Wellingtonia 46

Captured in the margins of a visit to Charlwood, on its heritage open day, on which more in due course. 

Just to the south of Reigate, on the bit of the A217 called Drovers Green Road, at the entrance to gated community called Somers Gate. According to the gate post, in 2015 by the developing people at reference 2.

Sufficiently gated that the gates were shut - I did not think to find out whether they were actually locked - and that Street View blurred things out when their camera was looking straight down the drive.

On the basis that the road to the east of the A217 labelled Salmonscross is actually Lonesome Lane, and the road to the west just below is actually Sandcross Lane, this estate may have been built on the site of Dovers, a few yards to the south of Doversgreen. At some point transformed into Drovers Green Road. I was looking for something of the sort, a house grand enough to be bothered with planting a Wellingtonia.

Much the same story at the end of the century. With the addition of Earlswood Asylum a few miles to the east, presumably the same sort of thing as we had here in Epsom.

However, casual research fails to turn up anything about a stately home called either Dovers or Doversgate, so can't be sure that is where Somers Gate came from. The Somers Town of London, between Kings Cross and Euston, presumably not relevant: 'At the end of the 17th century John Somers, Lord Chancellor and later Baron Somers of Evesham, acquired the local freehold. The arrival of the New Road (now Euston Road) improved access to the area and in 1793 Frenchman Jacob Leroux leased land from the Somers family for building'. Unless the developer was born in a Somers Town slum and had a sense of humour?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/wellingtonia-45.html.

Reference 2: https://thakeham.com/.

Group search key: wgc.