Silvermere is an estate in Surrey, England named after its mere – a shallow lake of about ten acres which has a silvery appearance when seen from the surrounding slopes.

It was created in the 19th century for the rich architect, William Atkinson, and subsequently became the home of the Seth Smith family, who had also become wealthy from property development.

They seemed to be ancient British of a similar antiquity to the Iron Age settlement found on nearby St George's Hill, labelled among two other knolls south of the Thames which had borne celtic artefacts at various times in the 17th to 19th centuries as Caesar's Camp.

He was the eldest son of Seth Smith, a well known & prosperous property developer, who built large proportions of Belgravia & Mayfair in the 1830s, and is famous for the pantechnicon, a building which the name of the van derives from.

Lady Seth Smith was told that the project was secret and was quite agreeable about this activity, "Anything to do with beating the Germans, me boy, you can have, but don't make much noise while you are doing it.