The history of Claremont Landscape Garden

Robert Clive and colonial wealth

Following Thomas’s death, Harriet sold Claremont in 1769 to Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive of Plassey (1725–74) for £25,000 (about £2.5 million today). Between 1744 and 1767, Robert was a senior employee of the East India Company. Through him, the Company deployed its armies to forcibly invade and conquer the Indian subcontinent, exploiting and financially profiting from the wealth and rich natural resources of India’s southern regions. Thus began the British Empire in India, allowing Robert, who was the first British Governor of Bengal, to amass a fortune of £900,000 (equivalent to £30 million today).

With this wealth, Robert employed the fashionable designers Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Henry Holland to build a new house on an elevated site. This house is now owned by Claremont Fan Court School.  Brown also made alterations to the landscape, altering the line of the ha-ha and diverting the Portsmouth Road.

At the time of Robert Clive’s death in 1774, the unfinished house was a store for his collection of South East Asian art, including ivories, textiles, statues of Hindu gods, ornamental silver and gold, weapons and ceremonial armour. This collection can now be seen displayed at Powis Castle in Powys, Wales (National Trust).

After 1774, Claremont passed through the hands of several members of the British nobility including Robert Monckton- Arundell, 4th Viscount Gallway (1752–1810), George Carpenter, 2nd Earl Tyrconnell (1750–1805) and finally, in 1807, Charles Rose Ellis, 1st Baron Seaford (1771–1845).

Part of Ellis’s wealth came from ownership of a Jamaican sugar plantation and enslaved people. Ellis was also a leading promoter of anti-abolitionist interests in Parliament. He sold Claremont to the British Government in 1816.

A royal residence

When Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796–1817) married Prince Leopold (1790-1865) in 1816, Claremont became their royal residence. The couple shared an interest in gardens. Their Camellia House was one of the first glasshouses of its kind and a place where they spent a great deal of time. The building was demolished in 1959, but some of the original camellias survive. Charlotte died in childbirth at Claremont at the age of 21.  Public grief was so great that the gardens were opened to thousands of people mourning her death.

Leopold continued to live at Claremont and his niece, the young Queen Victoria (1819–1901), and her family visited frequently. From 1848 the royal connections extended to Europe when Claremont became home to the exiled French king, Louis-Philippe I (1773–1850) and his family. His wife Queen Marie-Amélie (1782–1866), lived at Claremont until her death. Queen Victoria then purchased the property for her youngest son Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany (1853–84), when he married Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyremont (1861–1922) in 1882.

20th-century sale and dispersal

In 1922, after Helena’s death, the property was sold to Sir W. Corry, a director of Cunard Steamship Company, and in turn to a property investment company. In 1930, large portions of the park were sold for housing development. A private school bought the house and park (today Claremont Fan Court School) whilst the remaining 49 acres were sold to Sir Samuel Rowbothan, a property developer, whose plans stalled during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the site became overgrown. In 1947, new Green Belt protected areas were established that included the Claremont estate. Samuel’s widow, Dame Annie Rowbotham, offered the site to the Treasury in lieu of tax and it was then passed to the care of the National Trust.

Esher Urban District Council managed the land until 1975, when the National Trust took over. Thanks to a generous donation from the Slater Foundation, and the efforts of volunteers, the lake was dredged, garden buildings were repaired and the Amphitheatre cleared of invasive scrub. Claremont Landscape Garden, as it was then renamed, became one of the first, large-scale garden restorations, receiving a Europa Nostra Diploma of Merit in 1980. Until the early 2000s a series of modern fêtes champêtres were held annually to celebrate the restored gardens.

Nevertheless, the landscape garden today is by no means finished. Opportunities to restore lost elements are explored and the care of original planting continues, including mature specimens of Lebanon Cedar, native trees and some of the country’s oldest camellias.