Whiteley Village

From Sarah Rutherford's Garden Cities (2014), pp. 61-4.

'Whiteley Village was a unique self-contained retirement village. The site was bought in 1911 and the buildings constructed from 1914 using a £1 million bequest by William Whiteley, the murdered philanthropist and owner of the London department store Whiteley's. Set deep in Surrey woodland, near Cobham, it was planned in eight segments around an octagonal village centre with a monumental centrepiece. It was built to the highest quality with designs by seven of the most prestigious Arts and Crafts architects of the day including Reginald Blomfield, Aston Webb and Ernest Newton. As a pioneering community, self-sufficient in its facilities for retired persons, it housed all classes as long as they were of good character and sound mind, unaffected by any infection diseases, nor convicted of any criminal offence.' View it on google maps here.

In case you're interested (why wouldn't you be?!) Whiteley was shot at point-blank range in his shop in 1907 by a man he had been arguing with. The man claimed to be his son, Cecil, and although the Whiteley family initially denied all knowledge of him it later came out at trial that Cecil Rayner had in fact been born to William Whitely and Emily Turner out of wedlock in 1885 (Manchester Guardian 25 July 1907 p. 7; Manchester Guardian 23 March 1907 p. 10).  The £1 million was about two-thirds of Whiteley's estate. He had left a small amount additionally to provide for Rayner's mother, Emily, and her sister Louise. The Whiteley murder was sufficiently notorious that another shooting of a 'natural father' by his son, in Paris in 1912, was referred to by some newspapers as a 'Whiteley tragedy' (see Geelong Advertiser 20 May 1912 p. 3).

Smith's Weekly, 5 July 1919 p. 9