Fawkham Manor and a pair of gates to the west of the house

Fawkham Manor is a country house built between 1866 and 1867 to designs by E B Lamb, originally intended as his own residence. It is constructed in a picturesque Gothic revival style and was most recently used as a hospital, which closed in 2019.

The walls are built of knapped flint with buff and red brick dressings, with roofs covered in horizontal stripes of red and black clay tiles adorned with decorative ridge tiles and finials. Windows are iron-framed multi-paned casements.

The house is organised over three levels. A lower ground floor sits within a moat-like depression, above which is a slightly elevated ground floor, and then a first floor whose ceilings encroach into the roof space. The footprint is compact but highly irregular, comprising a dense composition of multiple projecting bays and intersecting ranges. A clear north-east/south-west axis runs through the plan, connecting two sets of entrance doors—one to the north-east and one to the south-west—each with an inner lobby. These meet at the centre of the plan in a double-height stair hall with a galleried landing. The carriage drive approaches the south-west front, but the north-east garden front is the grander of the two.

Institutional use has led to substantial subdivision of rooms, making the original floor plan difficult to interpret fully. On the ground floor, there appear to have been perhaps four large reception rooms leading from the central stair hall, with a service range to the south-east, from which a 1980s L-shaped range extends. On the first floor, the survival of Gothic-styled door architraves helps distinguish original room arrangements from likely later partitions.

The house blends domestic Gothic revival style with vernacular motifs, employing polychromatic materials, gabled and hipped roofs, prominent chimneys, timber-framed and jettied oriel windows, and skewed bays. Each elevation features a picturesque formal composition enriched with bands of brick, cut and laid to create colour, texture and pattern, which breaks down the walls panelled with knapped flint. Windows and doors have variously styled openings, including corbelled brick and elaborate stepped cut brick arches.

The irregularity and asymmetry of the elevations defy traditional notions of hierarchy, though the north-east garden front is the most formal. This elevation is centred on a tall, narrow doorway on the raised ground floor which opens onto a small terrace, from which a curved double stair leads down to the lawn. Above the door is a jettied, timber-framed, hipped-roof oriel with infill panels of red and yellow brick laid in a patterned formation of vertical and horizontal bricks. Part of the window has been extended downwards to form a door, and a metal fire escape stair now links it to the terrace below. To either side of the entrance arrangement is an external chimney stack, each of different configuration. To the left is a projecting half-hipped bay with a three-over-one ground-floor window featuring carved stone mullions and a transom carved so its underside forms a shouldered arch. This window design appears to be particular to Lamb; a study of it exhibited in an 1863 exhibition is commented upon in The Builder (11 April 1863, p.255). Above is another jettied timber-framed oriel, and on the lower ground floor are three lancet-like windows. To the right of the entrance the elevation is largely blind and steps away to the north-west.

The other entrance is to the south-west, set forward of the main body of the house and within a range continuous with the former service areas. The ground level here is higher, meeting the entrance almost at grade. The composition is more cottage-like and rambling in character, featuring gable-ends and half-hipped roofs, small single-storey ranges and lean-tos, while sharing the same palette of materials and detailing as the rest of the house. Over the roof to the right of the entrance is an octagonal lantern with a bell-shaped dome resting on open arches with chunky turned columns. It is possible that the lantern originally ventilated the kitchen. The most obvious alteration to this elevation is the addition of a dormer in the roof slope over the entrance, executed in broadly matching materials.

The original character of the interior is unclear due to substantial subdivision of rooms, lining-out of walls and ceilings, and structural interventions made to accommodate institutional use. As a result, the interior is considered to have lesser interest. Few features may confidently be identified as primary to the house. These principally comprise lengths of deep skirting board and door architraves with chamfers and run-out stops, found particularly on the first floor. Similar details are applied to exposed structural roof members in first-floor rooms. Several simple grey marble fire surrounds in first-floor rooms may also be original.

The large open-well, U-shaped stair and first-floor galleried landing feature polished hardwood barley-twist balusters. A full-height structural corner post on the landing has recently been opened up to reveal a solid square post with chamfers and run-out stops within. This post is untreated with either paint or stain, suggesting it is the remains of an intended Gothic style stair which was never completed. Ground-floor features of note include a heavily carved hardwood fire surround and door architrave; a partially obscured coloured marble feature beneath one of the windows; and three elaborate painted classical door surrounds with inset carved panels, each leading off from the inner lobby of the garden door. Above the three doorcases the ceiling of the lobby (above a later suspended ceiling) has a deeply coved cornice with applied plaster motifs.

Given the ownership history of the house and clues such as the disguised chamfered post on the galleried landing, it seems likely that the interior was never completed to Lamb's designs, and that an alternative scheme was chosen by a subsequent owner, Hohler. The extent and quality of Hohler's interior work, and how many of the historic features present are part of his scheme or later interventions by his descendants or the Billings family, remains unclear. While opening-up works may reveal more, with the exception of the first-floor joinery and fireplaces, there is little which might be identified as part of a consistent or legible interior scheme.

To the west of the house is a pair of wide decorative iron-work gates hung on cast-iron gate piers.