The first recorded predecessor was acquired by or for
Peter des Roches,
Bishop of Winchester, for his bishopric, early in the 13th century. The house was torn down in the latter half of the 15th century by
William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester and
Lord Chancellor, to make way for a large brick residence (with a tall slender tower
gatehouse (''Waynflete's Tower'', see below) that stands today).
Cardinal Wolsey, who possessed Esher Place as Bishop of Winchester, was kept under
house arrest here after his fall from power. The estate was then seized by
Henry VIII, restored to the Bishop of Winchester by
Mary I, and the lease was then re-purchased by the Crown under
Elizabeth I, who granted it to her
Lord High Admiral,
Lord Howard of Effingham, who granted it to
Sir Francis Drake's cousin
Richard Drake. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, three captured Spanish admirals and their retinue were held at Esher for over five years. It remained in the Drake family until 1634. Over the next 75 years, the house which had more land than today was held by at least seven individuals, the last two being Sir Thomas Lynch, an early
English governor of
Jamaica, and John Latton, a pluralistic office-holder under
William III (William of Orange). In 1716 its wider agricultural
estate was separated from what was its
manor house, that is, sold to the first
Duke of Newcastle, who owned
Claremont in the same
parish. The house (and immediate grounds), passed through two owners, including Peter Delaperte, one of the directors of the
South Sea Company, and came into the ownership of the Duke's younger brother,
Henry Pelham, in 1729. Pelham hired
William Kent to renovate the property who did so by having demolished much of the medieval and Tudor portions — except for the
gatehouse — and adding wings and some of the earliest
Gothic revival ornamentation in England. In
The Seasons, the Scottish poet
James Thomson (author of the lyrics to
Rule, Britannia!) praises Esher Place's owner's family by owning the house had the privilege of using one half of the
Newcastle Pew at
St. George's Church, Esher. After Pelham's death, the property passed to his daughter, and was then purchased in 1805 by London merchant John Spicer. Spicer pulled down the house and used the material to build another, designed by
Edward Lapidge, on a more elevated site. The new house was stuccoed, in imitation of stone, with Ionic porticoes on north and south fronts, and semi-circular wings. In the late 1890s, this building was then incorporated as a wing into the current
French Renaissance style house on the site, designed by
G.T. Robinson and
Achille Duchêne at the behest of
Edgar Vincent, later 1st Lord D'Abernon. Vincent had purchased the much-reduced estate in 1895 from
Money Wigram, who had bought it from the Spicer heirs. Vincent — Lord D'Abernon after 1914 — had guests including
Edward VIII (the British King in much of the year 1936) when
Prince of Wales,
Cecil Rhodes, and
Anna Pavlova. However, in 1930 Lord D'Abernon gave the house to the
Ragged School Union later the Shaftesbury Society, while most of the grounds were sold to developers who built a housing estate around the mansion. The house became the Shaftesbury Home for young children from 1930 until 1952, when it was sold to the
Electrical Trades Union (now merged into Unite the Union), which opened it in 1953 as the college it remains today. The gatehouse on More Lane is located in
Lower Green, Esher. ==Waynflete's Tower==