Summary
Snape Bridge House is a mid-C19 cottage orné dwelling begun in 1854 for Newson Garrett and originally used during busy winter months at Snape Maltings.
Reasons for Designation
Snape Bridge House, a mid-C19 cottage orné begun in 1854 for Newson Garrett, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* For its cottage orné architecture featuring a wide variety of different materials drawn from picturesque domestic sources;
* As a forerunner of 'bungalow' architecture having been constructed with all the principal accommodation on a single storey;
* In recognition of the high degree of survival for the building's many internal features of interest.
Historic interest:
* For the building's historic function as the director's house overseeing the intensive period of work over winter months at the maltings;
* For its association with the Garrett family, as a winter home for Newson and Louisa Garrett and their children, including Millicent Fawcett and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.
Group value:
* For the building's strong visual, functional and historic group value with the Grade II listed maltings.
History
Snape Bridge is the most westerly navigable point of the River Alde, and the last road bridge to cross it before the sea. In 1841 the established C18 commercial enterprises functioning there were purchased by Newson Garrett (1812-1893). Over the next twenty years he created large warehouses and (from 1854) extensive maltings there. By 1859 Garrett had persuaded the East Suffolk Railway to open a branch line to the site and the enterprise continued to grow.
In 1882 ‘Newson Garrett & Son’ was formed to run the maltings, with Newson’s son George Garrett as manager. Management later passed to George’s nephew, George Edmund ‘Maurice’ Cowell, until he joined the armed forces in 1914.
During the First World War the armed forces made use of the wharf and siding at Snape Bridge. The company’s men were drafted or enlisted, and a shortage of cereal crops in 1917 worsened the company’s prospects. The site’s young manager Maurice Cowell was killed in action. In 1918 Newson Garrett & Son was merged with S Swonnell & Son, a London firm of maltsters.
Swonnell & Son went into voluntary liquidation in 1965 and the holdings at Snape were put up for sale. The maltings site was purchased by George Gooderham, using part of the complex for milling and the storage of animal feed.
The nearby Aldeburgh Festival of Music and Arts was founded in 1948 by the composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), singer Peter Pears (1910-1986) and librettist and director Eric Crozier (1914-1994). Snape Maltings was acquired as the festival’s permanent home, opening in June 1967, while the Gooderhams retained Snape Bridge House.
Snape Bridge House:
In 1854 Newson Garrett began work on a house for himself on the southern edge of the maltings. The building was used over winter months, the most intensive period of work at the maltings. Historically called The Ferns and Bridge House it has latterly been known as Snape Bridge House. Its core was completed in two phases between 1854 and 1859. A garden room (identified elsewhere as a former chapel) was added in a third phase prior to 1882. Given the building’s close relationship to Garrett’s large industrial complex it is conspicuously lacking in formality, employing instead a cottage orné style and the villa-like simplicity of a single storey of accommodation (above a service basement). The design has stylistic affinities with Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture and Furniture (first published 1834). Garrett’s daughter Millicent Fawcett described the building as being ‘in the bungalow style: a one-storied house which could be extended at discretion.’ The house was set in landscaped grounds surrounded by trees, paths, several ponds and an orchard. The grounds border a route called the ‘Sailors’ Path’ on the south side.
Between 1889-1900 several internal changes were made to Snape Bridge House. These included the fitting out of the dining room with new joinery, a fire surround, and an elaborately moulded plaster ceiling. The garden room was converted to a billiard room, with a substantial heating system installed to keep the billiard table dry and warm. A glasshouse on the north side of the rear garden was constructed too. In 1909 architects Smith & Brewer rebuilt the south-east corner of the house to provide two storeys of further accommodation.
In 2008 a conservatory was added to the south-east corner of the house, sealing off a former staircase into the basement in the process. In 2015 the building was acquired by Britten Pears Arts.
The Garrett Family:
Newson Garrett (1812-1893) was the third son of the agricultural engineer and manufacturer Richard Garrett of Leiston. He married Louisa Dunnell, daughter of a wealthy London pawnbroker and publican. The couple determined that their daughters should have an effective education as well as their sons. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) became Britain’s first legally qualified woman doctor; Millicent Fawcett (1847-1929) was the first president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, Britain’s first woman mayor and first woman magistrate; and Agnes Garrett (1845-1935) became London’s first woman interior designer after training under the architect J.M. Brydon. Their brother Sam became president of the Law Society and was the first to employ female pupils.
Details
Snape Bridge House is a mid-C19 cottage orné dwelling begun in 1854 for Newson Garrett and used during busy winter months at Snape Maltings.
MATERIALS
The house is of brick construction, covered variously in paint, render or hung tiles. The roofs are covered in thatch at the front of the building, and a mixture of fish-scale and squared Welsh slates towards the rear.
PLAN
The building has a single storey of family accommodation, above a service basement. The addition of an upper storey of additional bedrooms in 1909 has not altered the principal elements of the plan.
