Bedgebury Lower School Lillesden With Terraces

House now school. Built in 1855 for Colonel Edward Lloyd. The building is constructed of red brick with ashlar details and some polychrome brick decoration, with slate roofs. The main range is accompanied by an attached service wing, the whole executed in an eclectic mixture of Romanesque, Gothic, and French Chateau styles.

The exterior presents two storeys with a basement and attic storey beneath a gabled roof with moulded bargeboards and finials. The central projecting entrance features a double tower with a pavilion roof and balustrade between the two towers, which are topped by small spires. Finialed spirelets crown dormers to the left and right, with a semi-dormer to the left and a small projecting spire to the right. Chimney stacks rise to the left, right, and at the end right. Fenestration is irregular, consisting of four segmentally headed sashes to the left, two to the centre and two to the right, all at varying levels. The central entrance comprises a round-arched doorway with a keyed moulded surround and attached shafts, with a parallel inner door enriched by a semi-circular tympanum and sidelights.

The left return elevation features two gabled projections with two-storey canted bays, stepped back to the upper floor, containing central paired sashes and French windows at ground floor level. The rear elevation shows irregular projecting ground floor with segmentally headed sashes on the first floor and finialed hipped dormers. The attached service wing on the left contains two storeys with a projecting gabled wing to the centre incorporating a central clock tower with spire. At the end left, a two-storey and attic range features the upper storey jettied and carried on angled, enriched wooden struts. A small entrance courtyard at the end left is defined by capped gate piers. Segmentally headed sashes are found throughout the service wing, except where it adjoins the main house, where a segmentally headed door is surmounted by paired round-headed windows with a central quatrefoiled roundel beneath a hoodmould. A projecting rear ground floor contains an arcade of six paired round-headed French doors with pierced balustrade. A projecting two-storey gabled wing with canted bay extends from this arcade.

Garden terraces are attached to the right return elevation, featuring sandstone walls approximately three feet high with raised corner piers and simple stone flights of stairs. These terraces return to the rear elevation where a large terrace is formed by retaining walls creating a fall of some eight feet, finished with scrolled end piers and a cornice parapet.

The interior features an arched screen from the garden entrance to the stair hall. Arched doorways throughout the house display soffits enriched with geometric patterns. The main staircase follows a dog-leg and half landing plan with two arched openings at the landing level, one accessing a corridor and the other incorporating a mirror, both surmounted by paired round-headed windows with stained glass. The stone balustrade and parapet are pierced with roundels containing deep relief foliage and fitted with a brass handrail. An arcaded screen crowns the top-lit upper landing with round arches enriched on a central pier with an enriched capital. Niches to the left and right of the half landing formerly contained statues signed by E G Papworth, dated 1861 and 1862 (probably the elder E G Papworth), though these were removed and sold in 2003.

Lillesden had been the seat of the Chittenden family, clothiers, from at least the late sixteenth century. Colonel Edward Lloyd, who became High Sheriff of Kent in 1876, demolished the earlier Chittenden house and built this replacement. Lloyd was a prime mover in the building of the Moor Schools (designed by architect Joseph Clarke) in 1863.