Oatlands Palace, model in museum

This model of the Palace in its heyday is in Weybridge Museum, which has a permanent exhibition about it. Very little remains today, however, except one archway once leading to the stables and a length of wall. The Palace was demolished during the Civil War, little more than a century after it was built, and many of its bricks used to construct the new Wey Navigation. But there is an interesting mention in the history of Oatlands by J. W. Lindus Forge, of "...the secret passages, with which one was solemnly assured, the whole district was riddled. One went to Hampton Court, one went to Windsor Castle, and one went all the way to London..."

The remaining arch, once leading to stables

The actual vaults under the Palace site were Tudor drains, Mr. Forge tells us, and it is hardly likely that a passage of such length to reach London could exist, but tunnel legends have elsewhere been indications of the existence of leys, and it is certainly interesting that a connection with London existed in the tradition.

In the eighteenth century the area became Oatlands Park, an extensive landscaped garden with a pond called the Broad Water mimicking a river. This is somewhat different in shape now, but the ley ran along it and through a "Doric temple" which was part of the landscaping.