A Stunning Estate With A Royal History

Chobham Park Estate 

Chobham Park House

"Chobham Park House, has been in its time a manor house, a royal hunting lodge, a gentleman’s country seat, a tenanted farmhouse, a grand country house and now, once again, is the heart of a pristine country estate." 

Penny Chuchill, Country Life Magazine

The Chobham Park Estate comprises an outstanding principal house set in a wonderful rural position, surrounded by beautiful formal gardens and grounds extending to around 100 acres, says agent Knight Frank, Guildford. 

Chobham Park House

There are three excellent secondary properties ideal for guests or letting, currently providing substantial rental income. 

The main house is private, with Chobham Park Cottage and Little Chobham Park Cottage along with The Tithe Barn accessed off a separate spur from the main drive.

Chobham Park House

There is also extensive stabling on the estate within the principal stable courtyard near the main house and a separate polo yard set further away providing 26 loose boxes.

Stables

Riding School

Believed to date from around 1700, Chobham Park House is an elegant Grade II Listed manor house with a classic Georgian façade. 

Fabulous Grounds

Approached along a treelined driveway which passes through its own land, the immediate gardens and grounds are accessed through impressive entrance gates with stone piers. 

Driveway

The gravel drive leads up to a large parking area to the side of the house. 

Chobham Park House

The house has undergone a substantial program of refurbishment in recent years resulting in an extremely high standard of presentation.

Swimming Pool

The property offers light and well-proportioned rooms, all enjoying superb views over the gardens and grounds. The accommodation briefly comprises an elegant light reception hall, drawing room, dining room, study, wonderful family kitchen/breakfast room, morning room, guest cloakroom, utility room and second cloakroom. 

On the first floor there is an impressive master suite, with large double aspect bedroom, en suite bath/shower and a fabulous dressing room. There is a second bedroom suite, two further bedrooms and a family bathroom on this floor.

Further accommodation can be found on the second floor where there is a bedroom suite with balcony, two further bedrooms and a bathroom. 

There is also an additional sitting room on the top floor. 

A second set of stairs from the kitchen provide access to the eastern side of the house, where on the first floor there is a study and a fabulous triple aspect first floor sitting room. 

On the top floor, on this side of the house, is a further shower room and a dressing room.

Adjacent to the main house is the coach house which offers garaging for four cars, a gym and a first floor games/billiards room.

Billiard Room

Conveniently situated acriss the courtyard is a converted barn laid out to provide excellent offices with a meeting room, sitting room, office, store room, kitchen and cloakroom.

Tithe Barn & Cottages

Across the drive is a substantial timber framed and clad barn conversion with a galleried reception/dining room with kitchen/breakfast room, on the ground floor and two large bedroom suites on the first floor with a galleried landing.

The Tithe barn has a beautifully landscaped private garden and is ideal for principal guest accommodation.

Entrance to Tithe Barn Complex

Opposite The Tithe Barn sits Chobham Park Cottage. The cottage offers two principal reception rooms, a study, kitchen and cloakroom on the ground floor with a bathroom and en suite shower room on the first floor. This building is presently used as a private office but is perfect for guests. 

Little Chobham Park Cottage

Next to it is Little Chobham Park Cottage which is a single storey 2 bedroom cottage (both en suite) with reception room and kitchen, ideal for guests or staff.

Formal Gardens

The Chobham Park Estate is on the market, at the time of writing, with Knight Frank in Guildford for £15,000,000.  To go to the agents listing CLICK HERE

History

It is understood that the land at the site of Chobham Park was owned in ancient times by the Abbot and Monks of Chertsey Abbey. It was granted to Chertsey Abbey prior to 675 A.D by Frithwald the subregulus of Surrey and the founder of the Abbey. There was a double moated manor house on the site of the existing Chobham Park House until around 1537 and the dissolution of the monasteries saw the house pass to Henry VIII. It is thought the King kept the manor for his own use before his daughter Queen Mary sold the property to her chancellor, Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York, in 1558. The estate was enclosed by a pale, which gave it the right to be called a park with it being marked as a deer park on John Norden’s map of 1610.

Stunning Grounds

“In places, it’s 500 years old—you feel the history, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s very much geared up for modern-day family living, it doesn’t feel like you’re in a museum,” selling agent Tim Harriss, the head of the Guilford office of the global real estate firm Knight Frank, told property website, Mansion Global.

Although the exact details aren’t totally clear, it is believed that the abbot and monks of Chertsey Abbey owned the land in ancient times. According to Knight Frank’s listing, it used to have a double-moated manor house until around 1537, when there was a “dissolution of the monasteries” and the house was passed to Henry VIII. He used the manor house, and his daughter, Queen Mary, eventually ended up selling the estate in 1558 to her chancellor, Nicholas Heath, who was the archbishop of York.

Paddocks

On the Archbishop’s death, the Chobham manor house and estate passed to his nephew, Thomas, who sold them in 1606 to Francis Leigh, later 1st Earl of Chichester, writes Penny Churchill from Country Life Magazine: 

A year or so later, Leigh sold his Chobham estates to Antony Cope, who, in turn, sold them in 1614 to William Hale. In 1654, Hale’s son, John, sold the old manor house to Henry Henn, whose descendants were still in possession in 1681. For much of the Henn family’s ownership, Chobham Park House was let to tenants, one of whom was James Martin, a prosperous East India merchant, whose son, John, later bought the estate.

The old manor house was pulled down in the late 17th or early 18th century, given that its listing entry dates the present Chobham Park House at ‘about 1700’. Some 30,000 bricks from nearby Woking Palace were used in the rebuilding, carried out probably by John Martin Jnr, who sold the estate in 1720.

From the late 1770s, Chobham Park House and farm were occupied by a succession of tenant farmers, until, in 1908, the estate was bought by Aynesely Greenwell, a wealthy Londoner who had the farmhouse altered and converted into a residence suitable for an Edwardian gentleman.

Tennis Court

Twice sold in the 1920s, again in 1934 and after the war in 1947, from 1968 until 1985, Chobham Park — its lands by then much reduced in size — was owned by Sir Cranley Onslow. It was later acquired by entrepreneur Anthony Tiarks, who, in 1996, sold Chobham Park House to Michael and Francesca Evans, the current owners.