Sutton Place, Surrey

Bindoff (1982) stated:

The building, with its perpendicular forms overlaid with Italian ornament, bears little resemblance to any other courtier's house of the 1520s, and it ranks with the vanished Nonsuch Palace as a landmark in the introduction of renaissance ideas"[5]

Harrison (1899) stated it to be "a landmark in the history of art",[6] and "a cinquecento conception in an English gothic frame".[7] He identified it as "one of the first houses built as a peaceful residence, with no thought for defence...one of the first country houses in the modern sense, instead of an imitation castle...Weston perceived that the Wars of the Barons were over, that a gentleman might live at his ease under protection of law and the king's peace".[8] Weston was certainly daring in his choice of eye-catching decoration above his front-door, for which he surely risked being ridiculed by his manly friends, including the king himself: innocent loving children at play: the amorini. Was this a signal by an avant-gard Sir Richard to his visitors, many of whom must have been valiant and experienced soldiers, that his house was to be a haven where love and play were de rigueur, not the old-fashioned militaristic conversations and behaviours? What a different message this was to that placed above the gates of Dante's Inferno: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here". At Sutton, the defensive towers and turrets of the old castles and fortified manors have been reduced to mere pilasters, covered with decorative terracotta, caricatures of their former selves, perhaps as symbols of a deliberate rejection of defensive elements by Weston. The symbolism of the short stretch of crenellated parapet on the roofline above the front-door, one of the most potent aspects of the old defensive fortress, has been disarmed and cancelled-out by the almost jarring sight of a covering of yet more playful amorini. A more deliberately dissonant juxtaposition would be hard to imagine, yet that is what Sir Richard ordered to be erected. Sutton is clearly a house with a message to proclaim, which would not have been, could not have been, missed by its visitors.

Original north wing containing gatehouse, demolished 1782, drawing made in 1779

The house is built of red brick and was originally of four blocks enclosing a quadrangle exactly 81 ft. 3 ins. square.[9] The northern block or wing was demolished in 1782, giving the house its present open appearance of a U-shape, the two surviving flanking wings forming a courtyard looking to the east. An unusual feature is that, due to the extreme flatness of the site, the entire ground floor of the whole house stands on the exact level of the soil, so that no step exists for entering the house on any side.[10] It is set within a separately listed formal parkland at the end of a long driveway.[11]

• Sir Richard I Weston (d.1541). Granted manor by Henry VIII on 17 May 1521.[21]
• Sir Henry Weston (d.1592), grandson of Richard I. From about 1569 the fortunes of the Westons fade,[22] they start to live more at Clandon.
• Sir Richard II Weston (1564–1613), son of Henry. Led an uneventful life, knighted 1603.
• Sir Richard III Weston (1591–1652), canal builder & pioneering agriculturalist. Son of Richard II. Last prominent member of Weston family in English public life.[23] In 1641 he sold Clandon Park and Temple Court Farm at Merrow to Sir Richard Onslow, MP for Surrey in the Long Parliament and ancestor of the Earl Onslow.[24]
• John I Weston (d.1690), 2nd and eldest surviving son of Richard III, his eldest brother Richard IV having died young. Married in 1637.[25] Mary Copley da. & heiress of William Copley of Gatton, Reigate, Surrey.[26] He sold Gatton in 1654 and Sutton Place once again became the Weston's principal residence.[27] He constructed a new quadrangle on the side of the east wing of Sutton Place, as service quarters, and generally refitted-out the house.
• Richard V Weston (d.1701). Married Melior Nevill, da. of William Nevill of Holt, Leicestershire.
• John II Weston (d.1730), only son of Richard V, and last heir male of the blood of the founder.[28] He married Elizabeth Gage (d.1724), sister of Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage (d.1754). He refitted the upper part of the east wing which had been dilapidated since a fire in 1561, creating a long gallery. His wife Elizabeth was, in Harrison's estimation,[29] the subject of Alexander Pope's "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady", published in 1717. Harrison derives his opinion from a note of Pope's appended to his letter to Mrs Weston, and states the story of the poem, involving a suicide, to be pure imagination.
• Melior Mary Weston (1703–1782), spinster, last of the Weston name. A portrait exists of her in 1723 aged 20. She bequeathed all her estates to John Webbe, a very distant cousin, on condition that he adopted the name and arms of Weston.[30] John Webbe-Weston erected a marble tablet to her memory in Holy Trinity Church, Guildford where she was buried in the Weston Chapel built by Sir Richard Weston the founder, inscribed as follows:[31]

