Garden Walls With Gateway To Esher Place Gardens, At Number 7 (Garden Reach Cottage)

Garden Walls with Gateway to Esher Place Gardens, at Number 7 (Garden Reach Cottage)

These boundary walls and gateway, probably dating from the mid-18th century, are associated with work by William Kent at Esher Place for Henry Pelham in the 1730s.

The walls are constructed of two distinct builds. The roadside section, gatepiers, and part of the east-west section are of plum-brown brick, mostly in English garden wall bond. The taller boundary wall and pedimented gateway forming the southwest boundary are in soft red brick in Flemish bond.

The walls enclose a roughly triangular area that was formerly part of the kitchen gardens to Esher Place. This area contains the former orangery and gardener's cottage at 7 More Lane. The roadside section is buttressed and broken by a pair of gatepiers, which have been repaired and retain later 18th-century Coadestone pineapple finials. The southern corner of the wall has been rebuilt. The return forming the northern boundary of number 7 is partly of similar construction and may contain a blocked entrance. It extends westward towards the cottage in soft red Flemish bond brickwork. The taller wall forms the boundary between 7 More Lane and the property to the south, and incorporates a pedimented round-arched gateway in Flemish bond red brick. The piers have plain red brick impost bands, and the pediment carries a brick dentilled cornice. Inserted in the wall are a doorway under a cambered red brick arch with a vertically boarded door, and a narrow opening. The wall is buttressed at the angles. The continuation of wall to the north of the gateway, beneath a shaped parapet, has been partly rebuilt.

Esher Place was one of the most significant Rococo landscapes in the country, with house, landscape and estate buildings designed by William Kent—painter, architect and garden designer—for Henry Pelham in the 1730s. The design incorporated a house built for Bishop Wayneflete of Winchester in the late 15th century. The centre of the house, now known as Wayneflete's Tower, together with the grotto, an urn and the lodges, survive. The walls and gateway at 7 More Lane enclosed 18th-century kitchen gardens and have historic interest for their association with Esher Place and the rich context of early 18th-century landscapes in Esher. To the north of 7 More Lane are the remains of the former rectangular kitchen garden.

Esher Place is depicted in an engraving dated 1759, though the kitchen gardens, as expected, are not included in the view. The precise date of construction of the walled garden, gardener's cottage and orangery is not known, although Kent is documented to have built a boundary wall to the estate. Until the 1950s the walled gardens were run as commercial gardens by the former estate gardener, who lived in the gardener's cottage.