Tower House

Shooting lodge, circa 1893, with a small early twentieth-century kitchen extension to the rear. Probably designed by Boulton and Paul of Norwich.

The building is constructed of corrugated iron sheeting on a light timber frame, though the sheeting has been replaced. It is a two-storey structure with gable roofs and two rear brick chimney stacks. All window frames and doors remain contemporary and unaltered in their original openings.

The principal façade features two full-height projecting bays flanking a porch with a pent roof and a late nineteenth-century part-glazed entrance door. At ground floor level, two French windows with rectangular fanlights open from the principal rooms. The left-hand (south) French window has a stained-glass fanlight and opens onto a veranda with a projecting roof and supporting columns, which wraps around the south elevation. The first floor of the façade contains a central rectangular casement window flanked by pointed arched casement windows in each bay. Bay windows appear on both north and south elevations, with the south bay featuring a central French window. The rear elevation has a central French window with a rectangular fanlight at ground floor level, alongside a small outside toilet complete with early twentieth-century fittings.

Interior features remain entirely unaltered. Throughout the house, each room has matchboard cladding and exposed floorboards. Two cast-iron late nineteenth-century fireplaces occupy the principal ground floor rooms, with one additional fireplace on the first floor. The doors are predominantly four-panelled with contemporary fittings, whilst the kitchen and larder contain timber battened early twentieth-century examples. The late nineteenth-century staircase features newels and stick balusters with a moulded handrail.

The Tower House is a pre-fabricated building, one of many types catalogued and produced during the era, including the well-known tin tabernacle churches, houses and agricultural buildings. It was erected as a shooting lodge for the Quilter family, initially constructed in Wherstead around 1893, then moved to Sutton, and finally relocated to its present location in the early twentieth century. For fifty years a local agricultural worker occupied the house apparently without altering or embellishing it. During the late 1990s the building underwent sympathetic renovation, with the exterior corrugated sheeting replaced in kind, though the interior remained substantially unaltered.

The Tower House retains significant importance as a surviving unaltered domestic pre-fabricated building from circa 1893, a building type of which many thousands were erected across the country but surviving unmodified domestic examples are rare. The plan-form, window frames and interior fixtures and fittings, including the staircase and fireplaces, are contemporary and remain intact. The building has group value with the adjacent designated Martello Tower.