Thames Tributary River Mole - Painshill

Thames Tributary River Mole
The Mole now flows



Post to the north Convent Lane
Post to the east Cobham
Post to the south Painshill
 A3 roundabout

A full time gyratory roundabout at the junction of the old Portsmouth Road and the A3 Esher Bypass built in the 1970s.

Byfleet Road
Manor Pond owned as a fishery by C
entral Association London Provincial Angling Clubs. Up to the 18th it is thought that the area occupied by Manor Pond was a marshy expanse with a stream running through it. The stream still exists and travels west to East through the pond. Part of the area, was dammed, to make a lake.
Adder Pond is artificial and built at the same time as Manor Pond
Feltonfleet School. House built in the 1870s. Yet another posh private school, this time one which moved here from Folkestone.

Street Cobham
Street Cobham is a settlement which grew around the area where the main road to Portsmouth crosses the river Mole. It is possible that the name of Elmbridge – which is the name of the Hundred – refers to this crossing and that the Hundred met here.
Cobham Bridge over the Mole. Is said to have been built for Queen Matilda in the 12th to replace a ford and for the benefit of the soul of a maiden who had drowned here. In 1350 it was reported that the wooden bridge here was broken it was repaired in 1353 by the Earl of Hereford. It was replaced with a brick one in 1780 by George Gwilt, the County Surveyor. It was widened in 1914. It is red brick with stone coping and nine arches. 20th parapets approximately four foot high. The main road crosses the Mole at on this bridge. There is a plaque on the parapet of the bridge about Queen Matilda.
Faircroft. House on a site where cattle fairs were held in the 18th and early 19th on the feast of St.Andrew.
Swan Inn opened in 1431 but the site not known although it was there to the 18th

Painshill Park
Laid out by Charles Hamilton 1704-1780, fourth son of the Duke of Abercorn. Laid out on what was barren heathland – previously owned by De Quesne who had built the house. He had been succeeded by a William Bellamy who consolidated the estate by the purchase of some farms. Hamilton made it a pleasure garden as a series of three dimensional pictures altered by surprises and illusions - a garden of the mood as you moved on. The image of a painting by Poussin. By 1953 the follies were all being destroyed by a timber company – but it is now open and restored by Painshill Park Trust.
Painshill House. The house is now divided into flats. This house is on a different site to the original built for Charles Hamilton and only a fragment left of the house which originated with De Quesne. The current house was built in 1778 by Richard Jupp for Benjamin Hopkins, with alterations by Decimus Burton in 19th and then Norman Shaw, who was commissioned by Charles James Leaf. Shaw removed the grand portico but it was replaced in the 1920s by one taken from the Temple of Bacchus which might be by Robert Adam. Painshill has many owners but was owned by the Coombe family in the 20th
Roman bath
Turkish tent – has been rebuilt. Designed by Henry Keene it has white drapes and golden finials. The tent is a solid building with additional drapes which were originally were made of canvas and papier-mâché, but have been replaced with fibreglass to last longer - although they still look like a tarpaulin. It is on the top of a hill. There were no extant standing remains of the original 18th Tent, and half the site of the feature belonged to a neighbouring landowner. Contemporary accounts suggested that it was brick and plaster, draped with white-painted, blue-fringed canvas. It had a lead roof. In 1986 archaeologists uncovered the remains bricks laid in herringbone pattern. Because of the land ownership issues it was decided to site a new Tent 50 yards to the south.
Icehouse. Built of brick into a natural hillside. The dome is a metre below the surface. The entrance is an 18ft long vaulted tunnel 5ft high in place. The ice pit is circular and there are three possible doors. It is adjacent to the ornamental water as a source of ice.
Fir walk, Amphitheatre. This is a planted area including a cork oak in the centre of the lawn. The shape of is based on a plan of 1744 by John Rocque and combines ideas from Italianate gardens and the emerging informal style of the English landscape movement. It includes a Statue which is a copy in lead of the Sabine group by Giambologna, c1582, the marble original of which is in Florence.
Bath house and pumping engine. A pump was near the Bath-house and worked by horse power, to supply water to the house from a nearby spring.
Great cedar of Lebanon is reputedly the largest in Europe. With a girth of 10,28 m near the ground and a height of 36 m. It lost some of its branches in a storm of 2007
Five arch bridge
Heywood Girl Guides Camp
The Broom
Portsmouth road
Matthew Arnold Close on the site of Painshill Cottage where Matthew Arnold lived 'the hermit of the Mole' from 1822 for the last fifteen years of his life. Demolished 1963

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