Oxhey Grange

Oxhey Grange

Large house on Oxhey Lane, built in 1876 by architect W. Young for W.T. Eley, with substantial extensions and alterations carried out in 1908. The building is constructed of stock brick with red brick and stone dressings, with tiled roofs, and follows the High Victorian Gothic style throughout, organised on an irregular plan with an entrance relocated in 1908.

The house rises to two storeys with attics. The original front, now to the right of the present entrance, comprises three bays. The left bay projects as the former entrance. A plinth runs across the frontage with red brick quoins. The principal first floor feature is an eight-light timber mullion and transom oriel window with plasterwork detailing on a coved base and eaves, enriched with foliate ornament, date and initials. Above sits a hipped roof. The central bay displays two tall ground floor casements and two smaller first floor casements, all set within gauged and moulded red brick surrounds. The right bay has three tall ground floor casements and a first floor six-light stained glass timber mullion and transom window with chamfered jambs and a quadruple pointed relieving arch topped by a timber balconette. A large gable terminates this section, decorated with tile-hanging and ornamental bargeboards.

The garden front, formed by the right return, steps back at the return angle and contains two distinct blocks. The left block features a semi-circular turret with ground floor French windows and flanking tall casements. The first floor oversails on decorative brick courses with a stone course at sill level serving similar windows. Brick diapering enriches the surfaces. Coved eaves with decorative plasterwork mirror the front elevation, surmounted by a trumpet spire with leaded finial. To the left of the turret stand two ground floor windows with an initialled plaque on the first floor above. A four-light stained glass window in the return wall between the left and right blocks is set well back. The central entrance features a slightly cambered head within a moulded red brick surround. Projecting to the right on the ground floor is a large canted bay with thirty-six light ovolo moulded stone mullion and transom windows containing leaded panes, crowned by a stone coped parapet with ramped up merlons. Further right, another canted bay projects with cross windows. Three small bargeboarded gables crown an octagonal turret roof with finial. A separately roofed block extends to the rear.

The rear elevation includes a two-storey projecting canted bay to the right with cross windows beneath a hipped roof, finished with red brick diapering and quoins. A ground floor timber verandah runs along the base. The left return from the original entrance underwent alteration in 1908, with the ground floor now containing a stone mullion and transom window in a canted bay inscribed with date and initials. Above, the first floor displays a four-light window in a projecting bay topped by a tile-hung gable and a panel bearing an earlier date and initials.

The 1908 entrance addition extends as a long set-back projection to the left. Its most prominent feature is a massive Neo-Tudor ashlar porch with a round arch, key-blocked and moulded to the recessed entrance. The repositioned plank and muntin door bears the date 1736. A moulded square head frames the surround. Engaged Doric order supports a raised parapet with carved relief to the centre depicting putti, fortifications and a motto, flanked by two lion finials and scrolled ends. To the right, a red brick base carries stone surrounds to one and three-light windows. To the left stands a Doric loggia of tetrastyle in antis design. Behind the 1908 addition, the original block contains a twentieth-century basement. The ground floor here features a four-light window with stone surround, while the first floor displays a six-light stained glass stair window set within an ovolo moulded stone surround, beneath a bargeboarded dormer.

The interior is notable for its 1908 entrance hall, panelled and top-lit. The hall to the garden contains stone columns with shallow timber arches and repositioned angel corbels. The drawing room preserves a Neo-Classical plaster ceiling and chimneypiece. A dog-leg stair with barley sugar balusters and carved newel posts provides vertical circulation.