"To the Memory of Melior Mary Weston of Sutton Place in the county of Surrey, Spinster. This Marble was erected as a tribute of sincere respect and gratitude by John Webbe Weston of Sarnesfield Court in the county of Hereford, Esq. who in pursuance of her last will and bequest succeeded to her name and estates. She was the last immediate descendant of an illustrious Family which flourished in this county for many successive generations, and with the ample possessions of their ancestors inherited their superior understanding and distinguished virtues

obiit, 10 Junii, MDCCLXXXII, aet. 79. R.I.P."

John Webbe erected a tablet very similar to this one in Sarnesfield Church in 1795 to the memory of his other spinster distant cousin Ann Monington, a nun who had left her Hereford estates, including Sarnesfield, to him in 1780. Ann Monington's father Edward's second wife was Bridget Webbe and he died without any male heirs. John Webbe, to whom Ann Monington left the Sarnesfield Estate, was the son of Bridget Webbe's uncle Thomas Webbe of Hammersmith.[32] It appears both bequests came to him due to his having adhered to the Roman Catholic religion, which other cousins in contention for the bequests had deserted, to the displeasure of the legators. John Webbe-Weston was the son of Thomas Webbe, a linen draper, of York Street, St Paul's, Covent Garden (in the 1740s) and of Brook Green, Hammersmith (in the 1770s) by Ann Tancred, daughter of Thomas Tancred, a woollen draper, of St Paul's, Covent Garden (in 1768) by Frances Gazaigne.[33] Thomas Tancred was the grandson of Sir William Tancred, 2nd Baronet (d.1703) of Aldeborough, Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, by Elizabeth Waldegrave, da. of Charles Waldegrave of Stanninghall, Norfolk, 2nd son of Sir Edward Waldegrave, 1st Baronet.[34] Thomas Webbe's mother was the sister of William Wolffe of St Giles-in-the-Field and Great Haseley, Oxon, who married Frances Weston, aunt of Melior Mary Weston. William Wolffe's mother was Anne Pincheon of Writtle, Essex, daughter of John Pincheon who was the son of Sir Edward Pincheon of Writtle by Dorothy Weston, sister of Richard Weston, 1st Earl of Portland, who shared a common descent with Richard Weston the founder of Sutton Place from a certain Humphrey Weston.[35]

• John Webbe-Weston (d.1823), assumed by licence in 1782 the surname Webbe-Weston, but did not adopt old Weston arms. He was descended from the sister of William Wolffe, the husband of Frances, Melior's paternal aunt. The Wolffes of Great Haseley, Oxon., were descended from the Westons of Preston Hall, Essex. In 1782, the year he inherited Sutton Place, he demolished the dilapidated gatehouse wing[36] He completed renovations in 1784, having rejected proposals of the architect Bonomi to remodel the house in an Italianate or neo-classical style. In 1794 he inherited Sarnesfield Court, Hereford, (demolished in 1955) from his cousin Anne Monington. He married firstly Elizabeth Lawson (d.1791, aged 34) da. of Sir John Lawson of Brough Hall, Yorks.
• John Joseph I Webbe-Weston (d.1840), son of John Webbe-Weston by Elizabeth Lawson. He married in 1811 Caroline Graham.
• Capt. John Joseph II Webbe-Weston (d.1849), only son of John Joseph I. He died in action on the Danube. In 1847 he married Lady Horatia Waldegrave, da. of John Waldegrave, 6th Earl Waldegrave. On her 2nd marriage to John Wardlaw the Weston estates passed as a life interest to Thomas Monington Webbe-Weston (d.1857) her 1st husband's uncle.
• Thomas Monington Webbe-Weston (d.1857), 2nd son of John Webbe-Weston, last of that name. He married Mary Wright and died without issue.

