Russians? We don’t have Russians in Weybridge,” maintained the bank clerk from behind his counter. “Now if you mean Poles,” he lowered his voice, nodding in the direction of the builders behind me in the queue. “There’s loads of Poles. And Indians and Chinese, but definitely no Russians.” Later that day, the waitresses in a nearby cafe echoed the sentiment. “You must mean the Poles — there’s no Russian community here.”

Ah, but there is. You just have to know where to look. Viewed from the high street, Weybridge is a tidy, typical Surrey commuter town. But a short drive from its centre, behind manned security gates, lies another world: St George’s Hill, 964 acres of leafy private estate with its own tennis club, championship golf course and 400 luxury piles, from Edwardian country houses to glass-roofed eco-mansions to neoclassical monstrosities straight out of Footballers’ Wives. A one-acre plot here will set you back between £3m and £4m, and building a house on it at least another £3m. Elton John used to have a place here, as did John Lennon, Cliff Richard and Kate Winslet.

“Five years ago, there were virtually no Russians living here — now, we estimate about 10% of houses are Russian-owned,” says Simon Ashwell from the local branch of the estate agent Savills. Property prices on St George’s Hill went up by 25% in 2007, according to Ashwell, with Russian buyers setting the pace. “I’d be wrong to say that the market is purely driven by Russians, but they are a key factor.”

At the upscale property developer Octagon, David Smith says: “Every house we’ve ever built on St George’s Hill has either been bought or at least viewed by a Russian. They do seem quite prevalent around here.”

The home counties are fast turning into “home countskis” — or, at least, the fancy parts are. Russians who qualify as non-domiciled high and ultra-high net-worth individuals (UHNWIs have a basic £100m in the bank), and are flush with oil, gas and City money, have been buying up exclusive parts of the capital such as Belgravia and Hampstead since the 1990s. Now they are migrating onwards and outwards as they warm to life in Britain. Roman Abramovich was a pioneer, snapping up a 450-acre estate at Fyning Hill in West Sussex for £12m in 2000. Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch, now owns a property on St George’s Hill, while over on the Wentworth estate, another exclusive location near Virginia Water, residents include Andriy Shevchenko, the Chelsea footballer, and Peter Aven, head of Russia’s largest private bank, Alfa-Bank.

“East Berkshire and north Surrey are the two main areas,” says Alex Newall of Knight Frank, who specialises in finding £10m-plus abodes for super-rich clients. “There’s a corridor between the M4 and A3 running southwest from London, within which the two most popular places for Russians are the private estates of St George’s Hill and Wentworth, where properties on the more exclusive ‘main island’ are increasingly sought after — a 12,000 sq ft retreat on 2.6 acres is currently on the market there for £13m. Many Russians like the security gates at St George’s Hill — there are estates like that outside Moscow now. The A3 makes it quick to get into town and nearby is Farnborough airport, where you can jump into a private jet or helicopter.”

Buyers seeking larger plots — the average on St George’s Hill is a paltry acre — are looking along the M4 axis of the corridor: south Ascot, Sunningdale, Englefield Green and Windlesham are the hotspots. “You can find new builds on plots of about 15 to 20 acres,” says Edward Shaw of Knight Frank. Amersham, an affluent market town in Buckinghamshire, is another popular location.

Russians aren’t only buying up the home counties, they’re redesigning them too. “We sold a house to a Russian buyer for about £9m three years ago, and he took out everything we’d put in and upgraded it by more than £2m,” Smith says. “The kitchen alone was worth £80,000, probably more with all the appliances, and it ended up in a skip. They rarely ever buy without changing something. It’s not in their nature. If we had the crown jewels in a property, they’d probably say, ‘Give me something else’.”

Why? Because they can. In Russia, it’s common for large properties to be sold as vacant shells for buyers to fit out. Old habits die hard. Of course, there’s also an element of keeping up with the Petrovs. “When you’re that wealthy, you can have pretty much whatever you want,” Ashwell says. “In the end it comes down to quality — and they’re very aware, in their own circles, of what quality is. When the Russians first arrived people sneered that they’re unsophisticated, they’re gauche, they want swimming pools everywhere. Not true.

“We recently sold a 15,000 sq ft house, Hartlands, which had a Russian owner. He’d fitted the study with walnut panelling; a bespoke walnut desk with a built-in computer system that pops up; book shelving; a humidor; a backlit watch-display case — the antiques of the future, which in a Victorian or Edwardian house would make you go, ‘Wow, they don’t do those any more’. Well, they do. We can’t afford them, but Russians can. They tend to have more money even than locals who have lived on St George’s Hill for years.”

Ashwell takes me on a guided tour of the area. The security guard at the main gate recognises his car and waves us through. We roll along capacious, rhododendron- lined streets, past mansion after mansion worth from £10m to £18m. Several belong to hedge-funders and corporate chief executives — “not celebrities as such, but stars in their own industries” — such as Arun Sarin, the chief executive of Vodafone, and the occasional Premier League footballer. “That’s [the Chelsea footballer] Didier Drogba’s old place,” says Ashwell, nodding at one neoclassical pile. “There’s no way a Russian would buy that one,” he says as we pass another monolith further along. “Not enough space around it. Too hemmed in. They’d want more privacy.”

We pass several building sites, evidently showing no sign of a slump at this end of the property market. “If anything, it’s speeding up,” Ashwell says. The Edwardian manor houses are gradually being knocked down to make way for the new builds. We pull up at one place, still under construction, aimed at the Russian market in the popular neo-Georgian style. Inside, the basement has space for an infinity swimming pool in its concrete floor (some do like their pools after all), with zones marked out for a gymnasium, Jacuzzi, home cinema and wine cellar. There are rooms upstairs, for entertaining, with high ceilings — “very important, they like a formal feel”. Upstairs includes his ’n’ hers dressing rooms, while the second floor is intended to house live-in staff. Compared with your average Premier League footballer’s gaff, this is a model of restraint.