All “3 grand houses” still standing, Parkstead, Mount Clare and Grove House, are all now part of the University of Roehampton

Parkstead House, formerly known as Manresa House and Bessborough House, is a neo- classical Palladian villa built in the 1760s. In 1955 it was designated Grade I on the National Heritage List for England. The house and remaining grounds are now Whitelands College, part of the University of Roehampton.

Bessborough House was built forthe 2nd Earl of Bessborough, an Anglo-Irish peer. Construction on the building started circa 1760, by the architect Sir William Chambers, who also designed Somerset House in London. It was completed in circa 1768.

A notable resident was Henrietta Ponsonby, the wife of The 3rd Earl of Bessborough, a Whig hostess, gambler and socialite.

On the death of Henrietta, in 1821, the 3rd Earl leased the property to a politician, Abraham Robarts, who made it his permanent home. When Robarts died in 1858, The 5th Earl of Bessborough sold the house and forty-two acres of parkland to the Conservative Land Society for division into smallholdings.

However, in 1861, the house and 42 acres of surrounding land was sold to the Society of Jesus, the Jesuit religious order. The Jesuits used the building to house their novitiate and a retreat house for Ignatian spirituality. The house was renamed Manresa House after the town in Spain where Ignatius of Loyola the founder of the Jesuits developed his Spiritual Exercises. They commissioned Joseph John Scoles to design the chapel. It was completed after his death, in 1864, by his pupil S.I. Nicholl. In the 1870s, Henry Clutton designed the north aisle which expanded the chapel. Clutton later designed the long gallery connecting the chapel to the refectory in the new north wing, which was built in 1880. In 1885, the south wing, designed by Frederick Walters, was added. It copied the elevation of the north wing.

In the 1950s, the LCC compulsorily purchased the surrounding land and part of the Jesuit land for the Alton Estate. By 1962, the Jesuits decided that Manresa House would no longer be suitable for a novitiate, when the design of the housing estate was altered to include high rise flats adjacent to their land.

In 1963, Garnett College moved to Roehampton and later it made use of Manresa House. In 1986, Manresa House was part of the campus when Garnett College, the UK's only dedicated lecturer-training college, was absorbed into Thames Polytechnic, and teaching ended there in 1987. During a large part of the 1990s, the Manresa House premises was utilized by Wandsworth Council for community recreational purposes.

The house was acquired as the new home of Whitelands College, a Church of England College, in 2001, which renamed the estate Whitelands College but referred to the original house as Parkstead House once more. In the 1880s, when Whitelands College was in Chelsea, Morris & Co. were commissioned to make stained glass for their first chapel. This was moved with the college to Putney in 1930 and in 2006 to Parkstead House.

Mount Clare is a Grade I listed house built in 1772. The architect was Sir Robert Taylor and the house was enlarged with a portico and other enrichments in 1780 by Placido Columbani. It was Grade I listed on 14 July 1955.

The house was built for the politician George Clive and the gardens were landscaped by Lancelot "Capability" Brown.

The house was requisitioned by Wandsworth Borough Council in 1945. In 1963 it became a hall of residence for Garnett College (see Manresa House above). Today, Mount Clare is owned by the Southlands Methodist Trust] and used as a hall of residence for the University of Roehampton.

Grove House is a Grade II* listed house on Roehampton Lane. Sir Joshua Vanneck, 1st Baron Huntingfield, a British merchant and Member of Parliament, acquired the house and estate 1774 after the owner, disgraced banker Alexander Fordyce, was forced to sell After 1777 the house was rebuilt by James Wyatt and Robert Adam and has later alterations and additions.

It is now part of Froebel College, University of Roehampton. Froebel College was founded as a women's teacher training college in 1892 by followers of Friedrich Fröbel.

Designed by a London County Council (LCC) design team led by Rosemary Stjernstedt, the estate is renowned for its mix of low and high-rise modernist architecture. The estate comprises Alton East (1958) styled in a subtle Scandinavian-influenced vernacular and its slightly later counterpart: Alton West (1959) with brutalist architecture.

The contrasting styles of the distinct Alton estates represented two traditions in the LCC Architect's Department in the 1950s, which because of its great size – with 250 architects in its Housing Division alone – was divided into small groups who developed their own team spirit and methods of working. Alton East and Alton West mirrored a debate between supporters of a humanist Swedish idiom, and those who favoured a tougher, more architectonic approach inspired by the work of Le Corbusier in the Alton West team. At Highcliffe Drive on Alton West the LCC essentially retained the Georgian landscape and placed within it five ultra-modern slab blocks: Binley, Winchfield, Dunbridge, Charcot and Denmead Houses (all Grade II* listed buildings)

The landscape also reflected this contrast, with Alton East offering a greater sense of enclosure and privacy than the more expansive, open landscaping to Alton West that emphasised the monumentality of the later scheme.

In 1966 Alton West featured as a location for scenes in the feature film “Fahrenheit 451”.

Overall, the estate, which celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 2009, has over 13,000 residents, making it one of the largest in the United Kingdom.

Before the church was bult Roehampton parishioners had to make their way across the fields to St Mary’s, Putney to worship. As the population grew the owners of the local big houses and estates were approached for funds to build a church in Roehampton. These included JP Morgan, the banker, who had several houses in West Putney and donated a significant sum. The appeal was so successful that the church was able to be significantly larger and more ornate than any in Putney at that time.

A grade II* Listed building the church was built in Gothic style between 1896 to 1898 G H Fellowes Prynne using Corsham stone rubble with fine dressings. To the north-west there is a tower with crocket-pinnacled angle-turrets buttressing topped by a stone needle spire with 3 tiers of lucarnes. Inside there is a fine brass lectern, a marble pulpit with rich cosmati work together with a marble font with tall Gothic-style wooden font cover.