Wimbledon
Common was surrounded with the seats of the nobility and gentry; Wimbledon
Lodge owned by Gerard de Visme, was of particular note. David Hughson
described it as an elegant modern structure, architecturally most chaste
and stylish. The ground were laid out in "superior taste".
On the west side were two good houses, occupied by Lord Melville and
Abraham D'Agueler, while there were several other good houses on the
Common, particularly those of John Horne Took and Michael Bray.
The
manor of Wimbledon itself lay seven miles south-west of London. Anciently
the manor belonged to the see of Canterbury, subsequently went through
the hands of several members of the royal family and higher nobility
and in the eighteenth century came into the ownership of Sarah. Duchess
of Marlborough. She rebuilt the ancient palace and then let it to her
grandson John Spencer, whose son, Earl Spencer, turned Wimbledon into
one of the most beautiful parks in England. The house burned down in
1785, although some remnants of it remained in the early nineteenth
century.
