Oatlands Park Hotel, Weybridge

The wonderful four-star Oatlands Park Hotel is built within the grounds of a Royal Palace and may have a reputation of being haunted. The Tudor Palace of Oatlands was demolished following the execution of King Charles I (Died 1649). A house, possibly a hunting lodge associated with Palace survived and was eventually enlarged, extended and renovated into a mansion.

After the King’s execution the palace was sold and demolished, leaving a single house that may have originally functioned as a hunting lodge. This house, which passed through the hands of Sir Edward Herbert (Born 1648 – Died November 1698) Lord Chief Justice for King James II, Admiral Arthur Herbert, 1st Earl of Torrington (Born 1648 – 13 April 1716) and Henry Fiennes Pelham-Clinton, 2nd Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne (Born 16 April 1720 – Died 22 February 1794) was destroyed in a fire in 1794 and subsequently rebuilt in a Gothic style. It is this later building that forms the core of the Oatlands Park Hotel.

According to an article in Surrey Life entitled ‘Surrey’s most haunted sites – spooky Halloween stories’, published on 19 October 2015. ‘Oaklands Park Hotel, many people have observed a ‘grey lady’ in a 17th century crinoline dress walking across the restaurant before disappearing through a wall on the western side of the hotel, into the accounts’ department, where bay windows used to lead to the garden. Room 1313, on the third floor of the Tudor Wing, is reputed to contain a maid who committed suicide after jumping off the bell tower where she barricaded herself during a lovers’ tiff – right above room 1313.’