Needham Lodge And Attached Screen Walls Pavilions

Needham Lodge and attached screen walls and pavilions are a pair of gate lodges located at the entrance drive to Shrubland Park, built around 1870 for Sir W.F. Middleton, Bart. Designed in the Italianate style, the lodges feature a central carriage gateway topped by an Italianate tower and flanked by single-storey lodges. The structure is made of gault brick with heavily rusticated quoins and has deeply oversailing Roman pantiled roofs supported by heavy, widely spaced modillions. The rear chimneys are also constructed of gault brick. Each lodge includes a small-pane sash window framed in broad limestone with a cornice. The central archway boasts a limestone arch with giant voussoirs, and the keystone is intricately carved with the Middleton coat of arms. There are wrought iron gates adorned with scrolled ornament at the top of each. Above the gateway is a gabled roof, and set back is the square tower, which features twin recessed open arches on columns on each face and a shallow pyramid roof. Attached to either side are semi-elliptical screen walls made of gault brick, approximately 2.5 meters high, with limestone copings and piers highlighted by block quoins. Each screen is capped by a solid square pavilion, about 3.5 meters high, also made of gault brick with block quoins. These pavilions have a coved niche lined with ashlar stonework, a pyramidal Roman pantiled roof with a limestone eaves cornice, and a ball finial.