Oaklands Park House
Where: Newdigate, Surrey
Built: c. 1890
Architect: Unknown
Abandoned: c. 1998
Listed: No
Visited: 2017
Last Known Condition: Derelict, in danger of collapse.
Page Updated: December 2017
The Victorian mansion at Oaklands Park was built c. 1890, probably for Capt. Richard Elliott Palmer (b.1853), formerly of the Kerry Militia, and his wife Mrs Minnie Merritt Palmer (b.1856) a cycling enthusiast and patron of the arts.
The estate comprised formal gardens, a landscaped park with ornamental ponds and pheasantry and a 124-acre dairy farm, where Capt. Palmer kept a prizewinning herd of pure pedigree Kerry cattle. The Elliott-Palmers seem to have been well liked in society, hosting charitable events, dinners and even a 'bicycle paper chase'. They appear not to have had any children of their own, but adopted a daughter, Miss Violet Elliott, who in 1917 married a Major Nicholls, DSO, master of the Worshipful Company of Distillers.
Capt. Palmer died in 1931 aged 78, leaving the estate to Minnie; on her death in 1934, it appears to have passed to her executor Harold Harris
Bailey (1878-1962), an eminent ornithologist and author of several publications on American birds.
The Bailey Family held the estate for many years, running a successful dairy business, but appear to have sold the great house as a self-contained parcel in 1998 for £565,000. Rumour has it that the buyer was a master of the local hunt, who was ultimately unable to foot the bill for renovations.
Though it is abandoned, it is far from quiet here; Planes from nearby Gatwick roar overhead every five or ten minutes, so loud that the sound can be felt even indoors; in the intervals, an electric fence ticks, horses whinny, farm dogs bark - I think they might be on to me, but their owners hush them, unaware of the intruder in their midst.
I cautiously test the floors as I move from room to room...twenty years of abandonment have left Oaklands Park derelict, damp and dangerous. Some parts have succumbed to the rot and fallen in on themselves; a large section of the roof now rests at the top of the main stairs and the North wing has collapsed inside from top to bottom, leaving fireplaces, pipes and even a toilet cistern stranded halfway up the algae-stained walls.
So hopeless is the condition of the mansion that the future can now only include demolition or major structural failure.