The house of Claremont is now occupied by Claremont Fan Court School and its landscaped gardens are owned and managed by the National Trust.
The first house on the estate was built in 1708 by Sir John Vanbrugh for his own use. He also built the stables and the walled gardens and very probably White Cottage, which is now the Sixth Form Centre of Claremont Fan Court School.
In 1714 he sold the house to the Whig politician Thomas Pelham-Holles, Earl of Clare, who later became Duke of Newcastle and served twice as Prime Minister. The earl commissioned Vanbrugh to add two great wings to the house and to build a fortress-like turret on an adjoining knoll.
The Earl of Clare named his country seat Claremont.
When the Duke died in 1768, his widow sold the estate to Robert Clive (of India). Lord Clive decided to demolish the house and commissioned Lancelot “Capability” Brown to build the present Palladian mansion on higher ground. Clive is reputed to have spent over £100 000 on rebuilding the house and a complete remodelling of the celebrated pleasure grounds. However, Clive never lived here as he died in 1774, the year that the house was finished. The estate then passed through a succession of owners, finally to Charles Rose Ellis.
In 1816 Claremont was bought by the British Nation by an Act of Parliament as a wedding present for George IV’s daughter Princess Charlotte and her husband Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. Princess Charlotte, who was second in line to the throne, was, after two miscarriages, died there after giving birth to a stillborn son in November 1817. Although Leopold retained ownership of Claremont until his death in 1865, he left the house in 1831 when he became the first King of the Belgians.
Queen Victoria lent the house to the exiled French king and queen Louis-Philippe and Marie-Amelie, the parents-in-law of Leopold I of Belgium, after the revolutions of 1848. The exiled king died here in 1850.
Victoria bought Claremont for her fourth and youngest son Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, when he married Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont in 1882. Claremont should have passed to the Duke of Saxe-Coburg on his mother’s death in 1922, but because he had served as a German general in the First World War, the British government disallowed the inheritance. Claremont was accordingly confiscated and sold by the Public Trustee to shipping magnate Sir William Corry, director of the Cunard Line. After Sir William’s death, it was bought by Eugen Spier, a wealthy German financier. In 1930 the Mansion stood empty and was marked for demolition when it was bought, together with the Belvedere, the stables and 30 acres of parkland, by the Governors of a south London school, later renamed Claremont School and since 1978 known as Claremont Fan Court School.
Claremont has become the general name for an area south of Esher town south to the Esher Bypass. In the north it covers exclusive housing, most notably Kinfauns – George Harrison’s home in the 1960s and 1970s. In the south Claremont Landscape Garden is a National Trust garden covering the grounds of the mansion.
