M25 Egham Great Fosters


Post to the south Thorpe Green
Post to the north Thorpe Lea



Black Lake Close
Black Lake Christmas Tree Farm

M25

Stroude Road
Great Fosters. Very posh hotel, on this site since 1931. The estate dates from the 1550s when it was owned by William Warham and called 'Imworth'. By 1622 it was called Fosters and owned by John Doddridge and in 1639, the manor was owned by Judge Robert Foster. At the Restoration in 1660 he became Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench. It had many owners and was used as an asylum from 1767 until the early 19th becoming a private home in the 1860s. In 1918, W H Romaine-Walker refurbished and extended the house and the gardens with G H Jenkins. It opened as a hotel in 1930. A tithe barn brought from Malden was installed in 1930, staff accommodation replaced glasshouses and a Conference Centre put in the coach house. In 1989 the Painted Hall and Orangery were built in the Willow Garden.
Great Fosters House. This was built around 1550-1610 and extended in 1635. It is in red brick with stone dressings with staircases housed in square-topped brick towers. Kitchens were installed in the 20th.
Stables are of 'very simple Artisan brickwork' with the carved initials of the owner. They became a garage in the 1930s and a Conference Centre in the 1970s
Gardens. The surroundings of the house include a U-shaped moat which may be Saxon and it is linked to brick loggias. The area includes a 16th sundial around which is a yew-hedged 'Tudor' garden. Beyond this a lawn slopes gently down to a stream on the eastern boundary of the site. A path leads over a steeply arched wooden bridge spanning the south arm of the moat and a wooden pergola runs parallel with the stream to a yew-enclosed rose garden with a circular pool and fountain. There is also a swimming pool with wooden changing rooms from 1928.  Trees here were badly affected by the storms of 1987 and 1990 and a lime avenue was severed by the M25 now ends in a grassed amphitheatre. There is a kitchen garden, now grassed over and enclosed by high brick walls and yews.
Black Lake Farm. This is now converted into housing

Thorpe Bypass
Thorpe Lea Nurseries. This was an extensive nursery business based from Clockhouse Lane to the north. In 1989 permission was given to Hall's Aggregates for the extraction of sand and gravel  In 1997 it was restored as a lake for nature conservation and informal recreational use. Archaeological work on the site showed that there was probably a Roman farm here and also that in the 3rd and 4th that there was an iron works here because remains of a furnace lining and slag have been found
Crabtree Corner

Sources
Black Lake Christmas Tree Farm. Web site
Great Fosters. Web site
Historic England. Web site
Osborne. Defending London

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