Ewell Court House, Including Attached Grotto

Ewell Court House, Including Attached Grotto

A Jacobean style house, mainly built in 1879 by architect J Alick Thomas for John Henry Bridges on his marriage to Edith Tritton. The building incorporates parts of an earlier house called Avenue House dating from 1690, which survives in the kitchen wing.

The house is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond with sandstone window dressings. Some timberframing appears in the gables, and the roof is tiled with tall brick chimneystacks. Windows are mainly mullioned and transomed with leaded lights. The building is irregular in plan, with only the garden front being symmetrical.

The entrance front faces east and is L-shaped. The southern section has two timberframed gables and three mullioned and transomed casement windows to the first floor. The ground floor features a projecting porch with balustrading topped by ball finials, strapwork-decorated Ionic pilasters, and a three-tiered window arrangement with leaded lights. The doorcase is segmental-arched with keystone and impost blocks. To the north lies a single-storey billiard room with a six-light dormer to one side and a flat-roofed dormer to the other. The ground floor contains a seven-light bay with leaded lights. The L-wing comprises two storeys with three windows, featuring a canted bay that extends through both floors with a cornice topped by ball finials. The ground floor has an arched doorcase with cornice and supporting brackets. A second two-storey canted bay follows, with a timberframed gable above containing mullioned and transomed casements with leaded lights. The return of this wing also has a timberframed gable.

The symmetrical garden front faces south and is composed of seven windows arranged as a recessed centre of three bays with projecting gabled end wings. The centre has two hipped triple dormers with casement windows containing leaded lights. The first floor features a central canted bay with an arched doorcase decorated with strapwork-adorned spandrels incorporating the date 1879, flanked by octagonal half-columns and mullioned and transomed casements. Other windows are similar but were adapted in the mid-20th century into french windows. The projecting end wings are timberframed with bargeboards with pendants and bracketed eaves cornices. These wings have two mullioned and transomed windows to the first floor and ground-floor canted bays with central french windows flanked by sidelights, all divided by octagonal half-columns.

The west elevation is dated 1879 in a quatrefoil on the chimneybreast. Two timberframed gables with bargeboards and pendants rise from this face. The first floor has three mullioned and transomed casements, and the ground floor a triple mullioned and transomed casement to the left with an arched doorcase. Set back to the left is the service wing, incorporating the earlier 1690 building. This section is two storeys with a square cupola featuring wooden arches, a lead ogee head with finial and battered lead cheeks with bell. A projecting open pedimented gable and a single-storey section to the north complete this part, which includes a tall red brick chimneystack with tumbling-in. Connected to the house by a brick arch is a single-storey brick garden pavilion with a round-headed arched door. A wall containing five segmental-headed brick arches rests on pilasters. The central arch remains unblocked and contains a grotto. The grotto walls are probably kitchen garden walls from the 17th-century building, but the grotto itself is a Victorian fern grotto, retaining pipework that provided heat and steam to grow ferns and orchids. The north front features a series of gables.

Interior

The interior contains a large main well staircase with turned balusters, an arched gallery and coved ceiling with stained glass skylight. Downstairs rooms feature ornate plastered ceilings, panelling and fireplaces, including one with an overmantel carved with a shield. The former billiard room has a coved ceiling with leaded lights and a fireplace with an overmantel comprising three panels and pilasters. The adjoining room, formerly the Gun Room, has an oak fireplace with a bolection-moulded surround and retains original shutters. The service staircase is a dogleg type with turned balusters and square newelposts decorated with strapwork.

A well-preserved Jacobean style house of 1879 distinguished by high-quality internal joinery, plasterwork and stained glass. The attached fern grotto is a fairly rare survival, and the service wing incorporates fabric from the 1690 Avenue House.