HERE is a certain irony about St George’s Hill, that 964-acre swathe of land in Weybridge, north Surrey. Some 100 years after it was transformed into one of the country’s first private estates by Walter George Tarrant in 1911, it is arguably one of the most exclusive addresses in the nation. One wonders if Tarrant knew that, back in April 1649, it was the site of a ‘Digger’ colony, now recognised as one of the first small-scale experiments of socialism in the world. What Tarrant certainly did know was that the burgeoning middle classes of Edwardian England would soon be drawn to this picturesque part of the Home Counties, take advantage of its beauty and utilise the
