Weirleigh

Weirleigh is a house in two occupations, built in 1866 for Harrison Weir, an artist and designer of distinction who illustrated the Illustrated London News and specialized in ornithological prints. The house was significantly altered around 1890 for the Sassoon family, who purchased it in 1882. Siegfried Sassoon, the celebrated writer and poet, was born at Weirleigh in 1886 and spent his childhood here. References to the house appear in his writings, including The Old Century (1938).

The building is constructed of brick, partly tile-hung with ornamental tiles including scalloped tiles and bands of cream-coloured peg-tiles. Stone dressings and peg-tile roofs with brick stacks complete the exterior. The architectural style is eclectic High Victorian, with the late 19th-century alterations executed in Arts and Crafts style.

The house sits on a roadside site on sloping ground, with an asymmetrical, approximately rectangular plan. The long east elevation overlooks Gedges Hill. The design takes advantage of views across the Weald, with principal rooms arranged in tall three-storey blocks at the north end. The principal entrance is at the south end, with a passage running along the long axis to the staircase, positioned at the centre of the east side. The south block contains a smoking room, butler's pantry and store room to the west of the entrance passage. The principal rooms—dining and drawing rooms—occupy the north end, with kitchen and services in a half-basement below. A pump yard is situated in the centre on the west side.

The exterior rises to two and three storeys, appearing as four storeys at the north end and east side where the half-basement is visible. The blocks have irregular floor levels and very steeply pitched roofs. Many windows are high-transomed with stained glass above the transom.

The south elevation presents an asymmetrical single-window entrance, with the roof half-hipped to the front on the left and carried down as a catslide to the porch on the right. The original plank front door is housed within a porch whose roof is supported on upward curving stone brackets and a stone lintel carved with flowers and Latin text. These brackets rest on detached pink polished granite octagonal shafts with capitals of finely carved foliage. To the left stands a secondary late 19th-century canted bay window with a hipped roof glazed with high-transomed casements. A 20th-century block has been added, set back to the left. A late 19th-century glazed garden door appears to the right under a hipped porch hood on shaped brackets, and a secondary late 19th-century canted bay to the left is partly converted to French windows.

The east elevation, overlooking the road, is impressively tall and craggy, consisting of the two-storey east return of the south block with three windows, followed by four staggered blocks in a 1:2:1 window arrangement, the fourth block blind. The south block's east return is gabled to the east with a first floor one-light oriel window on corbels, above which sits the date plaque of 1866, and three ground floor one-light transomed windows. The next block, three storeys with a pyramidal roof, is set forward and contains ground and first floor one-light transomed windows and a third floor three-light stone mullioned window with terra cotta relief panels below. The four-storey stair tower follows, crowned with a pyramidal roof. Its basement stage features a plank door with strap hinges and a recessed overlight in a stone frame, alongside a similar one-light transomed window. The third stage has two transomed windows, each with terra cotta panels below the sill, one depicting sunflowers in relief. The upper stage contains a two-light stone mullioned window breaking the eaves, with two stone carved panels below. Adjacent to the north is a three-storey block with a two-storey front projection featuring a lean-to roof. This contains two ground floor one-light high-transomed windows and one first floor three-light stone oriel. Above the lean-to roof, a V-shaped oriel is glazed with high-transomed windows. The northern block has a projecting shouldered stack with a panel of blue headers and tall multiple shafts.

The north elevation comprises two blocks: a three-storey one-window block at the left with a pyramidal roof, and a set-back two-window gable-ended block to the right with a diapered brick stack. The left block contains high-transomed windows including a three-light basement window, a five-light ground floor window, a three-light first floor window, and a two-light lucarne in the roof, with additional windows on the west return. The right block has three one-light windows, one per storey on either side of the stack.

The interior is of considerable architectural and historical interest. The spectacular staircase of 1866 rises through four storeys in an open well. The balustrade features alternating barleysugar balusters and verticals of single pieces of wrought iron, bent into shallow curves. The underside of the flights is clad with herringbone-patterned boarding, and similar boarding lines the pyramidal roof. A single original water closet was positioned on one of the stair landings, though its fittings no longer survive.

The drawing room to the north-west retains a late 19th-century Arts and Crafts inglenook with a canopy formed from a balustrade of turned balusters and a timber chimney-piece. This feature is described in Sassoon's The Old Century (1938), where he recalls clambering through it during poetry readings organized by his mother. The dining room to the north-east displays late 19th-century wall panelling in an early 18th-century manner and good stained glass in the windows above the transoms. The smoking room to the south contains a late 19th-century Art Nouveau chimney-piece. 19th-century joinery survives throughout, and some original tiled floors remain.

Minor post-1945 alterations are associated with the subdivision of the house into two occupations. A spire and observation platform that formerly crowned the stair tower have been dismantled.

The original house was built from the designs of a well-known firm of architects, as noted in the 1882 sale advertisement. The principal rooms were partly remodelled by the Sassoon family around 1890. The present owner maintains an extensive archive of historical information about the house, including a planting plan of the garden as recollected by one of the original gardeners.