Polesden Lacey is a National Trust house and estate on the North Downs at Great Bookham, near Dorking (RH5 6BD). The Trust gives the estate as 1,600 acres, with gardens, an Edwardian house and plenty of room to walk. It suits a slow afternoon with a garden and a good view, and a longer day if you want the hills.
The house and Mrs Greville
There has been a house on the site since 1336. Thomas Cubitt built the core of today's building in 1821 to 1823, and the outside still has the look of a Regency villa, with roughcast and yellow-washed walls. The interiors are another matter. They are a showcase of Edwardian opulence, and they are Mrs Greville's work.
Margaret Greville (1863 to 1942) was the daughter of William McEwan, the Scottish brewer. She and her husband Ronald began buying and remodelling in 1906, and the estate was bought in 1906 to 1907. Her father's fortune paid for the refurbishment: £80,000, about £8 million today, according to the National Trust. Ronald Greville died in April 1908, a year before the work was finished, and never saw the result.
She brought in Mewès and Davis, the architects of the Ritz Hotel in London, with the decorators White, Allom & Co. The principal rooms use architectural salvage, including gilded panelling, 18th-century marble fire surrounds and a carved 17th-century church reredos. The Saloon was commissioned as a room fit to entertain Maharajas in, and it remains the glittering gold centrepiece.
She was made a DBE in 1922, and entertained for about 30 years; guests included Winston Churchill. The Duke and Duchess of York, later George VI and the Queen Mother, spent the first part of their 1923 honeymoon here. Archive photographs show them playing golf and relaxing on the south terrace. When she died in 1942 she left the estate to the National Trust, for the largest number of people to have enjoyment of it.
Her collection includes paintings by Raeburn and Lawrence, plus Dutch, Italian and British pictures, ceramics and French furniture.
What the house offers now
In 2026 only the ground floor is open, there is no exhibition, and the first floor stays closed all year. The downstairs showrooms hold the paintings, ceramics and furniture. If the interiors are your main reason for going, it is worth knowing that before you set out.
The gardens and the Rose Garden
The Trust's highlights are the views, the walled Rose Garden and double herbaceous borders that bloom through to autumn. The Rose Garden is more than 100 years old, and Surrey Life reports that its layout is almost unchanged from Mrs Greville's day, restored and replanted by the Trust in the 1970s. It holds Hybrid Musk, Scotch and Edwardian roses, with Dorothy Perkins and Sanders White Rambler over the central pergola.
Roses peak in June, so by late September the main flush is over. Come instead for the borders, with day lilies, rudbeckia and hydrangea, and for autumn colour spreading across Ranmore Common as seen from the South Lawn. The Old Kitchen Garden is a quiet corner.
The Trust is raising funds to replace the wooden pergola at the heart of the Rose Garden, to be rebuilt in sweet chestnut from the estate. The garden will have to close for that work at some point, with notice given, so check the National Trust page before you travel.
The Winter Garden, designed in the 1950s by Graham Stuart Thomas, the Trust's Gardens Adviser, brings aconites, snowdrops, sarcococca and mahonia, and is a reason to return in the colder months.
The estate walks
The National Trust describes four waymarked routes, varying in length and difficulty, all with views of the Surrey Hills. Pick up a leaflet at visitor reception or look at the map in the car park.
Garden walks: the shorter routes pass Mrs Greville's dog graves, the ancient woodland of Preserve Copse, and the Long Walk and Nun's Walk.
Butterfly Walk: 2 miles (3.2km), about an hour and a half, dog friendly, starting and ending at the drive to the house. Ranmore Common makes up most of the estate and is a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Longer circuits: the Polesden Lacey Estate walk on RatedTrips is 4.4 miles (7.1km), about 2 hours 15 minutes, of medium difficulty with 663ft of ascent.
Ranger Run: a 10K trail crossing Grade II registered parkland and woodland dating back 400 years.
A free ramblers group meets on the fourth Wednesday of the month at 10am outside the coffee shop. Dogs are welcome in large parts of the garden and the wider estate. Beyond the eastern edge lie Denbies Hillside, Denbies Wine Estate and the Mole Gap Trail.
Practical details
Admission: from 1 March 2026, adults pay £19.80 with Gift Aid or £18.00 without; children aged 5 to 17 pay £9.90 or £9.00; under-5s are free. A family ticket is £49.50 or £45.00. Members get in free and must bring their physical, named card. There is no need to book.
Hours: the Trust lists the house open 11am to 3pm (ground floor only), the garden 10am to 4pm and the café 10am to 4pm, with hot food from 12 to 3pm. Check the day before you go.
Parking: £5 for a full day, free for members and Blue Badge holders, about 200 yards from the entrance.
By train: the nearest station is Box Hill and Westhumble, about 3 miles away, with no bus to the site. The walk from Great Bookham is 2.7 miles and can be quite strenuous.
By road: from Guildford take the A246 via East Clandon and East Horsley. The main drive has granite sett speed humps, which low-slung cars may find awkward.
Access: paths are uneven in the pleasure grounds, Rose Garden and Old Kitchen Garden. The main route to the house is along a slope, with an alternative.
Families can look to the Moomins trail, running daily from early September to 8 November, and The Great Polesden Mystery trail from 17 October to 1 November. The Twelve Days of Christmas runs from 21 November to 3 January.
Details are on the National Trust Polesden Lacey page. For the history, see the Trust's account of the house, and for the roses, Surrey Life's piece with the head gardener.
