Summary
Lodge house at Lord Wandsworth College, 1914-1915, by Reginald Blomfield with inter-war range and link block added.
Reasons for Designation
The Lodge House to Lord Wandsworth College is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as carefully composed lodge house design in the Queen Anne style by Reginald Blomfield, a leading architect of the period;
Historic interest:
* as an early part of an important educational trust focused on agricultural training, established as a legacy of the Liberal politician and philanthropist Sydney James Stern, Baron Wandsworth (1844-1912);
Group value:
* with the other early Lord Wandsworth College buildings, particularly the adjacent main north gates, designed as a piece with the lodge by Blomfield. The buildings throughout the estate have a strong collective value, demonstrating careful planning by Blomfield and Dawber, manifest in the varied yet harmonious arrangement of distinguished buildings which draw on vernacular and classical traditions.
History
Lord Wandsworth College was established with money left by Sydney James Stern, Baron Wandsworth (1844-1912), a banker and MP who was raised to the peerage in 1895. As a Liberal MP for the rural Suffolk constituency of Stowmarket, Stern had taken an interest in agricultural affairs and had been committed to improving the living conditions of the rural poor; introducing three Bills on Better Housing of the Working Classes in Rural Districts in the 1890s. Upon his death in 1912, the majority of his fortune (estimated to have been around £1.25 million) was allocated for a residential institution for the benefit of the rural poor, where ‘scientific and practical training will be given in every branch connected with Agriculture’ (quoted in Podger, pp16-17). In accordance with the stipulations set out in the bequest, a committee formed of various experts in the fields of agricultural management, finance and education was established to oversee the foundation and guide its development. The initial question of the site for the ‘Lord Wandsworth Orphanage’, as it was originally termed, was considered by the Trust in 1913, with the Long Sutton estate chosen in August and acquired in October. At the time of purchase the site was comprised of 950 acres of arable land, with the main Sutton House and its associated farm buildings situated to the south and Hyde Farm and its various buildings set to the west. Bennet’s Field, which occupied the main right of way to Hyde Farm, was subsequently purchased in October 1917. The estate was reported to be in poor condition in 1913, with 17 existing cottages on the estate found to be ‘unfit for human habitation’ and the land and hedges in a ‘dreadful condition’ (Kinney, p43); the state of Long Sutton at this stage reflecting the decades of depression which had severely affected agriculture across the country.
The Foundation was originally conceived along the lines of a model village, with the intention being that small groups of children would reside in cottages overseen by a housemaster and be taught on the farm and at a central school house. Trustees met in January 1914 to consider the layout of the site and instigate an initial building programme. Reginald Blomfield (1856-1942) was appointed to the Trust’s Advisory Committee and was given responsibility for selecting an architect to create plans for new buildings under his direction. The architect that Blomfield recommended to the Trust, selected in July 1914 from a field of five candidates, was Guy Dawber (1861-1938), who was a former President of the Architectural Association principally known for his designs for many small country houses and writings on vernacular architecture. The earliest work on the estate was divided, apparently with ‘some friction’, between the two architects (Podger, p20). Blomfield assumed responsibility for the lodge and main entrance gates, for which plans were produced in July 1914. In the same year Blomfield also designed Shepewood House (originally the assistant manager’s residence, later the Warden’s house) and several estate cottages. Additionally, in collaboration with C S Orwin (Director of the Institute for Agricultural Economics at Oxford), he produced plans for the extensive Hyde Farm buildings to the west of the site. Dawber’s early work included a power house and workshop block, designs being produced in February 1915, along with a series of cottages completed by October 1916. The most ambitious plans produced by Dawber in this early phase were however thwarted by the outbreak of war: the first proposals for a formal range of school buildings were particularly grand, with a perspective drawing and plans exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1915 showing buildings arranged around three sides of a central court (315 feet wide and 630 feet long), with a main north hall flanked by ancillary buildings connected by colonnades and, to the east and west, separate boarding houses. Contracts were issued for the work, with the western Administration and Engineering Blocks built in 1915, but only the foundations could be laid for the initial school house before licences for further building were refused by the Ministry of Munitions in November 1917.
