Page 144 - Wish Stream Year of 2018

from the Thames at Weybridge, via the Wey Navigation, to Basingstoke, the nearest point to Sandhurst being Farnborough).
The proprietor (owner) of the estate at that time was William Collins who had purchased it only three years earlier in 1798 from the Lodge fam- ily, in whose possession it had been since 1671. William Collins was a moderately wealthy mem- ber of the landed gentry with properties in Lon- don and Leicestershire and was an enthusiastic amateur scientist and inventor. Among other things, he invented and obtained patents for a new alloy of copper which had good anti-cor- rosive properties and could be used effectively for wooden hulls of ships for protection. He also vastly improved the existing Cole-Bentinck bilge pump in use in Naval ships, and the new ‘Collins version’ was in use for most of the first half of the 19th century. Although considered among the lowest of the low in maritime equipment terms, it was actually remarkably effective at keeping ships afloat, that otherwise might have sunk!
The estate (Photo 2) consisted of a large brick house (the basis of the current Government House), cottages and farm buildings (described
as Blackwater Manor House and Cottages) and also a mill worked by the Wish Stream. William Collins may have purchased the estate for its mill and water power for his experiments, steam power being then in its infancy. The estate lies in the middle of a large tract of sandy infertile countryside covered in birch, heather and gorse stretching from Bagshot in the east to Hartley Wintney in the west. Bordering the Estate to the south was the London to Southampton Road (now the A30) frequented in the 17th and early 18th centuries by notorious highwaymen such as Dick Turpin and William Davies (known as ‘The Golden Farmer’). In 1800, the only immedi- ate local settlements were the two small hamlets of Sandhurst and Blackwater.
The main players!
The Government soon appointed an architect, James Wyatt, and a building contractor, Alex- ander Copland. Wyatt was coming towards the end of his long and distinguished career and so, before construction actually started (there was a long period of inactivity before funds were finally released for the project), his plans were modified in 1808 by another architect, John Sanders. An Edward Bracebridge, with Wyatt’s approval, was
Photo 2
142 HISTORICAL