Reasons for Designation
Kudos House, Ednam Road and Priory Road, Dudley, a surgeon's house and consulting rooms built circa 1864 is designated at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural: the design of the building is accomplished and uses the repertoire and proportions of a restrained classical style with confidence.
* Interior: the restraint of the exterior design extends to the interior, and this is also notable for the quality of the design and materials used.
* Intactness: the complete state of the plan of this specialised building and the survival of many original fittings is noteworthy.
* Rarity: the building type, a purpose built doctor's house, and its survival in a readable form are noteworthy.
Details
726/0/10072 EDNAM ROAD
25-NOV-10 3
KUDOS HOUSE
II
A surgeon's house of 1862. The building is of red brick, laid in Flemish bond with blue brick and painted stone dressings and a hipped slate roof with lead flashings. The building has two storeys with a domed lantern to the centre of the roof. It combines the functions of a home for the surgeon with a suite of consulting rooms, each being approached through different entrances.
EXTERIOR: The building is girded by a plinth of blue bricks and flush bands of similar blue bricks at the level of the ground and first-floor window sills and above the first-floor windows and by a moulded, stone string course between the floors. The Ednam Road front has three bays symmetrically disposed with a central frontispiece which consists of a doorway which is flanked by slender lights. The painted stone surround has consoles which support the entablature above this tripartite arrangement. At first-floor level, the central four-pane sash window has a moulded stone surround which is flanked by moulded consoles which sit on the sill and have scroll ends and small panels of vermiculated rustication. Below this is a panelled apron with sunken circular and rectangular panels which connects to the entablature above the doorway at ground-floor level. To either side of this are windows with similar stone surrounds. They are shouldered and have panelled aprons below the first-floor sills which connect with the taller ground-floor windows. The roof has sprocketed eaves, and at the centre is the square drum of the lantern, which is lead-sheathed. Above this is the glazed dome which has a ball finial. At either side are brick chimney stacks, each with a flush band of blue bricks, which appear to have been truncated. The Priory Road front is essentially similar, save that the bays are set closer together. There is a later, brick ground-floor extension to the right with a hipped roof and C20 window. The door to Ednam Road has six raised and fielded panels and is a C20 replacement. All windows across both fronts are horned sashes with four panes. The garden front to the south-west is of two bays which are widely spaced, as before, but the right-hand ground-floor bay now holds an entrance door, but formerly contained a pair of French windows as the shouldered surround demonstrates. The left-hand, ground-floor bay has a bow window added later. This has stuccoed walling and a flat roof behind a plain parapet. The rear has flush bands of blue brickwork, but is otherwise plain, with random fenestration. A projecting bay at the near centre of this front has ground-floor extensions to either side of it, which appear to be additions.
INTERIOR: The entrance hall has a floor of patterned, encaustic tiles. The open well staircase has moulded tread ends and a wreathed curtail with metal balusters supporting a mahogany handrail. The lantern has raised plaster panels to its lower, square body and a suspended glazed ceiling below the dome which was inserted in the C20. Doorways lead from the hall to the reception rooms of the house on the south-west front and to the kitchen and service rooms on the north-west side. In the south-east corner a door leads through to what appears to have been the surgeon's consulting room, which has windows looking to the south-east and north-east. This room also connects with the entrance lobby at the centre of the north-east front from which a further door leads to a waiting room and a staircase leads up to two first floor rooms, presumably to accommodate patients who were lying in. The principal ground floor rooms all have window shutters and projecting shutter boxes. Cornicing can be seen in the ground and first floor rooms on the southern side of the house and chimney breasts can be seen in rooms at ground and first floor levels, but the fire surrounds have been removed. Original doors to both floors have been replaced with C20 fire doors which have laminated surfaces and inset, glazed panels. At the end of the C19 or start of the C20 the house was decorated, using Lyncrusta paper which is used below the dado in the entrance hall and up the central staircase and also on the ceiling in that room. Picture rails also appear to have been fitted in many of the rooms at this same time.
HISTORY: Priory Villa was designed as a purpose built dwelling to house the then 'Surgeon in Charge' to the Dispensary, Mr John Hyde Houghton. It functioned both as his home and for his professional consulting rooms, a dual role that is still clearly evident in the plan. The building has two formal entrances; one off Ednam Road leading into the private part of the house, and a separate entrance off Priory Road for the use of patients. Houghton was the Surgeon for Dudley Dispensary as well as a Magistrate for the County of Worcester. He was a specialist in obstetrics and published an article in 1852 on the use of electric shock therapy to assist with difficult labours. The house was designed and built in 1864-5, at the same time or shortly after the dispensary building which has since been demolished. The dispensary was a charitable donation to Dudley from the nailmaker, John Guest, and was described by Pevsner as 'in a wild Gothic, totally asymmetrical' (see SOURCES).
Three generations of the Houghton and the related Messiter family lived in the house and served as surgeons in the borough and it was only sold by the family in the 1960s. In the 1870s Priory Villa became absorbed into the Priory Fields development. This was laid out on land belonging to Lord Dudley, to the west of the town centre. Within this new layout the house gained a prominent corner location at the crossroads of Priory Road and Ednam Road, which was newly laid out on a line between the Dispensary and Priory Villa. It is believed that the bow window on the south-west front was added at the same time and some of the ground floor service rooms on the north-west side of the house also appear to have been added then. The house was bought by Dudley Borough from the Messiter family in the 1960s and has served as office accommodation since then.
SOURCES
Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England; Staffordshire (1974), 122, 123.
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION
Kudos House, Ednam Road and Priory Road, Dudley, a surgeon's house and consulting rooms built circa 1864 is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural: the design of the building is accomplished and uses the repertoire and proportions of its restrained, classical style with confidence.
* Interior: the restraint of the exterior design extends to the interior, and this is also notable for the quality of the design and materials used.
* Intactness: the complete state of the plan of this specialised building and the survival of many original fittings is noteworthy.
* Rarity: the building type, a purpose built doctor's house, and its survival in a readable form are noteworthy.
