Sutton House

Sutton House, built around 1530 for Sir Ralph Sadler, a statesman, stands as a rare survival of an early 16th-century medium-sized house in the London area. The building is constructed of 16th-century English bond brick with dipper work, early 18th-century Flemish bond brick, and circa 1904 plum brick with red brick dressings. It features gabled and hipped plain tile roofs.

The house originally had an H-plan layout with a central hall range, which was transformed into its present courtyard plan by the construction of a south range around 1904. The front (north) elevation displays 3 storeys with a 2:4:2 fenestration pattern and projecting outer wings. The recessed central range was refaced in early 18th-century brick, with wooden porches added around 1904. The windows feature gauged red brick flat arches, with 12-pane ground-floor sashes, 18-pane first-floor sashes, and 16-pane second-floor sashes with blind outer windows. The west wing has early 18th-century gauged red brick flat arches over 8-pane and 12-pane sashes. The east wing was rendered in mid-19th century with rusticated quoins and a channelled ground floor, containing horned 4-pane sashes set in moulded square-headed architraves with decorative brackets to cornices. The originally gabled front was given its present parapets in the early 18th century.

The building underwent early 17th-century alterations for Captain John Milward, internal alterations around 1700, and was sub-divided into two dwellings circa 1752–4. The east wing was rendered in the mid-19th century, and rear range (Wenlock Barn) and east and west wing additions date to around 1904.

The west wing contains a notable dog-leg staircase with landing, inserted in the early 17th century, featuring fine strapwork wall paintings to the landing with pendentives to the upper frieze and gryphons and cherubs flanking moulded wood door architraves with sunk spandrels to arches. The first-floor front room has early 17th-century panelling and a partition with reused timbers, together with a 16th-century stone fireplace with moulded stone architrave and painted armorial shields to foliate-carved spandrels. The ground-floor front room has linenfold panelling (stored at the time of survey) and a 16th-century stone fireplace with moulded architrave and blank shields to sunk spandrels. The ground-floor rear room has blocked 16th-century door and window openings, with 18th-century spit racks over the fireplace set in a mid-18th-century moulded wood architrave with a late 17th-century marbled surround.

The east wing ground floor contains a 16th-century stone fireplace with blank shields and vine trails to the spandrels of an arched moulded architrave, together with early 18th-century panelling and a dentilled cornice. The former 16th-century kitchen to the rear has a chamfered bressummer over a blocked open fireplace. A fine open-well staircase of circa 1700, inserted in its present position circa 1752–4, separates the two ground-floor rooms, featuring a panelled dado, barley-twist balusters, and a ramped handrail. The first-floor front room has a mid-19th-century dentilled cornice with rosettes and a square-headed doorway to a 16th-century garderobe chamber. The roof has clasped and purlin construction with purlins clasped between diminished principals and raking struts.

The central hall range was sub-divided by insertion of flanking through-passage walls circa 1752–4. The ground-floor room retains a 16th-century four-centred arch over a blocked fireplace and early 18th-century panelling. The first-floor room has diagonally opposed doorways (one to the east blocked) and a 16th-century stone fireplace with an arched moulded architrave.

The building was known as "the bryk place" in an indenture of circa 1550. It became St John's Institute around 1890 and was purchased by the National Trust in 1938 through the W.A. Robertson Memorial Fund, one of nine war memorial purchases made by this fund and marked by a plaque.