Woodhouse at Forest Lodge

Woodhouse at Forest Lodge is a former chauffeur’s cottage and garage, built around 1936 to the designs of Robert Lowry FRIBA for Francis Egerton Pegler, and is now a house.

The building features a clay tile roof, red brick walls laid in English garden wall bond, a red brick chimneystack, and leaded casement windows. It has a symmetrical butterfly plan, with wings extending at an acute angle to the north-east and north-west from the central core.

This one-and-a-half storey house includes a central rectangular-plan red-brick chimneystack and a steeply-sloped plain clay tile roof, with dormer windows on the north, south, north-east, and north-west slopes, all clad with hanging clay tiles. The ground floor walls are made of red brick in English garden wall bond, and there are a variety of three-light, two-light, and single-light leaded casement windows in the living room, other rooms, and former garages. Access to the house is through the centre of the rear (north) elevation, which has a single step leading to a timber-battened door with 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 marked with the manufacturer’s name ‘CHARLES COLLINGE LAMBETH’.

The interior was not inspected, but plans dated 8 July 1936 indicate that it was designed to include a stair, coal store, scullery, living room, dry store, WC, and pantry on the domestic part of the ground floor, with garages in each of the projecting wings. The west garage is noted to retain a maintenance pit, while it appears that the proposed garage in the east wing was not built.