Ellingham

Ellingham is a detached house built around 1883, probably by Charles Nightingale Beazley, and later subdivided into three flats. It stands on St Clements Road in Westgate-on-Sea. A one-storey north-west extension was added by 1908.

The building exemplifies a Queen Anne style fused with the seaside architectural tradition. The ground floor is constructed in English bond brickwork, while the first floor is hung with ornamental diamond-shaped tiles interspersed with courses of plain tiles. The hipped tiled roof features terracotta ridge tiles and three tall brick chimneystacks, one of which is truncated. All three principal elevations have a modillion cornice and wide overhang, supported on a two-storey wooden balcony with turned Jacobean-style balusters. Most elevations include gabled dormers. Windows are mainly 12-pane sash windows, with a number of French windows throughout.

The plan is rectangular, extended to the north-west to form an L-wing. The south or entrance front has two gabled dormers. The first floor contains three French windows with six panes to the upper parts; the ground floor features a right-side three-light canted bay and a central square glazed brick porch on a brick plinth with deep moulded plinth and decorative leaded light windows with alternate rectangular and elongated hexagonal leaded lights. The west or garden front has a gabled dormer with two eight-pane sash windows, a French window to the first floor, a ground-floor cambered French window to the right, and a central five-light canted bay window comprising two sashes with horns but without glazing bars and three French windows. The north or rear elevation has a gabled dormer with two eight-pane sashes, two canted bay windows to the first floor, and a north-west ground-floor extension in stretcher bond brickwork with sash windows and similar balustrading. The east elevation has two gabled dormers, a first-floor sash, and a ground-floor porch, originally the tradesmen's entrance.

Although subdivided into three flats, key interior features survive. The staircase-hall contains a six-panelled door with leaded lights in the four upper panels matching the porch pattern, and an oak dogleg staircase with panelled base, slender turned balusters, and turned newel posts with ball finials. The ground floor includes a room with a wooden bolection-moulded fireplace, another with a Louis XVI wooden fireplace featuring console brackets and a tiled surround with cast iron fireplace, and a further fireplace with tiled surround, mirrored overmantel, and moulded shelf. The corridor retains a wooden serving hatch into the kitchen. The kitchen preserves a late 19th-century built-in dresser and cupboard. The cellar retains a tiled floor, coal holes, and wine bins. The first floor includes a rear room with a moulded fireplace with eared architrave, tiled surround, and moulded cornice. The top floor retains two original fireplaces.

Charles Nightingale Beazley was articled to William Wilkinson Wardell between 1853 and 1856, then served as an assistant to G E Street from 1858, starting in independent practice in 1860. He became a FRIBA in 1880. Ellingham first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1898 and was erected around 1883. A house on the Westgate front by Beazley, illustrated in The Builder in 1883, shows the Queen Anne style amalgamated with the local seaside tradition. Ellingham is certainly by the same hand and of similar vintage. Local oral tradition suggests an artist and his family lived here at one time. The building is reputed later to have been an annexe to a nearby hotel and for a period a boarding school. It has been divided into three flats since the second half of the 20th century.