500 years of Whitehall

Can you imagine living in a 500-year-old house? What would it be like to live surrounded by so much history?

Whitehall Historic House in Cheam is one of the oldest and most important buildings in Sutton. Its original use is still debated: some say that it started out as a farmhouse. Research suggests that a little later, by 1644 the house became the original location for Cheam School. According to local legend it even has a royal connection: did Queen Elizabeth I hold a meeting of her advisors there during a hunting trip to nearby Nonsuch Palace?

Between 1742 and 1963 Whitehall was home to the Killick family, a very long time for a house to belong to just one family. The last descendant of the family sold the house to the Borough of Sutton and Cheam, as it was called then. Whitehall Historic House began its new life as a museum in 1978.

In early 2020, Sutton Mencap imagined how life would be in this extraordinary building. This book is a collection of drawings, collages and stories depicting Whitehall as a lively — and possibly haunted — home in 2020.

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