Botleys Mansion

Botleys Mansion is a Palladian mansion house in the south of Chertsey, Surrey, England. The house was built in the 1760s by builders funded by Joseph Mawbey and to designs by Kenton Couse. The elevated site once bore a 14th century manor house seized along with all the other manors of Chertsey from Chertsey Abbey, a very rich abbey, under Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries and today much of its land is owned by two hospitals, one public, one private and the local authority. The remaining mansion and the near park surrounding were used for some decades as a colony hospital and as a private care home. The building is owned and used by Bijou Wedding Venues Limited.

History

The history of the site is unclear. The building standing today was built in the 1760s as a replacement of an old manor.^[1][2] The mansion's ownership was transferred often throughout its history.^[3]

The Metropolitan Asylums Board was dissolved in 1930 and responsibility of caring for the mentally deficient was passed to the (local government) Councils.^[4] Surrey County Council decided set up new buildings to house patients while the mansion housed the hospital staff becoming designated from 1932 Botley's Park hospital, which specialised in patients with psychiatric disorders.^[5] The first section of the new hospital was opened on 24 June 1939 by Lady Henriques, wife of then chairman of the Council Sir Philip Henriques.^[5] In September of the same year, many of the hospital's patients were moved to Murray House in Ottershaw so that Botleys could receive wounded soldiers from the war. During this time, the mansion was adapted into a nurses' home.^[6]

In 1995, a fire severely damaged the building, and within two years, most of the hospital closed down.^[7]

Architecture

Botleys Mansion is a Couse stone-built house in simple Palladian architecture without wings surrounded by park land and iron gates.^[1][2] The stone came from quarries in Heddington, Barrington, and Oxfordshire.^[8] It is a Grade II* listed building.^[9]

The house is almost cubic in form, and the estate was about two miles in circumference, today about a mile and approximately square, thus 0.25 square miles (0.65 km²). A double flight of steps leads to the marble-paved entrance hall of the house. The entrance hall ceiling is supported by Scagliola columns and Ionic pilasters. Several of the furnishings, such as the chimney pieces, are made of marble. In the eastern façade, there is an Ionic tetrastyle.

Ownership

In 1319, the original Botleys Mansion was either owned by John de Butteley or John Manory of Chertsey. In 1505, de Butteley's son Thomas gave the mansion to Richard Merland, Thomas Pervoche, and Henry Wykes; soon after though, Wykes became the sole owner of the mansion, then called Botlese Mansion. Ownership of the mansion changed hands several times and was owned by King Henry VIII in 1541, after he purchased it from Sir Roger Cholmeley. In 1763, the mansion was transferred to Joseph Mawbey, the man responsible for the house's reconstruction. The mansion was passed around after Mawbey's death until it was purchased by Robert Gosling in 1839. The Gosling family lived in the mansion until 1931, when the London City Council purchased the building for £30,000.^[3]

The mansion was bought and restored by a company, Bijou Wedding Venues, in 2010 and is used to host weddings and events as a mansion house listed for its age or architectural detail by English Heritage in one of the two relatively rare higher categories than simple national listing, Grade II*.^[1]

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Brayley, Edward; Britton, John (1841). A Topographical History of Surrey. Oxford University. pp. 221–223. 

External links

• http://botleysmansion.co.uk

Coordinates: 51°22′26.1″N 0°32′1.8″W / 51.373917°N 0.533833°W / 51.373917; -0.533833