The Italian Villa, including terrace balustrading, steps and entrance gateway

This is a summer house with terrace and steps, later incorporated into a house with a separate entrance gateway. The original structure is an early 19th-century casino or summer house built for Lord and Lady Farnborough. In 1930 it was incorporated into a house with a separate gateway designed by E Alexander Young using late 19th-century architectural salvage.

Materials and Construction

The summer house is built of brick in Flemish bond. The remainder of the house uses darker yellow brick in Flemish bond with red brick dressings, some roughcast and tile-hung pediments, and a slate roof with brick chimneystacks. The terrace is lined in slate with brick balustrading. The entrance gateway has a stone front and red and yellow brick rear.

Plan

The building comprises a single-storey summer house incorporated into a two-storey house with a single-storey section to the north and a detached gatehouse.

Exterior

The principal front faces north-east and originally overlooked the Italian garden. The southern end is of two storeys, the ground floor of early 19th-century brickwork with a round-headed arch containing early 19th-century French windows. The upper storey dates from 1930 and has darker yellow brickwork, a projecting wooden pediment with paired brackets, and an open balcony of red and yellow brick.

Adjoining to the left is a single-storey 1930 doorcase with a round-headed arch containing a fanlight and side-lights, the right-hand one blocked. The 1930 door has a large glazed roundel and there is a projecting cornice over, which is integrated into the left side single-storey north side of the building. This has a large tile-hung gable with wooden bargeboards and two windows, one metal and one wooden, the metal one incorporating a French window. In front of the north part is a slate terrace with brick balustrading and steps.

The south-west side has a full-height red brick bay window. The south-east side has a projecting pediment with paired brackets to the south, a casement window to the ground floor, and garage doors to the basement. The right-hand side has a projecting staircase bay of brick and roughcast with a narrow sash window in a round-headed arch and a casement below. The lower part is partially obscured by a projecting single-storey north wing with large tiled gable.

Interior

The ground floor has four rooms and a staircase hall. The staircase hall contains a 19th-century stained glass roundel and a dogleg staircase with alternate splat and stick balusters and square newel posts. A door with marginal glazing leads into the former casino or summer house, which has on the south-east wall four vertical painted panels, one horizontal panel, and two spandrels with painted rose garlands. The horizontal panel additionally depicts an urn. These paintings are by Amelia Long, Lady Farnborough. A corner fire surround also has a small relief pointed portrait thought to depict Lady Amelia Long. The ceiling has a cornice and brackets and there is a shallow alcove on one wall.

The lounge to the north has a circa 1900 fire surround in an Arts and Crafts manner with a stone four-arched fireplace with copper hood and green tiles set in an oak surround with an overmantel of three panels and a projecting carved panel supported on twisted pilasters. The ceiling and walls have applied timber decoration, which includes a plate-shelf.

The bedroom over the casino has a circa 1930 fireplace and cupboard. A very narrow passage leads to a small room with sloping ceiling to the north-east and attic to the north-west. The basement has the entrance to a tunnel, mainly blocked with rubble, which is thought to lead to the Bromley Court Hotel.

Entrance Gateway

This is situated to the south-east of the house. Its south face comprises the doorway of the 1874 School Board Offices, designed by Bodley and Garner and re-erected here in 1930 by E Alexander Young. The other elevations are of 1930 in yellow brick with red brick dressings.

The south side is in Neo-Jacobean style comprising a round-headed pedestrian entrance with enriched keystone and impost blocks, flanked by Composite panelled pilasters and a moulded cornice with an enriched panel bearing the date 1874 in Roman numerals. Above this is a gable with a central moulded panel with shield flanked by pilasters supporting a curved pediment with finials. There are larger side finials. The 1930 wooden double gates have curved tops.

The other sides are of two storeys with large round-headed arches to the ground floor. The entrance arch is attached to a yellow brick garden wall in Flemish bond about six feet high incorporating a stone tablet erected by E Alexander Young detailing the history of the doorway.

History

The Italian Villa incorporates an early 19th-century single-storey terrace casino (or summer house) of Bromley Hill Place. The estate was bought in 1801 by Charles Long (1760-1838), who was created Baron Farnborough in 1826, and his wife Amelia Long. Charles Long, politician and connoisseur of the arts, made the grand tour between 1786 and 1788 and laid the foundation of his art collection. He was a friend and ally of William Pitt and was successively an MP for Rye, Midhurst, Wendover and Haslemere. In 1803 he was the chief intermediary between Pitt and Addington, negotiations which took place at his Bromley Hill estate.

William Wilberforce is said to have visited and enjoyed gambling and drinking sessions at the terrace casino. Long was Chief Secretary for Ireland between 1805 and 1806 and Paymaster of the Forces between 1807 and 1826. He used his influence to further artistic causes such as the purchase of the Elgin marbles and the establishment of the National Gallery, and George IV consulted him over commissioning architecture, painting and sculpture.

Long married Amelia Hume in 1793, the daughter of the connoisseur Sir Abraham Hume and the favourite pupil of Thomas Girtin (1775-1802), the watercolourist. From 1801 the Longs proceeded to enlarge the existing 1760s house to their own designs and Amelia designed the celebrated Italianate grounds that she often used for her sketches in watercolour, pencil, charcoal and chalk. She also decorated the terrace casino with watercolour garlands of roses.

Amelia Long's early work was characterised by a topographical style but her later work concentrated on picturesque elements of architecture, natural foliage and country scenery. She made three visits to France and Holland between 1815 and 1819, but apart from this her surviving sketchbooks (located in the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Tayside Museum and Art Gallery Perth) indicate that her travels were mainly in the South of England.

She was respected by professional artists and gained honorary status at the Royal Academy (1807-22) and the British Institution (1825). Watercolours by Amelia Long are in the Tate collection. The Victoria and Albert Museum has an oil painting "Landscape with an Old Woman" (circa 1817) and Anglesey Abbey an oil painting of St Cloud with British troops on duty. Amelia died in 1837 and her husband followed in 1838. As they were childless, the title died out.

The 1895 Ordnance Survey map shows the terrace casino and terrace surviving and a fountain situated to the west. The main house is still called Bromley Hill. These features are repeated on the 1912 edition, but by then a road, Elstree Hill, has been constructed to the south of the casino and the main house is now called Bromley Park Hotel.

In 1930 E Alexander Young RIBA, the District Surveyor of Lewisham, incorporated the casino and terrace into a house in which he also brought in salvaged features from other buildings, including a detached entrance gateway constructed out of the original doorway of the London Board School offices designed by Bodley and Garner, which had been built in 1874 and demolished in 1929.

Bromley Hill House survives much altered as the Bromley Court Hotel on Bromley Hill.