Reveley Lodge And Associated Buildings

Reveley Lodge and Associated Buildings

A house with a core dating from around 1845, extensively remodelled and enlarged around 1895, with minor twentieth-century additions. The building is constructed of brick, mostly rendered, with hipped slate roofs.

The plan is linear, with a service wing to the east end, a central hall with the main stair to the rear, and formal rooms to the west end.

The north elevation faces Elstree Road and features an advanced brick entrance porch further extended by two bays with cast-iron columns and a pitched roof with glass panels. The eaves have wood brackets and there is a string course. Along the long elevation are sash windows with small multiple panes and a bay window of bottle-glass over small multi-pane lights.

The south elevation contains a single-storey conservatory at the west end with a small mansard roof and two hipped roof sections above. To the centre is a canted stair tower, to the right a canted entrance to the Dining Room, then a bay window with bottle-glass panes over leaded panes of three bays, all with irregularly spaced sash windows to the first floor. The eastern bays are plainer. The west elevation has a bay window of three bays to the Billiard Room.

Internally, the hall features a curved open well stair with balusters of very slender middles in a canted stairtower to the south, and a plaster ceiling with a hexagon motif. To the west is the 1895 Billiard Room, an extended Drawing Room and Conservatory to the south side. The Drawing Room has a cornice and periodic flat pilasters, an elaborate plaster ceiling with strap-work motif, and an elaborate eighteenth-century-style chimneypiece at the west end. Folding shutters sit at two pairs of French windows.

The Billiard Room is panelled with a dentil cornice above which is 1895 Arthur Silver grassweave wallpaper stencilled with 'The Tulip Garden', renewed in the late twentieth century. A wide semi-circular arch to the south end gives way to a continuation of the panelling with a central fireplace featuring fluted pilasters, angled tiles and a cast-iron grate, flanked by two niches. Behind this are toilets with fittings. At the west end is a bay window with leaded glass. The ceiling is coved with a glass tray above. A speaking tube is present.

The Conservatory has a tiled floor and cast-iron framed lights. To the east of centre, the Dining Room has a plaster ceiling of interlaced rounded-corner squares and rosettes pattern, and a full-height wood chimneypiece with mirror above and splayed Delft tiles inside. The Sitting Room has a plaster ceiling matching that of the Dining Room and a wood chimneypiece with glazed brown brick inside, with a window of bottle-glass panes to the corridor leading to the service end of the house.

The service wing contains a Kitchen with an open fireplace, pantries, a butler's room with a safe and bell board, and a secondary stair. Rising panelled shutters serve the passage windows. On the first floor are bedrooms with decorative plaster ceilings, sinks with Delft tile surrounds, plumbed-in marble surround sinks, and built-in cupboards.

The original house was built between 1842 and 1845 by John Titsel Harvey of Caldecote Hill. It was purchased by Ann Reveley in 1845, who expanded the site and passed it through the Reveley line, eventually reaching Jocelyn Tufton Farrant Otway, son of the patron of the former Otway or Caldecote Towers across Elstree Road. Otway commissioned London architect A.E. Hubert to extend Reveley Lodge to the east with new servants quarters and to the west with an enlarged drawing room, new Billiard Room with Arthur Silver grassweave wallpaper, and a Conservatory. In 1910, the house was leased by artist Albert Ranney Chewett (1877-1965), whose work held in the Bushey Museum includes a number of scenes of Reveley Lodge.

A Coach House and Stables and a Gothic-style Boiler House with attached wall and lean-to glasshouses are listed separately.