Whiteley Village

In 1907 the wealthy owner of a large Bayswater department store, William Whiteley, was shot dead by a young man claiming to be his illegitimate son. In his will he specified that the then considerable sum of £1,000,000 be used to purchase freehold land ‘… as a site for the erection thereon of buildings to be used and occupied as homes for aged poor persons’. Four years later the £40,000 purchase of the 225-acre Burhill Estate, between Weybridge, Walton-on-Thames and Cobham, initiated the creation of Whiteley Village.