The Tower of Esher - named Wayneflete Tower - takes its title from its 15th century builder, William Wayneflete, Provost of Eton, founder of Magdalen College, Oxford, Bishop of Winchester and Lord High Chancellor of England. The Tower was the former gatehouse to his grand palace, sited on the banks of the River Mole in Surrey, and is all that remains today. The gatehouse has been repeatedly added to and stripped of its architectural limbs, having twice been the central structure of two successive properties in the 17th and 18th centuries. These vicissitudes represented distinctive periods in English architectural history, with perhaps William Kent's commission for Henry Pelham being the most outstanding. Quite remarkably the Tower has survived it all.

Subsequent owners of the Esher Place estate - which at various times encompassed the Palace of Esher, the Manor and its gatehouse - included a Cardinal (Thomas Wolsey), two Kings (Henry VIII and Edward IV), a Queen (Elizabeth I), a Protector of England (Duke of Northumberland), two Equerries (Richard Drake and John Latton), a Governor Lieutenant of Jamaica (Sir Thomas Lynch), a Prime Minister (Henry Pelham), a stockbroker (John Spicer), a Lord (Lord D'Abernon), a Master of the Rolls (Sir Raymond Francis Evershed) and an actress (Frances Day). Residents included Spanish grandees captured during the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and visitors included the great circumnavigator Sir Francis Drake, English antiquarians and writers (John Aubrey and Horace Walpole), novelist (Jane Austen) and Russian ballerina (Anna Pavlova). Reference has even been made to the estate of "Asher" by the literary great, William Shakespeare.

In 1992, I became the proud owner and guardian of the Tower and I hope that by bringing its characters to life, set against a backdrop of more than five hundred years of English history, neither the Tower nor its residents will slip from memory and into oblivion.

Penny Rainbow

www.elmbridgehundred.org.uk
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/2006_esher.html
http://www.edlhs.co.uk/