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Virginia Water

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Template:Short description Template:For Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox UK place

Virginia Water is a commuter village in the Borough of Runnymede in northern Surrey, England. It is home to the Wentworth Estate and the Wentworth Club. The area has much woodland and occupies a large minority of the Runnymede district. Its name is shared with the lake on its western boundary within Windsor Great Park. Virginia Water has excellent transport links with London–Trumps Green and Thorpe Green touch the M3, Thorpe touches the M25, and Heathrow Airport is Template:Convert northeast.

Many of the detached houses are on the Wentworth Estate, the home of the Wentworth Club which has four golf courses.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Ryder Cup was first played there. It is also home to the headquarters of the PGA European Tour, the professional golf tour. One of the houses featured in a headline in 1998—General Augusto Pinochet was placed under house arrest having unsuccessfully resisted extradition, the facing of a criminal trial in Chile.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2011 approximately half of the homes of the postcode district, which is narrower than the current electoral ward, were detached houses. In 2015 Land Registry sales data recorded Virginia Water's single postcode district as the most expensive as to the value of homes nationwide.

EtymologyEdit

The village is named after the nearby artificial Virginia Water Lake, which forms part of Windsor Great Park.

HistoryEdit

The Devil's Highway Roman Road, running from London, through Staines-upon-Thames (previously Pontes) to Silchester is thought to run through Virginia Water. Some of the local course has been lost, disappearing at the bottom of Prune Hill, and reappearing at the Leptis Magna ruins in the Great Park.

Nicholas Fuentes has argued that defeat of Boudica's insurrection by the Romans in AD 60/61 took place at Virginia Water, with the landscape between Callow Hill and Knowle Hill matching the battle landscape described by Tacitus, and the battle commencing roughly where the railway station lies.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

The area was for centuries similar to the Strode or (also written) Stroude tything, one of four divisions of the very large "ancient" parish of Egham. Egham the Domesday survey valued at £40 per annum.<ref name=parententity/> Egham was in the original endowment of Chertsey Abbey in 666–75. The manor was included in all subsequent confirmations of the abbey land, and was held until the surrender of the abbey in 1537, since which time all its vestigial rights remained with the Crown, which thus sold much land piecemeal and controlled who could build major developments for centuries.<ref name=parententity/>

Christ Church, in the Church of England was completed in 1838 and established as a parish the same year.<ref name=parententity>'Parishes: Egham', in A History of the County of Surrey: Volume 3, ed. H E Malden (London, 1911), pp. 419–427. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/surrey/vol3/pp419-427</ref>

The Duke of Wellington's brother-in-law lived at the 'Wentworths' house; this building now forms the Wentworth Club. In 1850, the house was bought by Ramón Cabrera, 1st Duke of Maestrazgo, an exiled Carlist general. During the Second World War, plans were put into place to move the government to the house, with tunnels dug underneath what is now the club carpark.

To the east of the lake is the Clockcase tower, a Grade I listed, triangular belvedere built in the Great Park during 1750s.<ref name=re_vw>Template:NHLE</ref> It is three-storey Gothic style construction.<ref name=re_vw/> George III made it into an observatory and Queen Victoria occasionally had tea there.<ref name=re_vw/> The building is inaccessible to the public, lying within a private part of the park. It is still owned by the Royal Estate and when listed in 1984 used as a residence.<ref name=re_vw/>

Virginia ParkEdit

File:Virginia Park - geograph.org.uk - 134487.jpg
Entrance to Virginia Park

Virginia Park is a gated housing development occupying the site of the former Holloway Sanatorium, a mental asylum constructed in 1885 to the design of William Henry Crossland. This was a private institution where patients paid for their own treatment.<ref name="atkins">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1948, it was taken over by the newly established National Health Service, and closed in 1980.

