Audley'S Wood

Audley’s Wood is a country house dating to circa 1880, built in a Neo-Gothic-cum-Vernacular Revival style. It is constructed of red brick with a band and has a plain tiled roof. The house is L-shaped, composed of a projecting entrance, a double-depth main block, and a lawn service block. The design is highly irregular.

The entrance front features a stepped-gabled cross-wing on the left and two shallow gabled cross-wings on the right of the main block, the rightmost being lower than the main ridge. Decorated bargeboards with pendants adorn the tilt-hung gables. Numerous irregular ridge stacks are present, mostly diagonal with oversailing cornices. A low, shallow re-entrant projection is on the right return front of the entrance projection, featuring a bargeboard semi-dormer. An octagonal wooden oriel with an octagonal conical roof and finial is also on this return front. The entrance projects as a porte-cochere with a two-centred arch on each side and two smaller arches to the front, featuring Y-tracery.

The garden front includes a circa 1900 conservatory with gables containing mullioned Diocletian windows. There are two bow windows with balustrades above on the side, and a bow with a pedimented porch at the end. An extension with a balustraded bay is located on the left.

Internally, various unpainted features are present, including panelling and fireplaces. One room contains a C17 Dutch-style still-life painting; a wooden fireplace displays the date 1682 in the living hall; and parts of an early C17 fireplace are in the drawing room. The unpainted staircase is a three-flight square-open well with a long first flight. It features a ramped, flattish rail, mitred over a columnar foot nave with three balusters per tread, square hinges, columnar iron twist, carved cheek pieces, corniced tread-ends, and a decorated string. The stair is separated from the living hall by four panelled arches. The living hall has a plastered barrel-vault with a minstrel’s gallery and a C17-style stair at the far end. The garden room contains a marble columnar arched screen, and a fireplace at the far end of the room in a bay. The conservatory is currently lined in fibreboard, obscuring exposed steel trusses on marble columns, the structure appears complete but is largely concealed.