This article written by Jackie Rickenberg was published in the Parish Magazine in January and February 2022
Many of you, like me, may have been intrigued over the last year or so with the current refurbishment of Witley Park. The number of contractors vehicles entering and leaving daily, the shielded scaffolding over the lodge houses, and not least the whisperings of grandiose extravagance are all rather eerily reminiscent of past times when the Victorian mansion was originally created. Here is the tale of the history of the great house, as written by Jane Brown, in a booklet from the archives, entitled “Portrait of S.W Surrey”.
“Whitaker Wright was one of the last great eccentrics of the Picturesque – a movement that has seemed singularly attracted to Surrey ever since Charles Hamilton started building Painshill Park in the 1730’s – and the creation of Wright’s fantasy, Witley Park, was the last act of a suitably bizarre life.
He was born in the north of England in 1845 – and surely with a sense of adventure and a “nose” for an opportunity – because he studied chemistry and metal assaying and set out for the United States when he was only 21. He went to the metal mining boom areas of the mid-west and by the early 1870’s he rose to the ranks of the fortune makers. After moving to Philadelphia, Wright became a pillar of East Coast society – more than a millionaire at aged 31. However, for some reason, his American business failed, and so he returned home to England in 1889 with just enough money to start all over again.
Of course, Wright now knew enough about the metal mining business to exploit it from the actual “centre”, the City of London. In 1891 he bought his first mining company, the Abaris Mining Corporation, and then he floated the West Australian Exploring and Finance Corporation. He was on the road to success again, and his companies got bigger and bigger and his flotations ever more daring; his power over the stock market seemed such that the whole City shook at the mention of his name. During the late 1890’s he was at the peak of his fortune and reputation again.
With his business life secure again, it was time for the fulfilment of dreams. Despite owning a palatial house in Park Lane and the most magnificent yacht, in 1897 he bought what was then Lea House, one of the old Witley manor houses, and its surrounding land, which included at the time, Hindhead Common and the Devils Punchbowl. He pulled down the old house and built an enormous Victorian mansion, which has been variously described as “hideous” or “clever free Tudor style”, but which was certainly in the big league of baronial mansions, with 32 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, a drawing room, two dining rooms, a library, a theatre, a palm court, an observatory, a velodrome, stabling for fifty horses and even its own private hospital. Endless spooky corridors were hung with hunting trophies and suits of armour. With his home comforts secured, Wright turned his attention to his real dream, which was to leave his name in the list of great “gentlemen-amateurs of the Picturesque” by creating and constructing a truly marvellous landscaped park.
His first task was probably to enclose his park – a considerable feat in itself – as the great stepped wall runs for over a mile down the A286 from Milford Lodge to Brook, and then can be followed for over another mile beside and above the lane to Bowlhead Green.
In 1903, The Royal Magazine told “how the sombre, silent man from the City strode about his park, carrying a great oak stick and superintending. Everywhere he saw chances of improvement. “We will have a great lake here” he said, with a wave of his oak staff, “this hill blocks the view – take it away. Cut down this wood. Here we will have a grotto. An Italian fountain would look well here! It was a standing joke among the workmen to say, every time they saw the oak stick waving ‘there goes another hundred pounds’” And so the land at Witley was moved about by many men, at the will of one man – hills and valleys were manufactured the three great lakes: Upper Lake, Thursley Lake and Stable Lake were dug and filled from the tributary stream of the Wey. Wright imported fantastic ornaments for his park, one fountain of a dolphin came from Italy to Southampton docks but the railways refused to deliver it because it was too wide to go through their tunnels! Undeterred, Wright sent a tractor engine to haul the load home by road, and when it reached a bridge that was too low to get beneath, he ordered the road to be cut away until the dolphin could progress safely.
He was not short of imagination either and had a tunnel dug beneath Thursley Lake – it was 400 feet long, lit with chandeliers and wide enough for four people to walk side by side – and it led to a great chamber of curved glass 80 feet in height, known as the ballroom. It had tiled floors and the glass walls allowed the fish swimming in the lake to be observed. Apart from the underwater ballroom, there was also the grotto, approached by a secret water passage from the lake. The grotto itself was a “fairy-like cavern, with trees high above, forming the roof within their branches” and it led to galleries and chambers carved out of rock and decorated in the Oriental manner”.
Parish Mag article February 2022
Witley Park – Part 2
Last month we learned about the early life and times of Whitaker Wright, the entrepreneur businessman (AKA swindler and fraudster – keep reading!) who bought and built Witley Park at the turn of the twentieth century. This first passage continues Jane Brown’s excerpt from the publication “Portrait of S.W Surrey”.
