Combe Bank

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 14/07/2020

TQ 4855 32/1259

SUNDRIDGE Combe Bank Drive (West Side) Radnor House Sevenoaks School Combe Bank

(Formerly listed as Combe Bank (Convent of the Holy Child Jesus) Combe Bank Road (West Side))

10.9.54.

I The original building, second quarter of C18 by Roger Morris. Five bay Palladian villa with two and a half-storey side bays, under low pyramidal roofs, two storey centre with balustraded parapet, pyramidal slated roof and central cupola. Sash windows with glazing bars in moulded architraves, those on ground floor rusticated, and with pediments in side bays. Rendered elevations with stone quoins and dressings. Ground floor porch and Ionic screen added by Norman Shaw circa 1900. Similar five bay left return. Pedimented projecting centre on garden front.

Inside several rooms of modest size retain complete original decorations; ie chimney pieces, panelling and enrichments to doors and windows; and coved ceilings with ornamental plaster work. Graceful wrought iron staircase in late C18 style.

House built for Col John Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyle. The house was the childhood home of Cardinal Manning.

In 1879-1880 it was owned by Dr William Spottiswoode the President of the Royal Society, who had the saloon redecorated by Walter Crane as a library. Very rich, in bronze, silver and gold, with an early C17 Venetian frieze of putti. Fireplace signed and dated 1880, and all completely preserved. North addition of 1807 contains drawing room and ballroom (the latter now a chapel) with convincing Adam style decoration by Walter Cave. In 1883 William Spottiswoode died and for a while his son Hugh tenanted Combe Bank before selling it in 1906 to Ludwig Mond, a German-Jewish chemist and industrialist, who settled in England in 1862, where he became a prominent businessman, philanthropist and art collector. Mond, and his son Robert, who inherited in 1909, carried out extensive alterations to the gardens, and adapted the early C19 stable block as garaging for their motor vehicles and later as laboratories.

The house was adapted for use as a convent boarding and day school in the 1920s, and re-founded as an independent girls’ day school in 1973.

Listing NGR: TQ4803955747