oatlands Drive. In the 18th century the estate stretched from Weybridge in the west to Walton in the east.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

Gardener's Magazine 13, (1837), p 112

E Brayley and J Britton, Topographical History of Surrey 2, (1841), pp 388-9

W Keane, The Beauties of Surrey (1849), pp 18-20

Country Life, 103 (7 May 1948), pp 924-5

Alterations at Oatlands in 1830, Walton and Weybridge Local History Society Monograph 10, (1970)

B Jones, Follies & Grottoes (1974), pp 158-60

Garden History 8, no 3 (1980), pp 77-81, 106; 9, no 2 (1981), pp 136-56

H Colvin, History of the King's Works 4, (1982), pp 214-16

J Lindus Forge, Oatlands Palace, (Walton and Weybridge Local History Society 1982)

J Lindus Forge, Oatlands House, (Walton and Weybridge Local History Society 1983)

M Symes, Fairest Scenes: Five Great Surrey Gardens (1988), pp 24-35

Maps

B Rocque, A Plan of Garden and house of ... the Earl of Lincoln at Weybridge ..., 1737 [reproduced in Garden Hist 1981]

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1864-70, published 1868-72; 2nd edition published 1897; 3rd edition published 1920

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1868-70, published 1883; 2nd edition published 1896; 3rd edition published 1914; 1935 edition

Archival items

Sale particulars, 1824 (Surrey History Centre)

Sale particulars, 1829 (Surrey History Centre)
 

Description written: January 2000

Edited: October 2002