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Templemere is an estate of 64 houses set in over 12 acres of park and woodland, built in the early sixties by an idealistic property development company called Span.

Span estates all feature communal landscaped grounds. They are a domestic interpretation of American modernist architecture and Scandinavian social housing and landscaping from the early 60’s. There are developments across the south of England, but people who like that sort of thing tend to agree that Templemere is one of the best examples.

The land was acquired by Span in 1962 when two architects climbed over a fence behind a petrol station to discover an overgrown patch of ground on which beautiful and enormous cedar trees were swamped by laurel, brambles and old tyres. The subsequent layout of the houses and the landscaping was designed to be in harmony with the cedar trees, some of which have since been lost due to age and storm damage.

Before the estate was built (construction was completed in 1964), there had been the ruin of a grand house that dated back to the Regency period on the site. The house was called ‘Templemere’ because there was a large garden feature; a folly built in the style of an Ancient Greek Temple of Venus at the top of the hill, and a small lake (or mere) at the bottom.

Earlier still the estate was part of The Windsor Great Park. This still exists near Windsor, but it is much smaller now. In Tudor times the park was the hunting reserve of the monarch and courtiers. In fact where our block now stands, there was a Tudor ‘hunting tower’, from which gamekeepers would observe the movement of deer herds and signal to hunting parties by lighting a beacon. Many Tudor relics were discovered when the foundations for Templemere were dug, and are now in the local museum.

The nearby Oatlands Park Hotel (good for a smart ‘high-tea’ apparently) stands on the site of Oatlands Palace, and Cleves School is on the site of the house that Anne of Cleves was sent to after her marriage to Henry VIII ended. Henry found her physically unattractive and very boring, but that didn’t give him grounds to execute her, even then, so he sent Anne and her maids off to live close – but not too close – to Windsor and Hampton Court Palace.

All through the swinging 60’s, estates like Templemere were a social whirl of fondue parties, cheese and wine soirées and even the kind of evenings when keys are put in a bowl and then everyone goes home, but not necessarily in the company of the person you came with. The people who lived at Templemere then looked like Austin Powers, or Anne Bancroft in ‘The Graduate’. Today life is much more sedate and respectable, but it is still a friendly, safe and neighbourly place and we hope you enjoy it.

Number 35 is one of the closest houses to the woods, which makes it very quiet and secluded which is good, but also prone to invasions by frogs, toads, birds and creepy-crawlies which can be interesting. Also we sometimes get weird animal noises in the night, which personally I like.