Ewell Court House, Including Attached Grotto

Reasons for Designation

DCMS agree Yes List

Details

861/0/10027 Ewell Court House, including attached 01-OCT-04 grotto

II Formerly house, later public library and function rooms. Mainly built in 1879, architect J Alick Thomas for John Henry Bridges on his marriage to Edith Tritton, but incorporating parts of a 1690 house called Avenue House in the kitchen wing. Jacobean style house built of red brick in Flemish bond with sandstone window dressings, some timberframing to the gables and renewed tiled roof with tall brick chimneystacks. The windows are mainly mullioned and transomed windows with leaded lights. Irregular-shaped building with only the garden front symmetrical.

EXTERIOR: The entrance or east front is L-shaped. The southern part has two timberframed gables and three mullioned and transomed casement windows to the first floor. The ground floor has a projecting porch with balustrading with ball finials, strapwork decorated Ionic pilasters and three tier windows with leaded lights and sgmental-archd doorcase with keystone and impost blocks. To the north is a one storey billiard room with a six-light dormer to the left, flat-roofed dormer to the right and, to the ground floor, a seven-light bay with leaded lights. The L-wing is of two storeys three windows and has a canted bay through two floors with cornice with ball finials, casement windows to the first floor and arched doorcase with cornice and brackets to ground floor. The central casement is followed by an end two storey canted bay with timberframed gable above with mullioned and transomed casements with leaded lights. The return of this wing also has a timberframed gable. The garden front facing south is symmetrical with seven windows, comprising a recessed centre of three bays and projecting gabled end wings. The centre has two hipped triple dormers with casements with leaded lights. The first floor has a central canted bay with central arched doorcase with strapwork decorated spandrels incorporating the date 1879 flanked by octagonal half-columns and mullioned and transomed casements. The other windows are similar but adapted in the mid C20 into french windows. The projecting end wings are timberframed with bargeboards with pendants and bracket eaves cornice. The first floor has two mullioned and transomed windows and ground floor canted bays with central french windows flanked by sidelights divided by octagonal half-columns. The west elevation is dated 1879 in a quatrefoil on the chimneybreast. There are two timberframed gables with bargeboards and pendants. The first floor has three mullioned and transomed casements and the ground floor has a triple mullioned and transomed casement to the left with arched doorcase. Set back to the left is the earlier part of the building which became the service wing. This is of two storeys with a square cupola with wooden arches, lead ogee head with finial and battered lead cheeks with bell. There is a projecting open pedimented gable and one storey section to the north with tall red brick chimneystack with tumbling-in. Attached by a brick arch is a one storey brick garden pavilion with round-headed arched door and a wall with five segmental-headed brick arches with impost blocks to pilasters of which the central arch only is unblocked and contains a grotto. The walls to the grotto are probably kitchen garden walls of the C17 building but the grotto is a Victorian fern grotto and it retains pipework providing it with heat and steam in order to grow ferns and orchids. The north front has a series of gables.

INTERIOR: The interior has a large main well staircase with turned balusters, arched gallery and coved ceiling with stained glass skylight. Downstairs rooms have ornate plastered ceilings, panelling and fireplaces, including one with an overmantel with carved shield. The former billiard room has a coved ceiling with leaded lights, and fireplace with overmantel with three panels and pilasters. The adjoining room, formerly the Gun Room, has an oak fireplace with bolection-moulded surround and retains original shutters. The service staircase is of dogleg type with turned balusters and square newelposts with strapwork decoration.

A little altered Jacobean style house of 1879 with good quality internal joinery, plasterwork and stained glass,and a fairly rare fern grotto, incorporating an earlier house of 1690 in its service wing.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

492037

Legacy System:

LBS

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