The elevated site once bore a 14th-century manor house seized along with all the other manors of Chertsey from Chertsey Abbey, a very rich abbey, under Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries and today much of its land is owned by two hospitals, one public, one private, and the local council authority.

The remaining mansion and the near park surrounding were used for some decades as a colony hospital and as a private care home.

[1] The Metropolitan Asylums Board was dissolved in 1930 and responsibility for caring for the mentally deficient was passed to the (local government) Councils.

[6] In September of the same year, many of the hospital's patients were moved to Murray House in nearby Ottershaw so that Botleys could receive wounded soldiers from the war.

[2][9] It is a Couse stone-built house in simple Palladian architecture without wings, with walls clad in stone[1] and surrounded by park land and iron gates.

Ownership of the mansion changed hands several times and was owned by Henry VIII in 1541, after he purchased it from Sir Roger Cholmeley.