Coach House

Former Coach House

This former coach house stands at 56 Nightingale Lane, Clapham, built in 1870 by the architects Eaton and Chapman as an addition to the neighbouring Dudley House (designed by William Higgs and built 1869–70 for Henry Clifford Green, a wine and spirit merchant). A first-floor billiard room and connecting link to the main house were added in 1898 by local builder James Carmichael, commissioned by the then-owner James Ryan O'Connor, a Commission Agent (Turf Accountant).

The building is constructed of stock brick with red brick and terracotta dressings, beneath a roof of pantile and concrete tiles. The roadside elevation presents two storeys in two bays, with a single bay set back to the left. The ground floor includes a lean-to extension with a pair of round-arched sashes; this bonds into an earlier grey brick gate pier. The first-floor windows are round-arched sashes set within a rich terracotta frieze featuring enriched keystones between swagged panels and terracotta aprons. Above runs a plain red brick band and corbel table with a dog tooth band, which continues across all exposed faces, beneath plain deep oversailing eaves. The left-hand bay has an altered first-floor window above a ground-floor entrance, with similar enriched cornice detail. The roof, largely of concrete pantiles with original pantiles retained at the rear over the inglenook, carries a hipped glazed timber lantern with scrolled finials at the angles.

The east elevation features a tall stable doorway with a ledge and braced door beneath a segmental-arched overlight now containing coloured glass. This is flanked by a pair of round-arched horned sashes set back under a steel lintel supported on columnar shafts carrying the projecting upper floor, above which sits a flush red brick band. Either side of the doorway are a round-headed waterhead and a cast-iron lion's head loop. The rear elevation displays a pair of ground-floor round-arched sashes set back beneath a deep lintel supporting the first-floor chimney breast. This is flanked by small rectangular and round-arched inglenook windows under red brick arches, all within a projecting bay with shallow corbel table and plain eaves repeating the main block's decoration. The external chimney stack rises through the roof with a twisted terracotta shaft. The single entrance bay has been altered at ground floor level and now has a raised first-floor entrance with a small paned and panelled door and rectangular and round-arched sashes with red brick dressings.

The ground floor stables are divided by cast-iron columns moulded with a lattice pattern, with similar finials, cast-iron brackets and partitions of tongue-and-groove panels. The floors are laid in Dutch tiles with intact cast-iron drains. Walls are lined with a tongue-and-groove panelled dado below hexagonal ceramic wall tiles. The stable door features robust strap hinges. A former tack room occupies the rear. Round-arched windows of the former roadside ground floor are now internal.

The first-floor billiard room, accessed originally by stairs with very robust carved newels and now featuring a moulded rail with replaced turned balusters, was added in 1898. The stairwell, now subdivided to create a small first-floor room, has a dentil cornice and is lit by a vented lantern with coloured glass panels. The WC at the stair head is lined in encaustic tiles.

The billiard room itself is lavishly appointed, with Ionic pilasters arranged on the lateral walls in a 1:3:1 rhythm beneath a rich carved frieze and modillion cornice supporting a coved roof embellished with ornate rococo fibrous plaster panels. Windows have deep moulded architraves. The door between Ionic pilasters features an eared architrave embellished with rosettes and swags beneath an enriched rococo head, and is a five-panel door with low-relief ornament. Painted wall panels depict hunting scenes and a family in a coach. Repeated low-relief plaster ceiling rondels in different colours show boys playing cricket and football, and country sportsmen with gun dogs. The lantern above a frieze of sculpted panels of winged putti (some incorporating air vents) contains an inner coloured glass toplight portraying pairs of horse heads and horseshoes.

An inglenook at the north end is set back beneath a wide timber arch flanked by Ionic pilasters with enriched spandrels and brackets, and a keystone above which sits a splayed feathered crest. The fireplace, though introduced, closely follows the original proportions and is said to use marble slips from Dudley House; the hearth retains glazed ochre and floral tiles, with a painted panel above portraying a fully laden horse-drawn coach. The floor comprises parquet blocks of different woods with an ebony or stained wood fillet.

James Carmichael, the builder responsible for the billiard room, was registered as a joiner based in Trinity Road from 1885 and had established himself as a general builder by the turn of the century, running J Carmichael Contractors Ltd. His significant projects included work for St Thomas' and University College London Hospitals, Arding and Hobbs in Clapham, Harrods, the Gaiety Theatre and the Hotel Cecil on the Strand. Known as a local benefactor, he died in 1934.

Although the garden of Dudley House has been built over, historical maps suggest the associated buildings were not demolished, making the coach house an important surviving component of the 1870s layout of house, ancillary buildings and gate piers that characterised Nightingale Lane's status in the late nineteenth century. Contemporary terraced housing opposite remains listed.