A 19th-century house named the
"Wentworths" (now the
clubhouse for Wentworth Club) was the residence of the brother-in-law of the
1st Duke of Wellington. It was purchased in 1850 by an exiled Spanish Carlist military commander,
Ramón Cabrera, 1st Count of Morella (Carlist title) and 1st Marquis of Ter (Bourbon title), and his heiress wife. After the death of Cabrera in 1877, his widow (née Catherine Anne Vaughn-Richards) bought up the surrounding lands under The Cabrera Trust to safeguard the meadows, brooks and trees (planted from her travels on the continent with her gentrified husband) to form what has become the heart of the
Wentworth Estate. In 1912, builder
W. G. Tarrant had started developing
St George's Hill in
Weybridge – a development of houses based on minimum plots around a golf course. In 1922, Tarrant acquired the development rights for the Wentworth Estate, getting
Harry Colt to design a golf course around the
"Wentworths" house. Tarrant erected large residences on the estate using a similar Surrey formula to that used at St George's Hill. However, the development of the Wentworth Estate ground to a halt due to the
Great Depression at the end of the 1920s. In 1931, when the banks asked for repayment of a large debenture, Tarrant was forced to declare
bankruptcy. Ownership of the land passed to Wentworth Estates Ltd, which came under the control of
Sir Lindsay Parkinson & Company. In 1988,
Elliott Bernerd's property investment company Chelsfield bought Wentworth Golf Club for £17.7 million (also reported as £20 million). Bernerd sold 40% of the club to Japanese investors, raising £32 million, in 1989. In 2014 Caring sold the club for £135m to Beijing-based Reignwood Investments (a holding company associated with billionaire
Yan Bin), which has made the club more exclusive by cutting the number of members and raising the fees. Current debentures cost £175,000 and the annual fees is £16,000. ==Today==