Esher: a platform gate onto the racecourse, Claremont to the south.

Esher’s centre is strung along one road. The High Street is the A307, the old London–Portsmouth road, and it carries the through traffic past the restaurants under a 30 mph limit. A car waiting outside the Good Earth is waiting in that traffic, so a driver works from the council car parks behind the shops. The station sits north of the centre, beyond Sandown Park: South Western Railway trains to Waterloo, and a race-day gate on the platform that opens onto the racecourse. South of the town the A3 runs as a bypass and meets the M25 at Wisley a few miles on; Heathrow is about eight miles away in a straight line.

Many of Esher’s large houses stand on private roads south of the High Street. Esher Park Avenue, a short walk from the shops, suits the Waterloo commuter. The Claremont Park estate spreads around its own nine-hole golf course, beside the Palladian house that is now Claremont Fan Court School and the National Trust’s landscape garden. Further out, Blackhills is a gated private road among the commons, with plots typically of half an acre and more. Houses on plots this size and this secluded are most exposed in the weeks they stand empty, when cover while the owners are away is worth arranging. Sandown adds the crowds — the Eclipse in July, the Tingle Creek in December — and roads worth routing around.

In Esher the house comes first. A protective survey on the Claremont Park estate or Blackhills looks at the plot as a whole: the boundary where garden gives way to fairway, woodland or common, the side gates and service access, and the walk from the car to the door after dark. Security drivers cover the A3 into London and the Heathrow run, and keep Sandown’s fixture list in the diary. Close protection is booked for the days that need it: a race meeting, a visiting guest, a family occasion.