The Lodge

The Lodge is a villa with service wing, built around 1830 for Charles Shillingford and substantially remodelled in 1862 for Owen Grimbly, the proprietor of Grimbly Hughes grocery store in Cornmarket. The building was further extended in the 1890s with the addition of a billiard room and substantial rebuilding of the service wing.

The main structure comprises a central square core arranged on a classical central corridor plan, rendered in whitewashed stucco with ashlar to the ground floor of the entrance front. The roof is concealed slate. The building is two storeys throughout, with the stucco decoration enriched during the 1862 remodelling.

The garden front features two bays projecting at the centre, retaining the original 1830s ground-floor detail with chamfered quoins and architrave surrounds to French doors. The upper storey, enriched in 1862, displays panelled pilasters, a central panel, and an entablature with plain frieze, dentils and deeply moulded cornice. The parapet includes a raised centrepiece with moulded wreath. Tall paired casements with architrave surrounds and pediments on scroll brackets rise above. Narrow extensions set back unevenly to either side, each with a first-floor sash window with flat hood on scroll brackets and doors below leading to symmetrical cast iron conservatories. These conservatories project with canted ends towards the garden and are linked by a verandah with matching canted centre bay, the whole forming a covered passage around the front of the house. The entire composition is arcaded with pierced and moulded arches, trellis spandrels, and slender fluted columns with lily-leaf capitals. The parapet is of trellis-work. The conservatories are glazed with slender horizontal glazing bars above low panels, with renewed glazed roofing. A single-storey billiard room with long roof lantern and canted end is set back to the far left.

The entrance front has a first-floor stuccoed section with cornice and two sashes matching the garden front. The ground floor is ashlar with channelled rustication, a tripartite sash to the right, and an ashlar doorcase featuring a hood on scroll brackets, carved drops, and carved frieze of oak and beech leaves dated 1862. Double panelled doors with overlight lead through a porch to the original front door, with double doors to the conservatory on the left.

The rear features an original single-storey stucco porch with offset cornice and pilasters flanking a flush-panelled door with overlight. A brick service wing, partially whitewashed, has a slate roof with stone lintels over sash windows.

The interior contains a hallway with encaustic tiles and a stick-baluster staircase with cut scroll string and mahogany handrail. Two garden-front rooms are joined to form a large drawing room with original shutters. Plaster ceiling cornices from around 1830 grace the drawing room and hall, whilst the dining room has an elaborated cornice of 1862. Marble fireplaces with simple side pilasters and mantel-shelves survive throughout the building, including the service wing; two feature 19th-century cast iron grates with original tiles. The bathroom preserves complete 1930s fittings in green, including a panelled bath, shaped pedestal basin and mirror, WC, and tiling scheme with black and gold tiles (now covered by later green) beneath a narrow stepped black border to a creamy-yellow frieze. The kitchen and scullery retain their 1930s arrangements, with built-in cupboards, dresser and shelving, a metal sink, and a compact cast iron Servall Minor 4 range set into the earlier fireplace in a surround of treacle-coloured tiles.

This is a fine and little-altered early and mid-19th-century villa distinguished by an outstanding and very rare suite of conservatories and linking verandah, almost certainly intended to provide a key part of the reception circuit.