Botleys Mansion
Stonehill Rd, Lyne, Chertsey KT16 0AP
Botleys Mansion is thirty minutes from London but feels a million miles away. At the end of a leafy private drive, its handsome Palladian features preside over a classical fountain and 56 acres of rolling parkland. The ultimate romantic setting close to London.
The building is a Grade II listed Palladian mansion house in the south of Chertsey, Surrey, England, just south of St Peter's Hospital. The house was built in the 1760s by builders funded by Joseph Mawbey and to designs by Kenton Couse. The elevated site once bore a 14th-century manor house seized along with all the other manors of Chertsey from Chertsey Abbey, a very rich abbey, under Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries and today much of its land is owned by two hospitals, one public, one private, and the local council authority. The remaining mansion and the near park surrounding were used for some decades as a colony hospital and as a private care home.
In 1319, the original Botleys Mansion was either owned by John de Butteley or John Manory of Chertsey. In 1505, de Butteley's son Thomas gave the mansion to Richard Merland, Thomas Pervoche, and Henry Wykes; soon after though, Wykes became the sole owner of the mansion, then called Botlese Mansion. Ownership of the mansion changed hands several times and was owned by Henry VIII in 1541, after he purchased it from Sir Roger Cholmeley. In 1763, the mansion was transferred to Joseph Mawbey, the man responsible for the house's reconstruction. The mansion was passed around after Mawbey's death until it was purchased by Robert Gosling in 1822. The Gosling family lived in the mansion until 1931, when Surrey County Council purchased the building for a staggering £30,000.
The mansion was bought and restored by a company, Bijou Wedding Venues, in 2010 and is used to host weddings and events.