The Lawn Including Garden Boundary Wall and Gate Piers to North

Details

The following building shall be added to the list: CAMDEN PARK No 5 (The Lawn) 9/340 including garden boundary wall and gate piers to north GV 11

House. Circa 1853, architect not known. Stuccoed, probably brick walls. Low- pitched hipped slate roof with lead rolled hips and ridge and deep eaves on brackets with acanthus leaf decoration. Stacks with tall stuccoed shafts with modillion cornices and square yellow clay pots. Plan: An Italianate villa of double-depth plan with 2 principal rooms on the front facing the garden to the south, the right hand (east) room has a canted bay at the front and the left hand room a verandah at the front. Behind is the stair hall with the main entrance on the north elevation and a room to left and right. On the right hand (east) side a large conservatory and on the left hand (west) side a lower service wing, set back, with a small single storey range around a small yard on the extreme left. Exterior: 2 storeys: The elevations have rusticated and moulded quoins, moulded stringcourse at first floor level on console brackets and a moulded string alcove at first floor sill level. All C19 sash windows without glazing bars in moulded architraves. Asymmetrical elevations. The south garden front 2:3 windows, the right hand 3 windows in a large 2-storey canted bay around which the stringcourses and eaves cornice continue. To the left on the ground floor a pretty cast-iron verandah with thin posts and ornate spandrels supporting a tented roof and with pierced cast-iron steps up to the terrace of the verandah. Set back on the left (west) the lower 2-storey service wing is plainer and has a C19 tripartite sash on each floor. On the right (east) side an ornate wooden C19 conservatory with a canted front, gabled side, 3-centred arch lights, dentil cornice and elaborate cast-iron cresting to the ridge. The main entrance elevation facing north is asymmetrical: Shallow porch with pilasters, round arch doorway with keystone and imposts, cornice and parapet. C19 moulded and panelled inner door with side lights and overlight with console brackets. Projecting stack to left of porch and sash window on both floors in shallow project- ion to right of porch. Including front garden boundary wall to north: Mid C19 rendered and with rendered moulded coping ramped up at west end to a pair of carriageway gate piers which have large moulded caps and C20 wrought-iron gates. Interior: Was not inspected but photographs show that it is largely intact and includes original joinery such as panelled doors and chimneypieces etc and the plaster cornices are complete. The staircase has an elaborate cast-iron balustrade with a wreathed mahogany handrail. One of the rooms has what appears to be later C19 Jacobean style panelling and a large carved wooden chimneypiece with a pilastered overmantel. Note: No 5 is one of a crescent of Italianate style detached villas in their own gardens overlooking Camden Park. Camden Park was laid out in circa 1853 in imitation of Decimus Burton's Calverley Park which was started in 1828. 'According to the 1847 edition of Colbran's 'New Guide to Tunbridge Wells', Burton had by then planned an estate at Tunbridge Wells for the Marquess Camden, but Camden Park does not appear to have been laid out until circa 1853, and the five Italianate houses built by 1863, when work stopped, were probably designed by another architect'. (Colvin). Source: Colvin, H. A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, pg 172.

Listing NGR: TQ5930639112

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

168184

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Colvin, H M, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, (1978), 172

End of official list entry

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