Claremont, Esher, England

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

Extensive and complex pleasure grounds and park around a country mansion. Main phases are 18th century and early 19th century, with early 18th-century work by Sir John Vanbrugh with Charles Bridgeman and possibly Stephen Switzer, and William Kent with Thomas Greening; mid-18th-century work by Lancelot Brown; and early 19th-century work by J W Hiort, J B Papworth, and A C Pugin. Claremont was highly influential in the English landscape garden movement during the 18th century.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

The site is situated on the south side of Esher, in the county of Surrey. It is bounded by the A244 to the east and the A307 to the west, with C20 housing development and a late 19th-century golf course encroaching on the former parkland to the north, east, and south. Remnants of open land survive to the south-west (West End Common), south-east (Arbrook Common), and beyond a belt of 20th-century housing, to the south (Esher Common). The roughly 58 hectare site is laid out on gently sloping ground, with the house on a natural plateau and a higher ridge of ground immediately to the south-west.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

Note: There is a wealth of material about this site. The key references are cited below.

C Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus (1725)

Country Life, 2 (18 December 1897), pp 688-90; 10 (14 December 1901), pp 776-81; 63 (21 January 1928), pp 80-8; 165 (17 May 1979), pp 1547-50

N Pevsner et al, The Buildings of England: Surrey (1971), pp 160-2

P M Cooper, The Story of Claremont (5th edition 1972)

Claremont Landscape Garden, guidebook, (National Trust 1988)

Claremont: Storm Damage 1987, Grant Aid Application to English Heritage, (National Trust 1990)

C K Currie, An Archaeological and Historical Survey of the Claremont Landscape Garden,
Esher, Surrey, 2 vols, (report for National Trust 1999)

Maps

Plan of the Garden and Plantations of Claremont in Surrey (in Campbell 1725)

John Rocque, Plan of Claremont, 1738 (reproduced in guidebook)

John Rocque, One of the Seats of his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, 1750 (reproduced in guidebook)

J Rocque, Map of Surrey, surveyed around 1762, published 1768

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1866-7, published 1879; 2nd edition revised 1894-5, published 1897; 3rd edition revised 1912, published 1914
 

Description written: May 2000

Edited: April 2003