Changing places

FROM humble farmhouse to Victorian edifice, to elegant, Regency-style country house, the evolution of The Denbies House at Ranmore Common, near Dorking, reflects the changing fortunes of the rich and famous in Surrey, from the mid 18th century to the present day.

Named after John Denby, who farmed the land in the 16th century, the original farmhouse and its surrounding Surrey Hills estate were bought in the mid 1700s as a weekend retreat by Jonathan Tyers, the owner of London’s fashionable Vauxhall Gardens. Having converted some of the former farm buildings into a modest, two-storey house, Tyers went on to develop gardens at Denbies, the theme of which was death and damnation.

Following Tyers’s death in), who had Tyers’s collection of macabre artefacts removed and the grounds greatly altered.