Poles Convent (Fcj)

Poles Convent (FCJ)

Country house, now a convent school. Built 1890–91 by the architects Ernest George and Peto for Edward S Hanbury, with builders Simpson & Son of Paddington. A short extension to the service wing and new stables were constructed in 1913 for H H King on the site of older stables. The building became a convent school in 1923. In 1934, Walters designed a 3-storey tower forming a courtyard linking to the stables and a new chapel for the convent.

The main house is constructed in red brick with blue brick diaper, stone mullioned windows and dressings. The service wing features moulded oak windows. All roofs are red tiled. Later extensions are in red brick and stone dressings in a plainer Jacobean style. The stables feature decorative tile-hanging to the upper floor. The stables and convent extensions lie to the north of the main house.

The principal interior features a double-height Great Hall facing west, which backs onto the Dining Room overlooking the garden to the east. Entry is through a 2-storey porch on the west side into the Entrance Hall, which functions as a screens passage and opens into an arched Loggia to the east in the angle with the service cross-wing. A semi-octagonal bay window lights the middle of the hall. A gallery at the south end is reached by an oak stair within a rectangular glazed bay in the angle with the south cross-wing. This wing contains the Morning Room to the west and the Library to the east, both with stone bay windows.

The main house is 2 storeys with additional attics in the north service wing. To the north around the teaching courtyard, the structure rises to 3 storeys with a moulded wood cornice. The tall buttressed chapel features a gallery over the entrance at its east end. The formal entrance front on the west displays a buttressed arched porch with a brick oriel window above and a Dutch gable. The hall and stair feature 2-storey mullioned and transomed stone bay windows. The south cross-wing has a sculptured external chimney stack. A large chimney in Renaissance style with pediment and strapwork cartouche stands at the south end. The east front shows an alternation of semi-hexagonal bays with shaped gables between. The elevation is 6 windows long with large gable end windows in the projecting north cross-wing. An arcaded Loggia with stone arches on stone columns occupies the angle.

The garden front of the service wing to the north displays more vernacular Arts and Crafts style treatment, with moulded timber mullioned windows and a linked door and window. A corner sleeping gallery with Jacobean square pillars sits on the upper floor. The stable yard buildings match in materials with shaped gables, tile-hung upper floors, and labels to windows. The date '1890' appears on a lead hopper.

The interior of the main house is very ornate and unaltered. Oak panelling and moulded plasterwork line the entrance hall and great hall, with elaborate relief plaster friezes in both. The Great Hall features an oak beamed ceiling on stone corbels. The Morning Room is panelled in late 17th-century classical style with a pedimented chimney piece and doorcase, and a French marble columnar fireplace enriched with ormolu. The Library is panelled in mahogany and rosewood with inlaid rosewood bookcases and a large carved rose marble corbelled chimney piece in early Italian Renaissance style. The Dining Room features a long barrel vaulted plaster ceiling in strapwork with painted panelling and a Jacobean carved chimney piece with over mantle. In the kitchen to the north of the entrance hall is a simple black marble fireplace with a cast iron inset in Japanese style by Barnard and Barnard. Original electric light fittings remain in the main rooms.

This represents an unusually complete and unaltered example of a late 19th-century small country house.