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The plaque can be seen in our photo at the far left of the structure.

The enormous double beech tree doing its best to bring the gateway down is not on the list of the Great Trees of London. The list is crowd-sourced and this beech is so out the way that probably nobody knew about it. We only found this arch on our third attempt, and we knew it was here. Unpollarded beech trees are said to live 250 years, which coincidentally is how long the gateway has been here.

We have placed our pin on the right spot so we hope you find it more easily than we did. We advise you to approach from the path to the east.

This arch was obviously never the main entrance to the house.  It looks like it would have provided pedestrian access through a boundary wall. Pitt House had about 3 acres of grounds, mostly to the south. In 1952-4 the house was demolished (and rebuilt), and the LCC acquired most of the grounds. This is presumably when the boundary wall was removed so the grounds became publicly accessible and this gateway was left functionless. See our page for Pitt House for more details.