Immediately adjoining Jacobs Well is the estate of one of the two finest "great houses" in Surrey, namely Sutton Place. Its estate has much diminished in area in recent years but for centuries previously it must have had a considerable influence on its neighbours, great and small.

King Edward the Confessor was passionate about hunting and spent much time at his hunting lodge at Sutton in the Royal Forest of Windsor. The Manor of Sutton remained in the gift of the crown for several hundred years and was eventually bequeathed to Henry VIII by his grandmother. In 1521 he granted the Manor to Sir Richard Weston with permission to impark over 1,000 acres of land. There had been a previous house on this site, but it was in ruins because the nearby Manor of Woking had been preferred as a residence. Sir Henry built Sutton Place in the period 1521-1526 as one of the first purely domestic - as opposed to fortified - great houses built in England. It has been suggested that the design may have been influenced by the chateaux of the Loire which Sir Richard would have seen on his travels in France.

Sir Richard Weston. Sir Richard was a valued courtier, a Privy Councillor and a Judge of the Star Chamber amongst many other high offices. His brother, Sir William, commanded "The Great Carrack", the flagship of the Order of the Knights of St John, at the defence of Rhodes in 1522. It seems worth digressing to explain that this was in fact the first ironclad, being an outsize galley with eight decks and "sheathed with six several sheathings of metal, two of which were underwater". The Knights took it with them when they moved from Rhodes to Malta, and embedded its giant anchor in the rock at Senglea to form one end of a defensive barrier across the mouth of the grand harbour. An enormous capstan , on a specially constructed platform at the base of Fort San Angelo, on the opposite side of the harbour, controlled this chain. Normally it lay on the harbour bed, deeper than the draught of any vessels using the harbour.

Sir Richard's son, Sir Francis, was beheaded in 1536 at the Tower of London for treasonable intrigue with Anne Boleyn, two days before the Queen herself was also executed. However, despite his son's folly and the fact that he himself would not renounce his Catholic faith, Sir Richard was left in peace by the King and survived until 1542, outliving Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell.

Sir Francis' grandson, another Sir Richard, spent many years in Brabant (Flanders), where he studied their achievements in agriculture and waterways. On his return to Sutton Place he introduced Clover Grass to England, built an experimental lock at Stoke Mill and cut an irrigation channel from there to Sutton Place for the benefit of his Clover Grass.

Francis Salvin. The Manor remained in the Weston family until 1782 when the last of the line, Melior Mary, passed over her first cousin because his father had turned Protestant and bequeathed the title to a distant Catholic relative, John Webbe, on condition that he assumed the family name. By 1857 the Manor had passed to his grandson, Captain Francis Henry Salvin, who came from Croxdale, County Durham. He was described by Kelly's Directory as a "Principal landowner" in Worplesdon and his properties included several in Jacobs Well.

Francis Salvin chose to live at Whitmoor House and let Sutton Place to a succession of tenants. Charles LeFevre was resident in 1855, followed by Caledon Alexander, who kept his famous racehorse "Thunderbolt" there. Next was Sydney Harrison whose brotherFrederic wrote a fine study of Sutton Place.

Louisa Witham. When Francis Salvin died in 1904 the Manor passed to his niece, Louisa Witham and then to her son, Philip Witham, a solicitor, who also chose to reside at Whitmoor House. The final tenant of Sutton Place was Alfred Harmsworth, otherwise Lord Northcliffe the newspaper proprietor. In 1919 Sutton Place was sold to the Duke of Sutherland and in 1921 Philip Witham, the last of the Weston family line, died.