Arms of Salvin of Croxdale Hall, Durham: Argent, on a chief sable two mullets or[37]

• Francis Henry Salvin (d.1904), of Croxdale Hall, Co. Durham. He was the residuary legatee of the will of Capt. John Joseph II Webbe-Weston. He was a grandson of John Webbe-Weston, his mother having been Anna Maria Webbe-Weston, who in 1800 married William Thomas Salvin of Croxdale, a member of a Catholic family prominent in Yorkshire and County Durham.[38] He lived at the relatively modest Whitmoor House in nearby Woking. He was an authority on falconry, and wrote, with William Brodrick, Falconry in the British Isles (1855). He kept pet otters and a pet pig named "Lady Susan" at his home in Woking and was something of a practical joker using his pig as an accomplice. He inherited Sutton Place in 1857, but not with free-possession as, in 1855, it was tenanted by Charles LeFevre, who was followed by a tenancy to Caledon Alexander.[39] In 1874, Salvin leased Sutton Place to the stockbroker Frederick I Harrison (d.1881), from whom it passed to his son Sidney Harrison. One of his younger sons was Frederic Harrison, the historian, who wrote the definitive history of Sutton Place. The Harrison family spent much care and money on preserving the house.[40] From 1900, the tenant was Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe (d.1922)[41]

On the death of Francis Salvin in 1904, the estate passed to his niece's son Philip Witham, a solicitor, who died in 1921. Witham was born in 1842, 4th son of Sir Charles Witham Knt., a Captain in the Royal Navy, by Jane, daughter of John Hoy, of Stoke Priory. He was the grandson of William Witham and Dorothy Langdale. He was educated at Mount St Mary's and abroad and admitted a Solicitor in 1866. He became head of the firm of Messrs Witham, Roskell, Munster and Weld. He served as a member of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial Committee in 1904. He married, in 1878, Louisa Salvin, da. of Marmaduke Salvin of Burn Hall, Durham, and niece of Captain Francis H. Salvin.[42] Witham had never held vacant possession of Sutton Place and sold it on the expiry of the Northcliffe tenancy in 1918. His wife Louise lived on until 1945. In July 1945, the voluminous Weston family estate papers were presented to Surrey Archives by Mrs D Wolseley of Guildford.[43]

East Lodge gates, Sutton Place, on the north side of the A3 road.

• George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 5th Duke of Sutherland (d. 1963). [n 2] He modernised the interior.
• J. Paul Getty, who purchased the estate in 1959, was then, or shortly thereafter, the world's richest private citizen. His choice of Sutton Place for his principal residence made the property well known. He adopted a very low personal profile locally, being occasionally seen by Sutton Green villagers driving through in a very old model Cadillac coupé. For the 2017 film All the Money in the World, about the kidnapping of Getty's grandson John Paul Getty III, scenes set at Sutton Place were filmed at Hatfield House.
• Stanley J. Seeger. Sutton Place was sold in 1980, after Getty's death in 1976, by his Getty Oil Corporation, for £8 million, to a company owned by Stanley J. Seeger who established the Sutton Place Heritage Trust to maintain the property. He was an American heir to a family fortune from lumber, petroleum, and other sources, who had begun collecting art whilst a student at Princeton University.[48] He was a patron of arts and educational charities and endowed a chair of Hellenic studies at Princeton University. He is never known to have given an interview. He redecorated Sutton Place and hung some of his modern paintings there including a Bacon triptych. In the early 1980s he commissioned landscape architect Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe to relandscape the park and gardens. Although Seeger stated he spent almost £1m a year on maintaining the house, he rarely lived there.[49]
• Frederick R. Koch. After 10 years, Seeger sold it to another American art collector, Frederick R. Koch, who set up the Sutton Place Foundation, and in his turn redecorated the house and used it to display his own art collection to the public. According to The Guardian he is said never to have spent a night under its roof and to have sold it for £32m in 1999.[49] In January 2003, it was offered for sale at £25m.[50] The estate at that time comprised 21 properties, including the 18-bedroom Lady Grove Farmhouse.[51]
• Alisher Usmanov, a Russian businessman, is the present owner.[52] Some of the properties with part of the estate land have now been sold. Lady Grove Farmhouse has been redeveloped into luxury housing. The interiors of Sutton Place House underwent extensive renovation and improvements for its new owner from 2007 to 2009.[53]