The Court With East And West Lodges

The Court with East and West Lodges

A large house built in 1911–12 by architect J.D. Coleridge for Sir G. Alexander, located on the southwest side of Rickmansworth Road in Chorleywood. The building is constructed of red brick with stone and tile dressings, sham timber framing, and some tile hanging, with tiled roofs throughout. It exemplifies the Domestic Revival style and is set over two storeys.

The courtyard elevation to the front is arranged as 1:2:1:2:1 with a projecting gabled centre and cross wings. The centrepiece features a two-storey entrance porch with a four-centred arched head to a moulded stone surround and a recessed plank and muntin door. Above this is a datestone carved with a monogram and theatrical masks on the first floor. Flanking bays contain two-light timber casements with leaded lights and tiled segmental heads at ground level. The cross wings display six-light casements on the ground floor and five-light windows on the first floor, with ventilation slits in the gables fitted with tiled kneelers. Stacks with oversailing caps rise to the left on the front pitch and on the ridge.

The right gable end incorporates an entrance with two and three-light casements and a tile-hung gable. To the left, outside the courtyard, an entrance bay with a panelled door and margin lights leads to a first-floor four-light casement. Beyond this extends a large projecting wing featuring three and five-light windows in a re-entrant wall, a half-hipped front over an entrance with flanking two-light windows, and a four-light first-floor window. A cross axial stack stands near the front. The left return includes a single-storey added block with three, four, five and six-light casements. The left end of the main range is topped by a hipped roof.

The garden front is symmetrically arranged across seven bays, incorporating herringbone and chequered brickwork in the sham timber framing, with projecting cross wings and a central entrance. This entrance comprises a glazed door within a four-centred arched surround, flanked by timber mullion and transom casements with leaded lights. The first floor contains two, three and two-light windows. Small hipped-roof blocks occupy the angles of the cross wings: that to the left is entirely glazed to the stairs, while that to the right has long mullioned casements. The gabled cross wings sit on a plinth, with two-storey canted bays featuring four-light windows to the front, jettied gables with S-braces, and outer returns carrying stacks with paired diagonal shafts and crow-stepped offsets. Beyond the wings, two bay verandahs with balconies are set back from the main elevation; the right side has a first-floor round-headed entrance beneath offsets to the stack, closed to the left.

From the ends of the seven-bay front range, tile-coped walls with round arched openings and iron gates extend forward to enclose the East and West Lodges within a courtyard. These lodges are five bays wide and two storeys high, with a central carriageway flanked by wrought iron gates. On the courtyard side, the first floor is entirely sham timber framed, featuring a four-light casement in a projecting central bay with a hipped roof, flanked by three-light hipped dormers all supported on timber posts above a recessed ground floor with three-light casements. Gabled cross wings at the ends contain three two-light casements on the ground floor and five-light windows on the first floor with tiled segmental heads, and ridge stacks. The outer elevation to the road is marked by a timber lintel to the central carriageway, with flanking two-light casements; the first floor displays two, three and two-light casements, sides that project slightly with entrances towards the centre and outer two-light windows, while four-light hipped dormers with boxed eaves crown the hipped roofs.

The interior features panelling in the seventeenth-century style and a staircase with vase balusters. A facsimile Venetian well occupies the centre of the courtyard and was designed to be used as a stage.