Kudos House

Kudos House

A surgeon's house built in 1862, designed to combine residential and professional functions. The building is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond with blue brick and painted stone dressings, topped by a hipped slate roof with lead flashings. It comprises two storeys with a distinctive domed lantern at the roof centre.

The building is distinguished by its practical planning, which incorporates two separate entrance systems: one on Ednam Road serving the private residential quarters, and another on Priory Road providing access for patients attending the surgeon's consulting rooms. This dual-purpose arrangement remains clearly legible in the building's layout.

The exterior is articulated by a blue brick plinth and flush bands at ground and first-floor window sill levels, with a moulded stone string course between floors. The Ednam Road front presents three symmetrically disposed bays with a central frontispiece consisting of a doorway flanked by slender lights, the whole surrounded by painted stone with supporting consoles and entablature. The first-floor central window is a four-pane sash with moulded stone surround, flanked by consoles on the sill with scroll ends and small panels of vermiculated rustication. Below runs a panelled apron with sunken circular and rectangular panels. The flanking windows are shouldered with similar stone surrounds and panelled aprons. The roof features sprocketed eaves and a central square lead-sheathed lantern drum topped with a glazed dome and ball finial. Brick chimney stacks flank the lantern, marked by flush bands of blue bricks and appearing truncated. The Priory Road front is essentially similar but with bays set closer together. A later brick ground-floor extension with hipped roof and 20th-century window projects to the right. The six-panelled door on Ednam Road is a 20th-century replacement. All windows are horned sashes with four panes.

The south-west garden front contains two widely-spaced bays; the right-hand ground-floor bay now accommodates an entrance door but its shouldered surround indicates it formerly held French windows. The left-hand ground-floor bay retains a later bow window with stuccoed walls and flat roof behind a plain parapet. The rear elevation displays flush bands of blue brickwork with random fenestration, and a projecting central bay with ground-floor extensions to either side, which appear to be later additions.

The interior is entered through a hall with patterned encaustic tile flooring. The open well staircase features moulded tread ends, a wreathed curtail with metal balusters, and a mahogany handrail. The lantern contains raised plaster panels to its lower square body and a suspended glazed ceiling beneath the dome, inserted in the 20th century. The hall provides access to reception rooms on the south-west front and kitchen and service rooms on the north-west side. A door in the south-east corner leads to what was the surgeon's consulting room with south-east and north-east facing windows. This room connects to an entrance lobby at the centre of the north-east front, from which a waiting room opens and stairs lead to two first-floor rooms, presumably for patients requiring extended care. All principal ground-floor rooms retain window shutters and projecting shutter boxes. Cornicing survives in ground and first-floor rooms on the southern side, and chimney breasts remain at both levels, though fire surrounds have been removed. Original doors on both floors have been replaced with 20th-century fire doors with laminated surfaces and inset glazed panels. Late 19th-century or early 20th-century decoration includes Lyncrusta paper below the dado in the entrance hall and up the central staircase, and on the ceiling of that room. Picture rails were fitted to many rooms at this period.

The house was originally called Priory Villa and was designed as a purpose-built residence for Mr John Hyde Houghton, Surgeon in Charge to the Dispensary. Houghton also served as a Magistrate for the County of Worcester and specialised in obstetrics, publishing an article in 1852 on the use of electric shock therapy to assist with difficult labours. The house was designed and built in 1864-1865, contemporaneous with the nearby dispensary building (since demolished), which was a charitable donation to Dudley from the nailmaker John Guest. Three generations of the Houghton and related Messiter families lived in the house and served as surgeons in the borough before it was sold in the 1960s. In the 1870s, Priory Villa became integrated into the Priory Fields development, laid out on land belonging to Lord Dudley west of the town centre. The house acquired a prominent corner position at the crossroads of Priory Road and Ednam Road, newly created along a line between the Dispensary and Priory Villa. The bow window on the south-west front is believed to have been added during this period, as were some ground-floor service rooms on the north-west side. Dudley Borough purchased the house from the Messiter family in the 1960s and has since used it for office accommodation.