WAYNEFLETE TOWER PELHAM’S WALK ,

Wayneflete, or Wolsey’s Tower was built on the north bank of the River Mole between 1478 and 1484 for William of Wayneflete, Bishop of .

It formed the gate of a courtyard house approached from the river. The Mole flows into the Thames at Hampton Court, and the architecture as well as the history of the two grand houses was entwined.

In 1519, Cardinal Wolsey took up residence at , having been displaced from Hampton Court by Henry VIII. Having fallen irredeemably from the kings favour by 1529,

Wolsey spent his last years in Esher, dying at Leicester Abbey whilst en route from Esher to York.

In 1538, the house at Esher was given by the church to Henry VIII, who used it as a hunting lodge.

Between 1550 and 1583 the estate passed in turn to Edward VI, the Earl of Warwick and Queen Mary, before being granted by the Crown to Lord Howard of Effingham who sold it to , equerry to .

Drake held the Spanish Admirals Don Alonso de Cayas, Don Vasco de Mendoza and Don Pedro de Valdez hostage in the tower. It was they who painted the tromp l’oeil panels in the study.

The Drakes sold the house to Philip Doughty in 1677, Doughty demolished all but the gatehouse.

Henry Pelham, Prime Minister between 1745 and 1754, bought the estate in 1729, and commissioned William Kent to extend and revamp the tower. Kent introduced gothic revival stone windows and doorways into the daipered brickwork of the tower and built wings in a similar style to either side, changing the orientation of the house away from the river.

This was the first use of gothic revival style anywhere. It extended also into the house, in the form of elaborately decorated plasterwork that survives in the lobby, the study and drawing room.

Kent’s wings were demolished in 1805, the gatehouse left alone once more, a landscape feature in the grounds of a new Esher Place built a mile away.

It fell in decay, but its revival began under the ownership in the 1940s of the actress Frances Day.

The tower became surrounded by a luxury housing estate.

Major conservation works to the interior and to the masonry were begun in the 1994 by Ian and Penny Rainbow and continued by Penny Rainbow in 1998.

Nimbus Conservation Limited carried out a contract on the North elevation in 1994 and Nigel Copsey and Oliver Coe, having worked freelance for Nimbus on the first phase, carried out the second phase in their own right in 1998/99.

The local limestone had fallen into a parlous and dangerous condition. Considerable replacement of weathering elements such as string courses and hood mouldings, as well as mullions and jambs was unavoidable, although every care was taken to

conserve with lime mortar, repair and sheltercoat the maximum amount of historic fabric. Replacement was executed in Stoke Ground Bath stone, the best available match for the original, probably quite local, but relatively inferior limestone.

Kent had inserted the masonry in a very superficial way, often chopping out to only the depth of one brick, and interrupting the pattern of glazed brick diapering without too much sympathetic restitution.

The original Tudor pointing to the brickwork remained sound across the whole of the building.

Wayneflete Tower remains an enchanting, hidden survivor, unassuming witness to so many affairs of state and of men, upon which it was a rare privilege to worked