South Lodge

SOUTH LODGE

Former lodge to Hadlow Castle, dating from circa 1820, probably designed by George Ledwell Taylor who also designed Hadlow Castle. It was enlarged in the mid-19th century. The building is cement-clad brick with brick stacks and chimneyshafts, those visible from the street being cement-clad and ornamental. The roof is slate.

The lodge is set back from the High Street on the south side. Along with the companion North Lodge, it flanks the ornamental gateway to Hadlow Castle, although it actually backs onto the street and faces south east. The main block has a two-room plan with a central entrance hall and stair. The right room, next to the gateway, has an axial stack backing onto the entrance hall, while the left room has an end stack. A kitchen block projects forward at an oblique angle from the left end and has a rear lateral stack. The kitchen block's rear end faces the street but is hidden by a brick curtain wall.

The present layout appears to be mostly the result of mid-19th-century refurbishment. The original lodge was probably single storey with a two-room plan, possibly even just a single room. The building is now two storeys with a single storey kitchen block.

The exterior displays a distinctive Gothick style, the same as Hadlow Castle. The street front features an irregular three-window façade with various 20th-century replacement casements. A central Tudor arch doorway contains a 19th-century studded plank door. The first floor window to the left sits within a jettied and gabled porch-like bay. The right end bay is in the same Gothick style as the right end and back (the public sides), including a projecting ground floor bay with diagonal buttresses, embattled parapet and Tudor arch-headed window.

The street front is very much a mirror image of the North Lodge, although some detail is now hidden by ivy. The left bay, nearest the gateway, projects forward with panelled angle buttresses with weathered offsets rising to poppyhead finials. The front and left end sides include projecting bays with diagonal buttresses, embattled parapets and recessed Tudor arches containing windows. The end window contains timber Y-tracery and the bay is flanked by narrow lancets, all containing small diamond panes of leaded glass. Above the bay is a shield outline with flat hoodmould. Both sides have stepped parapets. To the right of this room is a blind lancet (the cement render has fallen off here) and alongside a mid-19th-century bay window, also containing small diamond panes of leaded glass. The parapet hides the low pitch roof. At the right end stands an original ornamental chimneyshaft, tall, narrow and octagonal with a lattice pattern around the shaft, moulded cornice and embattled top. Only the moulded base remains of the other one.

The gap to the right between the South Lodge and Hadlow Bakery is filled with a tall brick curtain wall that ramps up in a curve as it extends to the right, then down again as it returns forward.

By circa 1900, this lodge was larger than its companion North Lodge, and local people remembered it as the chauffeur's cottage.