“Whitaker Wright obviously also had an eye for local talent, for he gave the then 19-year-old Edwin Lutyens from Thursley, one of his earliest commissions for two boathouses on the lakes. The biggest of these is a beautiful classical building, a real Lutyens minor masterpiece built on two levels – the top floor with a small room and balcony for sitting and viewing, with boathouses and steps for swimming from on the lower level.
And then, of course, disaster struck again. Perhaps Wright was too involved in his dream landscape to keep tight enough control on his City activities, or perhaps those he thought were his friends, let him down, but his shares tumbled and the giant London and Globe Finance Corporation crashed in late 1900, bringing many members of the Stock Exchange and many subsidiary companies down with it. However, at first it seemed that Wright would escape; the Official Receiver’s report revealed the expected manipulations, deficits and false accounts, but no reason for public prosecution (in fact the Government ran scared because of the number of highly influential members of high society involved – Ed.). However, one creditor, a Mr John Flower, decided to act on his own account and obtained a warrant for Mr Wrights arrest in late 1902. Wright was in New York and eventually arrested the following March. Extradition failed and he returned home in August, of his own accord, to face the charges.
Wright’s trial took place at the Law Courts in January 1904; he was found guilty of fraud and convicted to 7 years penal servitude. After sentencing he was allowed a private meeting with his lawyers. He gave his watch to one of them saying that "I will not need this where I am going" and after requesting a whisky and cigar, swallowed a cyanide capsule he had smuggled into court. He died minutes later and was buried at All Saints Church, Witley.
The pity of it all was that Whitaker Wright, in seven short years, had found a real place in the hearts of the people who worked for him and lived near him at Witley. His time at the Park was marked by constant acts of generosity – great lunches, bazaar’s for charities and entertainments for Friendly Societies, Working Men’s Clubs and all kinds of ordinary people much less fortunate than himself. The day of his funeral was a very sad day – the villagers wore violets as a mark of their sadness – and his coffin was hauled from the Park to Witley Church by the men who worked for him”.
The collapse of Wright’s companies was largely unforeseen and took place on the last trading day of the nineteenth century. It was a true fin de siècle moment. Thousands of investors were ruined or suffered huge losses, and 20 firms of London stockbrokers went under. The story was headline news. With masterly understatement, The Times of London commented that ‘the last settlement of the century has certainly terminated in a deplorable manner.'
Following Wright's dramatic exit, his estate was parcelled up and sold off. The locals, who had been concerned about his landscaping efforts, banded together and bought the sections of the estate which included the Devil's Punch Bowl and Hindhead Common, at auction in 1905. The locals then donated the land to the National Trust in 1906, becoming, in the process, the first Trust property to be managed by a local committee.
In 1909 the house was bought by William James Pirrie (Viscount Pirrie) - famous as the designer of the SS Titanic and chairman of 'Harland and Wolff' the shipbuilders. He lived there with his wife until his death in 1924. The house was then bought by Sir John Leigh, created Baron Leigh of Altrincham in 1918, who was a wealthy newspaper owner, cotton industrialist and property financier. Photos of the house and interiors - possibly dated to around 1948 - show the fine and elegant style in which the house was kept. Sir John was considered a good owner and used his wealth to keep the estate and house in the style to which it was accustomed.
Sir John was not to end his days at Witley Park. Sometime around the early 1950s, he sold the estate and moved to Juniper Hill in Surrey where he died in 1959. Following the sale, the fortunes of the house now declined markedly. The new owner, one Ronald Huggett, bought the house and quickly held a sale to auction off anything possible, significantly stripping the house and leaving it a shadow of its former self. The die appeared to be cast for its eventual demise, as was to be the fate of many houses in the 1950s.
However, the end for Witley Park was almost as sudden as that of its former owner. In October 1952, a fire broke out (or was possibly started deliberately) in the ballroom and swiftly destroyed the house. What remained was levelled by another property speculator – and by 1956 all that remained were the domestic buildings, stables and the extensive parkland including the lakes with their now Grade-II listed buildings. The stables eventually became a conference centre - and even had a meeting room named Whitaker - with the grounds maintained as parkland. However, this was about to change. In 2003 a planning application was submitted and approved to build a house "...of classical design, with a main axis and two forward projecting bays at each end. A full height portico marks the front entrance and the garden elevation includes a projecting domed semi-rotunda, centrally set in this elevation."
That was 18 years ago and now, today, the former house and parkland are receiving yet another much needed injection of love, care, attention and funding. We welcome and wish good luck to the new owners and long may it continue to be one of the finest houses in Surrey.
These contemporary photographs were taken by Sean Edwards in 2018:
