Autumn trees reflected in Virginia Water lake. Photo: allen watkin from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0Six neighbourhoods in one village
Virginia Water grew after its railway station opened in 1856, and it is a village of distinct parts. The Virginia Water Design Code, published in May 2025 alongside the Neighbourhood Plan, divides it into six character areas: the Wentworth Estate, St Ann's Park and Virginia Park, Trumps Green, Callow Hill and the Crown Estate, the village centre and the Stroude valley. Callow Hill and the north side of Christchurch Road have Victorian and interwar detached houses, many of them bungalows or cottages. Trumps Green is mostly post-war family housing. In the 2011 census about half the homes in the postcode district were detached houses.
For the estate itself, see our Wentworth Estate page. This page covers the rest of the village, where the work is just as varied.
In the older cottages and bungalows of Callow Hill, and the post-war family houses of Trumps Green, projects tend to be smaller and more targeted: lighting scenes that replace rows of switches, a media room in the sitting room, and a Wi-Fi network that finally reaches the extension and the garden office. Wireless lighting and shading control keeps the disruption low in rooms that are already decorated.
From our Weybridge projectLiving in a listed building at Virginia Park
Virginia Park is one of the more unusual places to install technology. The former Holloway Sanatorium opened in 1885, passed to the NHS in 1948 and closed in 1980. The developer Octagon then spent six years, from 1994, restoring it and turning the site into a gated community, with the main building divided into 23 town houses and further houses and apartments in the grounds. The main building, with its tower, is Grade I listed. For homes inside it, listed building consent can apply to internal work as well as external, so chasing cables into walls or fixing speakers to historic surfaces needs agreement first. Wireless lighting control, careful use of existing service routes and equipment that sits neatly in furniture become especially valuable.
Virginia Park and St Ann's Park are both gated communities run under title covenants, by a residents' association and a management committee respectively, so we agree access and working arrangements before we start.
From our Weybridge projectGates, cameras and one app
Across Virginia Water, gates and security matter. The Design Code asks that new electronic gates and their piers are set well back into the plot and in proportion with the house, and on the Wentworth Estate the Roads Committee's guidelines apply too. Once the gate is in, Control4 can bring the gate intercom, cameras, alarm, lighting and heating into one app, so you can see who is at the gate from the sofa or from your phone. Our smart security page covers cameras and access control in more detail.
From our Walton-on-Thames projectA cinema without a basement
The Design Code notes that basements are uncommon on the east side of the Wentworth Estate, and across much of Virginia Water the cinema has to be found above ground: a spare reception room, a room over the garage or a garden building. Above ground, light control is the first problem to solve, so blackout blinds or curtains and dark finishes do much of the work. Our nearest published cinema is the Weybridge basement cinema, and many of its ideas, such as an acoustically transparent screen and Control4 lighting scenes, carry straight over to a ground-floor room. Much of the area is Green Belt, so check a new garden building with Runnymede Borough Council before it is designed.
Our demonstration cinema in Walton-on-ThamesSee it first
Our Walton-on-Thames showroom has a demonstration cinema and a Control4 and Lutron system you can try for yourself. We are a Platinum Control4 dealer, winner of the Control4 Circle of Excellence award in 2023, 2024 and 2025, and our own team maintains what we install. Book a showroom visit or book a free design consultation.
