Rose Hill, the first planned residential estate in Dorking, was developed by William Newland, a wealthy Guildford surgeon, who also had interests in the Wey and Arun Canal. Newland purchased the "Great House" on Butter Hill and the surrounding of land in 1831, which he divided into plots for 24 houses, arranged around a central paddock, known as "The Oval". The Great House was divided into two separate dwellings (Butter Hill House and Rose Hill House), adjacent to which a mock-Tudor arch was erected over the main carriageway entrance from South Street. Initially sales were slow, but the proposals for the building of the railway line from Redhill stimulated interest in the development in the late 1840s. Although most of the purchasers were private individuals (the majority of whom had been born outside of the local area), the Dorking Society of Friends bought one of the plots in 1845 for the construction of a meeting house. By 1861 the estate was complete.