EXTERIOR
The principal elevation faces west and is five bays long beneath a pitched roof of thatch with an ornamental ridge and gabled cross-wings at each end. There are moulded brick chimney stacks to the left and right of the central three bays. The building is mostly single storey above a basement. The ground floor is covered in hung tiles with a fish-scaled central band. The basement is covered in roughcast render and the windows have thick surrounds. The entrance is approached via a flight of steps and a glazed porch with a thatched mono-pitch roof. On each side of the porch are windows with chamfered-brick reveals. The cross-wings have canted bay windows with large-paned sashes and tiled swept roofs.
The ground rises to conceal the basement from the south elevation. There are two gabled bays to the left-hand side, forming part of the 1850s phase of construction. They are covered in hung tiles and have multi-light rectangular windows at the ground floor, and lattice-paned lancet windows in the attics. The 1909 phase of the building on the right-hand side is reached by a link corridor that is set back to allow light to reach two four-paned windows on the return elevation of the original house. The link has a pitched slate roof, plain render, and a C20 door with a side light. The return elevation of the 1909 range has a single six-paned casement window at ground floor, three six-paned windows at first floor and a diamond-shaped attic window. The south elevation of the 1909 wing has two multi-pane timber casement windows at ground floor and two at first floor within a broad central gable clad in tarred pine weatherboarding.
The south-east corner of the building houses a 2008 conservatory. It abuts the east gable wall of the two-storey range. At the first floor of the gable wall is a multi-pane casement, and in the attic is a diamond-shaped window. Adjoining the conservatory to the north is the billiard room. Its gabled east elevation has a canted bay window with margin lights and a swept roof covered in slate. Above the bay window is a panel of relocated architectural salvage, and a crudely cut-away cruciform window. The roof has plain barge boards with console brackets at each end, and the base of a central finial.
The long north elevation has two main sections. To the left-hand side are the later phases of C19 construction, and to the right is the original C19 phase; they are joined by linking structures on the ground and basement levels. The left-hand side of the north elevation features a long range at the east end with a single stack and a small rectangular window. Adjacent to this are two gabled roofs with finials and decorative ridge tiles, they also feature canted bay windows each with a swept roof. The roofs here are all covered in Welsh slate; the right-hand gable is roofed with fish-scale slates. The sloping ground reveals the basement with a window (left) and doorway (right) at the base of the canted bays. The forward part of the linking structures has a canted oriel window and at basement level a pointed arch containing a wooden door with a cat flap. The right-hand side of the north elevation stands proud of the rest and is covered in rough cast render at basement level and hung tiles above, continuing the central band of fish-scale tiles from the front elevation. It has two thatched gables and two canted bay windows with swept roofs covered in tiles.
INTERIOR
The internal plan has been altered as the building has grown but retains the original sense of a single high-status storey of accommodation above a service basement. This can be read in the high degree of surviving Victorian and Edwardian fabric, including at ground floor joinery, skirting boards, cornices, dado and picture rails, door and window furniture, fire surrounds and chimney breasts.
The front door has four raised and fielded panels with triangular sections. It leads to a reception hall with a bolection moulded fire surround covered in moulded foliage.
There is a large room at the north-west that has been formed from two originally separate spaces. One fireplace has been removed and one remains, the latter with a classically detailed surround and a mirrored overmantle.
Some but not all fireplaces survive with grates. Most rooms retain original doors and windows, and many have bell-pushes for servants.
The link corridor and the dining room contain joinery variously dated 1889, 1899 and 1900. The dining room also features a moulded plaster ceiling.
The billiard room has a common purlin roof with false hammerbeam trusses and decorative corbels featuring sculptural heads. There is an elaborate stone fire surround in a Renaissance revival style. The pine floor is interrupted by a brick-lined recess that accommodates the heating system for the billiard table. At the east end is a bay window with French doors and stained-glass margin lights. Above the window is a plaster quatre-foil in a loose Decorated style with stained and leaded glass. Opposite at the west end is a carved monogram (perhaps HCC).
The 1909 two-storey range features three-panelled doors and a high degree of surviving Edwardian fabric. The most notable feature is the staircase, the pine balustrade of which has a grid of balusters and rails and an oak grip handrail.
The original roof structures survive and are of pine construction with common rafters.
The basement also retains a high degree of original fabric relating to their use as service areas. These include chimney breasts, doors and windows, some brick and pamment floors, a copper, a bread oven (W Wells, Saxmundham), a boiler (Musgraves, Belfast), coal stores, and a wine cellar with wine bins.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES
The formal entrance to the driveway is reached through serpentine brick walls with inset panels terminating in octagonal gate piers with domed concrete finials. The gates are early C21 replacements.
On the north side of the rear garden is a glass house built of red brick walls laid in stretcher bond and glazed in timber frames. The floor is mostly covered in Suffolk white bricks marked ‘B&H’.
There is a free-standing garden store on the north side of the house, likely to date to around 1859. It is built of red brick laid in Flemish bond and has a pitched roof of Welsh fish scale slates. It is a single cell in plan with gables to the east and west. There is a doorway on the west wall, and a small window facing south. The roof is made of pine using common rafters.
