Spencely House, original hard landscaping and swimming pool changing hut

Summary

House, 1936, built to designs by Hugh Castle Greville Spencely. The builders were E H Burgess.

Reasons for Designation

Spencely House, 1936 by H C G Spencely, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* for the elegant, idiosyncratic blend of Modernism and tradition expressed in its composition, use of materials and detailing;

* for the quality and craftsmanship of its fixtures and fittings, ranging from its showpiece stair through to its personalised lead and glasswork;

* for its creative and practical L plan, separating principal and secondary spaces and framing the garden terrace;

* for its degree of survival, inside and out, including much of the original plan, many interior fixtures and surrounding hard landscaping.

Historic interest:

* as an interesting and well-preserved example of an architect’s own house of the interwar period.

History

Spencely House, originally known as The New House, and later Spencely’s, was built in 1936 to designs by Hugh Castle Greville Spencely (1900-1983) for himself and his family.

Spencely purchased the land in 1933. It was one of around 25 plots along Goodley Stock Road sold by the Squerryes estate in Westerham. The Spencely family remained in the house until 1948.

The house was published in several journals, including Country Life magazine in 1936 and The Ideal Home magazine in 1937. These write-ups provide detail of the original specification and illustrate the extent to which the house survives in a little-altered state. Changes have principally been in the form of a minor extension and limited opening-up of the plan in the service areas.

Spencely worked in partnership with Anthony Minoprio (1900-1988) from offices at Seymour Street, London. The two had met at Harrow School and both trained under Charles Reilly at the University of Liverpool School of Architecture. Amongst the partnership’s works are the extension to the Royal School for the Blind, Liverpool (1930-2, listed Grade II, National Heritage List for England: 1279733) and Fairacres, Roehampton, Greater London (1936, Grade II, NHLE:1065482). After the war the practice was engaged in planning work, at home and abroad, producing redevelopment plans for Worcester (1944-6) and Orpington (1964), as well as Kuwait, Baghdad, Dhaka and Chittagong.

Details

House, 1936, built to designs by Hugh Castle Greville Spencely. The builders were E H Burgess.

MATERIALS: brown and red brick laid in Flemish garden wall bond: three brown stretchers to one red header. Doors and windows are teak.

PLAN: the house is of two storeys and has a flat roof. It has an L plan, its front range running north/south, with entrance front to the east and a segmentally curved end wall to the south. An east/west range adjoins to the rear at the north end; a small, curved, C21 single-storey extension has been added at the west end. An attached garage and walled courtyard stand to the north of this range.

As designed, the internal plan was divided broadly into principal reception rooms, hall and bedrooms in the north/south range and children’s and service rooms, and service stair, in the east/west range, with some overlap at the junction between the two. The plan remains little-altered.

EXTERIOR: the building has spare, asymmetric elevations, a flat roof and undressed window openings in horizontal rows; the overall effect is one of a Modern building. However, the character of its brickwork and its overhanging eaves draw on established building patterns, and formal elements too are suggestive of historical precedents.

Enrichment comes mainly from a limited use of shaped bricks and the bonding pattern, which creates a subtle vertical stripe in the brickwork. Bull-nosed bricks are used at the corners of the building and there is a shallow modillion course at the eaves. Window lintels are concealed behind brickwork and sills are formed of three layers of clay tile.

The entrance front has a door positioned off-centre to the right. This is surrounded by a brick roll-moulding and wide, stepped brick architrave. Above is a flat leaded canopy with saw-tooth leadwork valance bearing the inscription: G S & P S MADE ME 1936. The door is teak with eight etched glass panels, each bearing a bittern motif - the adopted crest of the Spencely family.

Off-centre to the left is a wide, shallow external chimney stack with stepped, bull-nosed corners. The first floor has a row of six casements and the ground floor has two small casements to the left of the door and a large five-light casement to the right.

To the rear, the two ranges enclose a garden terrace to the north and east. The ranges meet with a curved, full-height hall window held in a mullion and transom frame. A pair of sliding glass doors pull back into the cavity of the wall, opening from the drawing room onto the east side of the terrace. This wide opening has a brick roll-moulding and stepped brick architrave. Glazed doors to the north are a C21 addition.

The curved south wall has a small plinth above the drawing room window. This held a bronze statue of a small boy holding a shell and a fish by the sculptor James Woodford. This was said to be a portrait of Hugh, one of Spencely’s sons. The sculpture has been lost from the house.

INTERIOR: the house retains a quantity of its original fittings and fixtures, including mahogany joinery and polished Roach stone window sills. Panel radiators are set within alcoves in the wall. Skirtings are low and there are simple plaster covings at the wall heads.

The most striking single fixture is the main staircase. This is straight with a quarter turn towards the bottom, situated within an open well, lit by the full-height curved corner window. The staircase, including balustrade and handrail, is mahogany, the risers slanted slightly to increase the depth of the tread. The string is open, with mahogany and sycamore banding, creating a zig-zag effect. The sinuous balustrade, which continues onto the galleried landing, is formed of three parallel rails held by posts on every third step, capped by a moulded handrail which curves downwards at the base of the straight flight to form a newel.

A glazed screen with etched glass panels separates the stair hall from the entrance lobby. The glass panels have botanical designs and monograms of Spencely and his wife, designed by Marjorie V Duffel. Ten-panel raised and fielded doors lead off the stair hall to the drawing room, dining room and service areas. Console shelves are positioned above each of the two stair hall radiators.

Beneath the stair, a plain door leads to a study, lined with vertical deal boards and with an electric fire in a veined marble surround. Built-in cupboards are a later addition. The dining room has a built-in sideboard designed by Spencely and made by cabinet maker, Peter Van der Waals. The floor is carpeted with a cork margin around the edge of the room.

The original kitchen, larder and pantry have been opened up and there is some reconfiguration, and extension, of the former maids’ room, boiler room and fuel store. These areas do however retain some original joinery and fittings.

On the first floor, doors are flush-panel and there are some original built-in storage cupboards. There have been minor alterations to the plan but the arrangement essentially survives as built. A dumb waiter in the east/west range connects what was formerly the nursery and children’s bedrooms with the kitchen below. The service stair in the north-east corner has a solid balustrade with hardwood handrail.

As with the exterior, the interior combines simple, pared-down, elements with those of a richer, more decorative material quality.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES
There are various low brick walls and raised brick planters framing the main entrance, garden terrace and south end of the house. A wall encloses the garage courtyard to the north.

To the south of the house is a swimming pool with flat-roofed, cedar-wood changing hut designed by Spencely.

The walls and the planters have not been marked on the accompanying map as they are absent from the base mapping.

Sources

Books and journals
Philips, R, An Architect's Own House in Country Life, (7 November 1936), pp. 44-48
New House in The Ideal Home, (May 1937), pp. 390- 394
A House in Kent in The Housebuilder, (January 1937), p. 139
House at Crockham Hill, Kent in Building, (June 1937), p. 232
Abercrombie, P, The Book of the Modern House, (1939), p. xxi, p. 332

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