Woodhouse at Forest Lodge

Former chauffeur’s cottage and garage, built around 1936 to the designs of Robert Lowry FRIBA for Francis Egerton Pegler, now a house.

MATERIALS: clay tile roof, red brick walls laid in English garden wall bond, red brick chimneystack, and leaded casement windows.

PLAN: the house has a symmetrical butterfly plan with wings projecting at an acute angle north-east and north-west from the central core.

EXTERIOR: the one-and-half storey house has a central rectangular-plan red-brick chimneystack and steeply-sloped plain clay tile roof, with a dormer window to each of the centre of the north, south, north-east and north-west slopes, clad with hanging clay tiles. The walls of the ground floor are constructed of red brick laid in English garden wall bond, with a variety of three-light, two-light, and single-light leaded casement windows (to the living room, other rooms and former garages respectively). The house is accessed via the centre of the rear (north) elevation by a single step and timber-battened door incorporating a square light. The former chauffeur’s house retains double-leaf timber-battened garage doors on the rear elevation of the west wing, featuring cast-iron strap hinges which bear the manufacturer’s name ‘CHARLES COLLINGE LAMBETH’.

INTERIOR: not inspected. Plans of the proposed building, dated 8 July 1936, show the interior was planned to have a stair, coal store, scullery, living room, dry store, WC and pantry in the domestic part of the ground floor, flanked by a garage in each of the projecting wings (the west garage is said to retain a maintenance pit), with three bedrooms over. It appears the proposed garage in the east wing was not carried out.