As the first new building scheme for the Lord Wandsworth Foundation, the vernacular, Queen Anne style lodge, along with the Edwardian Baroque gates, determined the main approach to the college and set the architectural tone for the rest of the estate. The gates and the lodge were designed as a piece by Blomfield, with plans signed by him in July 1914. Construction was carried out in 1914-15, with two houses set to the east of the Four Horseshoes public house demolished to make way for the work, whilst an existing outbuilding to the south (first shown on the 1896 Hampshire OS 1:2,500 map) was retained as an ancillary building for the lodge. It appears that the Blomfield’s plans for the lodge were revised to extend the building slightly to the west, up to the line of the existing outhouse, as early photographs of the lodge show this end as having been built (see Podger, p19).
Upon completion, the gates and lodge stood in isolation; a tender for the laying of the road leading south to the centre of the college and several estate cottages along this main approach was not accepted until July 1923 (Podger, p43). There was some early expansion of the lodge, with a single-storey west range built to replace the pre-existing outbuilding and in the late 1920s (see photograph of the range under construction in Fryer; plates opposite p20), this serving as additional accommodation. The most significant phase of work on this part of the site was prompted by the admittance of girls into the sixth form college from September 1988. Construction was underway early in 1988 and the new accommodation was formally opened in January 1989; the building named New Gosden House in reference to the earlier Wandsworth Preparatory School (attended by girls from the 1920s) which was at Gosden House in Bramley and run by the Trust from 1919 until 1946.
Details
Lodge house, 1914-1915, by Reginald Blomfield with inter-war range and link block subsequently added to the west.
MATERIALS: red brick, with rough-cast rendered sections, stone dressings and clay tile roofs and wall sections.
PLAN: square plan over two storeys (the upper storey set into the roof pitch). The main entrance projects to the east, this opening to a hallway which leads to a newel stair at its west end and gives access to communal rooms to either side along with a bathroom and separate WC. The stairs lead to bedroom dormitories on the first floor, accessed from a central landing. A connecting block and rear entrance are set to the west, leading through to the single-storey range of flats to the west (not inspected internally).
EXTERIOR: restrained Queen Anne style lodge, designed as a piece with the main gates, behind which the lodge is set back to the south-west. To the north, facing White Hill road, is a broad gable-end bay with rough-cast rendered upper floor and brick ground floor with a central window set under a stepped, gauged brick arch and brick quoins to the corners. The gable window is a large Venetian type, set within a moulded timber surround and beneath a panel bearing the construction date ‘1915’; the entire arrangement (save for the date panel) is repeated in the south elevation. The principal entrance to the lodge is to the east, facing the main approach road to the college and standing just proud of the rest of the east elevation. This has a ground floor of red brick with a window set off to the south and a cut-away section supported by a single stone Doric column to the east. This forms a covered entrance area with a herringbone-pattern brick floor and an original part-glazed door set under a segmental brick header. The gable end has hung clay tiles and a narrower Venetian window positioned centrally. The west elevation is entirely of brick and has smaller windows set either side of the projecting chimney stack. This elevation is mostly covered by the connecting block to the single-storey west range of the late 1920s. The later range has a shallow pitched roof with exposed rafter ends and regularly spaced multi-paned casement windows to the side elevations and a plain gable end to the north. To the south, the 1920s range connects with the later 1980s additions (excluded from this List entry). Most windows to the lodge house are later replacement casements, following the form of the originals shown in archive photographs. Windows to the western late-1920s range are principally original casements.
The roof has a ridge that runs north-south with a substantial paired brick chimney stack with a connecting arch to the centre. The gable end above the entrance projects out from beneath the ridge line, with a hipped join to the east pitch.
INTERIOR: The original simple plan arrangement remains legible, with distinct communal rooms at ground-floor level and bedroom dormitories above. Most rooms have been modernised, chiefly though the conversion and renewal of rooms undertaken in 1988-1989 as part of the integration of the lodge within the new Gosden House complex. Fire doors have been inserted and fireplaces and their surrounds removed. Some original joinery remains, including the staircase with its balusters and shaped newel, several door and window architraves, skirting boards and picture rails.
