Painshill Park

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Painshill Park, near Cobham, Surrey, England, was developed between 1738 and 1773 by the Hon. Charles Hamilton, 9th son and 14th child of the 6th Earl of Abercorn. It is one of the finest examples of an 18th Century English Landscape Park.

Hamilton was born in 1704 in Dublin, was educated at Westminster School and Oxford, and went on two Grand Tours, one in 1725 and a further one in 1732.

In 1738 Hamilton began to acquire land at Painshill and, over the years, built up a holding of more than 200 acres.

His park was among the earliest to reflect the changing fashion in garden design prompted by the Landscape Movement, which started in England in about 1730. It prompted a move away from geometric formality in garden design to a new naturalistic formula.

Hamilton eventually ran out of money and sold the estate in 1773. Until the Second World War the Park was held by a succession of private owners; however, in 1948 the estate was split up and sold in separate lots for commercial uses. The Park, as such, soon disappeared and its features fell into decay.

By 1980 the local authority, Elmbridge Borough Council, had bought 158 acres of Hamilton's original estate and the work of restoring the Park and its many features could start. In the following year the Painshill Park Trust was founded as a registered charity with the remit "to restore Painshill Park as nearly as possible to Charles Hamilton's Original Concept of a Landscaped Garden for the benefit of the public."

The restoration of this Grade I landscape is continuing, further progress being dependent on the availability of funding.