Tongswood, Now St Roman's School, With Garden Terrace

Details

HAWKHURST WATER LANE TQ 7630-7730 (east side) 17/451 Tongswood, now St Roman's School, with garden terrace GV II House. Mid-late C19, extended 1904-6. Red brick with some diapering in blue brick, with ashlar details and ornamental tiled roof. Jacobethan style. Main range of 2 storeys and attic on plinth with string course and moulded brick dog- tooth cornice to roof with 3 projecting gables, those to centre and to right shaped with finials, and with 2 gabled dormers to centre stacks ranged left to right, and large central clock tower, with tiled spire, and 2 tier wooden top- piece with cornices, leaded spire roof and ogee cupola with weather-vane. Three- storey bay to left and 2-storey bay to right, both with enriched parapets. Eight-window bay front, with sashed stone mullioned windows, mullioned and transomed on ground floor. Central panelled doors in C16 style Classical porch in projecting ground floor with banded attached columns, pediment with achievement, and keyed arch. Ballroom extension to right, with the details of the main range carried over, with semi-dormer to left, and central shaped gable, with canted bay on ground floor, with pierced balustrade and full-height mullioned and transomed window. Identical bay window to right return, with 2 shaped gables and central segmentally-headed gable with arms cartouche. Garden elevation with shaped pilastered gables, semi-dormer and 2 central dormers, bow windows on ground floor, Ionic columned canted bay to ballroom with half-glazed doors and fanlights. Two storey service wing to left of main front, with built-out ground floor; with moulded stacks, 4-bay front with gabled wing to left. Garden terraces to right return and to rear, with red brick walls, with regular buttress piers, with stone capping, reached by stone steps to right of main front, with pierced stone balustrade. Interior: the earlier main range richly panelled, with 4-centred arched doorways, especially to entrance hall, with openwell stair with landing, with ramped handrail on iron-twist balusters. Sugar-barley twist balusters to rear stair. Dining room with wainscotting, columned overmantel (present library). Plaster ceilings throughout. Ballroom and adjacent en-suite bedrooms finished in rich late C17 Classical style; the ballroom with pilaster and free- standing columned corners, and supporting cross-beamed ceiling with central roundel, with stepped main entry to house, the whole enriched (fluted columns, scaled pulvinated frieze, enriched beams). The ceiling painted after the Italian manner, as are those in the en-suite bedrooms and bathroom, and bar-room, also with enriched door surrounds, marble fireplaces, cornices etc. The main house built for William Cotterill before 1874; the ballroom added for William Gunther 1904-6 and built by J T Davis, builders of Hwkhurst. Gunther made his fortune from Argentinian beef products and drinks, and from 1902 to 1931 lived here, a general benefactor to the parish. Anciently the seat of the Dunks, the last of whom, Sir Thomas, founded the almshouses bearing his name in Highgate, Hawkhurst. Subsequently the property of Jeremiah Curteis of Rye, one of the leaders in mid C18 of the Hawkhurst Gang, probably the most notorious smuggling gang of the time.

Listing NGR: TQ7780130807

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

169802

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.