After Thomas Stonor's death in 1683 Watlington Park may have been occupied by younger sons of the Stonor family, but most of the time it seems to have been let to Roman Catholic tenants of importance. In 1753 negotiations were begun for the sale of the house for £1,500 to John Tilson, the son of the Under-Secretary of State, though the actual conveyance was not signed until 1758. Tilson built the present mansion in the fashionable Palladian style in the mid-1750s.
The Esher Family
The house appears to have remained virtually unaltered until the late 19th century when it was bought and enlarged by several owners. Oliver Brett, who later became Viscount Esher, purchased the property in 1920 and continued the work of enlargement and modernization. His son, Lionel Gordon Baliol Brett, architect and town planner, succeeded 1963 as the fourth Viscount Esher and decided to reduce the house to its Georgian dimensions by demolishing much of the recent 19th- and 20th-century extensions.