After years of neglect, in 2000 the building and grounds were converted into private sector housing by a developer, Octagon.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Octagon produced 23 residences in the main building and built 190 new houses and apartments on the grounds.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Properties are expensive and typically reach beyond the £1 million mark.<ref name=atkins />

The main building is Grade I listed, the highest category of recognition and protection.<ref>Template:NHLE</ref> The sanatorium chapel is Grade II* listed, meaning in a constrained mid-tier of the statutory scheme.<ref>Template:NHLE</ref> The gated estate includes a spa, gymnasium, multi-purpose sports hall, and all-weather tennis court.<ref name=atkins />

Wentworth EstateEdit

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File:Wentworth Estate - geograph.org.uk - 140278.jpg
A manicured street on the estate

Template:Convert of Virginia Water is owned by a members' trustee body, known as the Wentworth Estate. Founded in the 1920s, this estate comprises private sector houses, luxury apartments, woodland, several golf courses and a leisure club. It also includes part of the River Bourne, Chertsey.

The estate, due to its high walls and electric gates, has been compared to a "fortified suburb" found more commonly in South Africa and a place "where money disappears from view".<ref name="anthony">Template:Cite news</ref> Famous residents have included Elton John, Bruce Forsyth, Diana Dors and various professional golfers.<ref name=anthony /> Properties on the estate are regarded as "super prime" and have sold for as much as £50 million.<ref name=anthony />

GeographyEdit

Physical geographyEdit

The River Bourne runs from the artificial Virginia Water Lake through the long southern half of Virginia Water.

Housing and socio-economic geographyEdit

The 2011 census stated that the Virginia Water postcode district (post town) had the following dwellings, thus making up the relative proportions shown: <ref>https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/query/asv2htm.aspx Key Statistic KS401EW - Dwellings, household spaces and accommodation type by postcode district</ref>

Type Number Proportion
Whole house or bungalow: Detached 1,175 49.9%
Whole house or bungalow: Semi-detached 478 20.3%
Whole house or bungalow: Terraced (including end-terrace) 247 10.5%
Flat, maisonette or apartment: Purpose-built block of flats or tenement 346 14.7%
Flat, maisonette or apartment: Part of a converted or shared house (including bed-sits) 52 2.2%
Flat, maisonette or apartment: In a commercial building 33 1.4%
Caravan or other mobile or temporary structure 26 1.1%

Government data in terms of sales of homes from Autumn 2014 to 2015 showed Virginia Water to be the most expensive post town nationally (i.e. excluding any part of London). The recent averaged sold price for its homes was just over £1.1m.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

TransportEdit

The village has a junction railway station, built after the first line opened in 1856 to Ascot. Frequent South Western Railway trains run to London Waterloo, Weybridge, Twickenham, Richmond, Staines, Feltham, Clapham Junction, Vauxhall and Reading.

EducationEdit

Christ Church school was built by the National Society in 1843 on land given by Saint George Francis Caulfeild of The Wentworths. He attempted to bind the land with "all buildings thereon erected or to be erected to be forever hereafter appropriated and used as land for a School for the Education of Children and Adults or Children only of labouring manufacturing and other poorer classes". The school was built for £716. 16Template:Abbreviation 7Template:Abbreviation. In 2020, due to loss of intake, Surrey County Council set underway closure, moving attendees to consolidated Englefield Green Infant School by 2023.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

St Ann's Heath Junior School is on Sandhills Lane.

Trumps Green Infant School is on Crown Road in the south of the ward and the postcode district (the only of post town in this case).

IndustryEdit

Invicta Cars of Virginia Water Surrey were based in the village between 1946 and 1950<ref>Display Advertisement: Invicta. The Times, Friday, 11 Jul 1947; pg. 7; Issue 50810</ref>

Notable peopleEdit

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  • Susie Amy - actress<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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  • Joseph Coyne - American-born vaudevillian and musical comedy actor<ref name="The Times 1942, p. 6">"Deaths", The Times, 28 February 1942, p. 6</ref>
  • Ron Dennis - executive and investor, founder of the McLaren Group<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Diana Dors - actress, some years, between other homes, until her death in 1984
  • Joan Adeney Easdale - English Poet, resident of Holloway Sanatorium between 1954 and 1961<ref name=germ>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> died 2006 in Chile.

ReferencesEdit

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External linksEdit

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