Finchcocks

Finchcocks is a house dated 1725, built for Edward Bathurst. It is constructed of red brick with light red brick dressings, darker red brick parapet and chimneys, and painted mouldings. The building forms an elongated rectangular main block with curved and projecting flanking wings executed in a full-blooded Baroque style.

The entrance front is three storeys high with an attic and basement, and two-storey flanking wings, all disposed to create central emphasis. The main block is fitted with a plinth, plat band and painted moulded cornice supported on Tuscan corner pilasters with moulded bases and entablature blocks featuring triglyphs. The centre projects in three bays with a pediment filled with the Bathurst Arms and martial rapiers. Above cornice level is the third storey, with corner pilasters, cornice and panelled parapet to a hipped roof with segmentally headed dormers. Three panelled chimney stacks rise from the roof; originally there was a fourth dummy stack of wood and plaster to the rear right to complete the symmetry. Arched stacks project to left and right.

The front elevation is seven window bays wide. Each floor of the recessed flanks carries two segmentally headed glazing bar sashes, with progressively smaller sash heights on successive floors. The centre projections feature two roundels on the second floor, two round-headed glazing bar sashes on the ground and first floors, and a gauged and rubbed semicircular niche on the first floor, containing a statue of Queen Anne (17th century, said to be from the old Royal Exchange, set in place in the late 19th century). Central double round-headed doors with raised and fielded panels at head sit atop five moulded steps, framed by a broad Tuscan door surround. Segmentally headed basement windows light the lower storey. The basement windows are segmentally headed.

The flanking wings carry plinth, plat band and cornice on smaller examples of the Tuscan pilasters and entablature blocks found on the main block. Panelled parapets cap the wings, with hipped roofs; all horizontal features run around the curve of the quadrants where they meet the main block. Three segmentally headed glazing bar sashes appear on each floor of the right wing; the left wing has only two on its ground floor. Round-headed glazing bar sashes light the quadrants. The left wing is in fact only one storey high, with false windows on the upper floor. These wings were added somewhat later, being of lesser quality brick and not bonded into the main block. Projecting from left and right are brick walls, panelled and ramped down from the house, extending approximately 25 yards.

The garden elevations show a simpler composition of red and blue chequered brick with plinth, plat band, cornice and panelled parapet with pilaster-corners. Seven glazing bar sashes light the first and second floors, the centre three projecting with round-headed lights; six sashes appear on the ground floor with slightly reduced versions of the front door and doorcase to the centre. The wings play little role in this facade, nor in the side elevations, which show three unadorned bays only; their primary purpose is to emphasise the entrance front composition.

To the north of the entrance front, the left wing contains kitchen and office spaces with a small courtyard formed largely of early 19th-century single-storey blocks. Two hipped ranges project from the left of the garden front, originally housing laundry and bakehouse facilities, now fitted with a columned arcade. North of this service courtyard are lengths of brick wall partly enclosing it, with a ramped and buttressed wall about six feet high extending some 20 yards and terminating in a dovecot. The dovecot is hipped with a boarded door, casement window and dove holes; at the time of survey it housed an electricity generator.

The interior comprises a central hall running the full depth of the house, with the stair rising straight from it and two rooms on each side. The wings at lower levels originally did not communicate with the main block at upper-floor level, reflecting the two building periods. An extremely large fireplace occupies the hall, possibly from an earlier house on the site. It originally held a framed and fitted painting of the Bathurst family by James Manbart, now removed. The wooden surround is formed of the same Tuscan pilasters as the exterior elevations. Large panelled wainscotting rises approximately seven feet high with moulded surrounds to main doors, which feature keyed semicircular heads and large, simple, very fine brass L-hinges and fittings. The hall-landing stair has a moulded wreathed and ramped handrail with three turned balusters to each scrolled tread, leading to an upper landing with balustrade and a single Tuscan column at the stair head. This landing served as an upper parlour and contains a fireplace. Other rooms retain simple oak panelling, some possibly 17th-century work removed from an earlier house on the site, and feature bolection moulded fireplaces. A dog-leg stair with turned balusters serves the wing.

The cellar is of painted brick, vaulted on piers with stone caps and springers, with a passage running through the base of the main stack and flanked by barrel-vaulted secondary cells. The cellars were reportedly built so extravagantly as to have delayed construction of the wings. No architect is recorded, though the design is traditionally assigned to Thomas Archer on stylistic grounds, with execution attributed to a local builder who fitted the plan as best he could to the main elevations. Remarkable similarities exist with contemporary houses in Kent and East Sussex, including Rampyndene, Burwash (East Sussex, 1699), Matfield, Brenchley (1728), and Bradbourne, East Malting (1713). The only name associated with the house is that of Mr John Hodgskin, styled "The Architect", who eloped with Mary Bathurst in 1740.