Woburn Farm, Chertsey, England

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

Arcadian landscaped ferme ornée designed by Philip Southcote from 1734/5.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Woburn Farm lies on the north side of the A317, 2.5km from Chertsey to the north-west and 2km from Weybridge to the south-east. The registered site covers an area of around 60 hectares, of which some 37 hectares are occupied by the College and its grounds; the central section of the site to the north-west which is in private residential use covers an area of about five hectares, and the remainder, owned by the local authority, is leased for various uses. Alongside the A317 the site is enclosed with a variety of fencing and walls. The boundary to the north-west is a stream that flows north into The Bourne, which flows from west to east and forms the northern boundary of the site. The far bank of Woburn Park Stream, which also flows north into The Bourne, forms the eastern boundary of the site. The landform is mainly flat, lying as it does to the south of Chertsey Meads in the Thames flood plain, but in the centre of the site the land rises to a hill about 15 metres high, with a steep slope on the north, the high ground giving views across the Thames valley.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

T Whately, Observations on Modern Gardening (1771)

T Jefferson, Memorandums Made on a Tour to some of the Gardens in England (1786)

O Manning and W Bray, The History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey (1804-14), pp 227-8

E Brayley and J Britton, History of Surrey (1850), p 234

Garden History II, no 3 (1974), pp 27ff; III, no 2 (1975), pp 3ff; VII, no 2 (1979), pp 82ff; VII, no 3 (1979), pp 9-12

J Dixon Hunt and P Willis, The Genius of the Place (reprinted 1979), pp 34-5, 267, 334

D Jacques, Georgian Gardens: The Reign of Nature (1983), pp 25, 28

Country Life, 176 (5 July 1984), pp 28-30

M Symes, Fairest Scenes: Five Great Surrey Gardens (1988), pp 50-7

M Batey, Alexander Pope, The Poet and the Landscape (1999), pp 91-2, 117, 121

Maps

D Jacques, Plan [copy on EH file]

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 1865, published 1885; 2nd edition published 1896; 3rd edition published 1914

Illustrations

William Woollet, engravings, 1759 (reproduced in Garden Hist 1974)

Luke Sullivan, engraving, 1775 (reproduced in Symes 1988)
 

Description written: February 2000