The Folly

Details

WOODCOTE

472/0/10020 SOUTH STOKE ROAD 31-JUL-06 The Folly

II Early C19 villa in late Regency style with minor later alterations; architect not known. MATERIALS: largely painted brick with slate roof. PLAN: rectangular; internally double-pile arrangement.

EXTERIOR: The Folly is a two-storey building with a broadly symmetrical, three-bay façade in the late Regency style, although in the exposed left gable wall especially it is clear that the present building incorporates earlier phases. The most plausible story is that a decade or so either side of 1830 an existing building was incorporated within and almost wholly remodelled to give a house with largely symmetrical two-storey, three-bay, façade beneath a low, hipped, slate roof. The service end to the left may be a slightly later addition.

The main house has three eight-over-eight pane unhorned sash windows with slender glazing bars to the first floor with an identical window to the left of the ground floor and a larger ten-over-ten pane sash window to the right. The windows have stone sills and brick flat-arched heads. The central six-panelled door has a fanlight over and stands behind an original, decorative, wrought-iron porch (some panels replaced in later C20) with concave lead roof. Standing to the left side and slightly set back from the main façade is a short two-storey service range (possibly a slightly later extension although in similar style to main house, with 12-pane sash windows) with a cantilevered gable to its first-floor and served by a side door. The shallow-pitched hipped slate roof of the main body of house extends over this service end. Tall, narrow, chimney stacks rise through sides of the main roof, one to left and two to right. There is a further stack rising from the service end.

The rear elevation has a string course under first-floor sill level, ground-floor plinth, and a full-length canopy running above the ground-floor windows (its zinc covering recently replaced). The central door giving access to garden as do French doors from rooms to either side. The first floor is lit by six-over -six pane sash windows smaller than those to the front - two to the left, one to the right - with the third bay occupied by a long window which lights the stairs.

The screen wall attached to the right of the house and the late C19 brick outhouse it links to are of lesser interest and are not included in the list description. Similarly of lesser interest is the screen wall to the left of the house (raised in the C20) including the niches and inset heads in its rear face, and the lean-to's built against it.

INTERIOR: Central hall flanked by two front and two rear rooms. Throughout panelled doors, skirting boards, plaster cornices and other original features survive. The fireplaces are largely mid to late C19 marble replacements in a simple classical style. Both the front-left dining room and front-right service room have windows with wooden shutters which rise from beneath the hinged sills. The rear windows to the living and morning rooms have conventional folding shutters. The dogleg staircase, which is original, has stick balusters and a mahogany rail, and is lit by the long window to the rear. The first-floor bedrooms are set off a hall running axially along the building; again, most woodwork and fire surrounds are original.

HISTORY: Woodcote is a hill-top village at the southern end of the Chilterns, supposedly originating as scattered cottages around a common in the beech woods. The Folly is believed to have been built (or rebuilt) in the earlier C19 by the Fergusons, who were Reading brewers. Several bricks with dates of the 1750s and 1760s are set in the right-hand gable wall but it seems likely that they were reset together when the house was rebuilt in the early C19. A brick stamped 'Ferguson 1805 [or 1809]' high on the gable wall may be in situ, although the gable's fabric shows a complex structural history (as do parts of the lower rear wall) and this date may not represent the building which survives today, which is outwardly at least of one build and as has been said probably of a decade or so either side of 1830. Probably in the mid to late C19, as map and ground evidence show, fairly extensive (upwards of 3 acres) pleasure grounds, shrubberies, and specimen trees (many surviving and now with Tree Preservation Orders) were set out in the rear garden. A surviving oak avenue led away from the house to a now-lost folly; this may be the origin of the main house's name.

SOURCES: VCH Oxfordshire 7 (1962), 95

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: Buildings from between 1700 and 1840 are usually listed. One feature of the early C19, both in town and country, was the construction of villas built in the fashionable Regency style which were popular with the growing number of middle-class professional and commercial families. This well-finished example of a villa in the late Regency style which bespeaks its brewer-owners' social position, survives little altered both externally and internally, and standing opposite Woodcote's listed parish church and adjacent to the grade II barn that is mid-late C18 in date, it makes a considerable contribution to the character of this part of the village.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

495851

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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