Woolverstone House Including Walls Attached To Each Side

Woolverstone House, built in 1901 by Sir Edwin Lutyens for Mrs Berners, is a large red brick building with some tile hanging. It was originally known as St Paul’s Home and was designed as a convent, later becoming a school house. The house is laid out around a courtyard, with a single-storey, U-shaped entrance range and a single-storey chapel attached to the left. The main range is two storeys and an attic, featuring a triple-gabled front. The entrance range includes a carriage arch with a timber gate and leaded-light casement windows set within pegged flush timber surrounds, beneath a steeply-pitched roof with tall ridge stacks. The first floor of the main range has a jettied upper level supported by square tile piers, which divide into four shafts with cornices. The central entrance has a studded door with miniature balusters to a peep-hole, original fittings, and a tile lintel. Further casement windows match those of the entrance range, with mullion and transom casements with leaded lights on the first floor and leaded-light casements in the attic. The garden front has single-storey projecting outer bays under catslide roofs and prominent stacks rising to gables. A central entrance features splayed jambs and a four-order arch with splayed buttresses; casement windows with leaded lights are set within flush pegged timber surrounds. A band of casements runs below the eaves. There are clustered stacks to the rear chimneys, and a group of five diamond-set stacks to the ridge. The chapel, recessed on the right of the garden front, has a gable-end stack and similar casement windows; an external stack with a bellcote is situated in the angle between the chapel and the entrance range. Garden walls, approximately three metres high, run along each side of the house with buttresses, tiled coping, and round arched gateways with splayed jambs and a two-order arch. A wall ramp leads to a further gateway on the left. The interior retains many original fittings, including doors, window furniture, fireplaces, and tiled floors. A groin vaulted passage runs the length of the house to the entrance front, and a staircase is located opposite the entrance, designed in a 17th-century style.