The Royal Automobile Country Club (RAC), entrance steps, curved colonnades, and outer pavilions of Woodcote Park (old house)

The Royal Automobile Country Club (RAC), Entrance Steps, Curved Colonnades, and Outer Pavilions of Woodcote Park

This building comprises the surviving original elements of Woodcote Park, a substantial country house on the Old Barn Road in Epsom. Construction began in 1753 to a design by the architect Isaac Ware. The house burned down in August 1934, but the entrance steps, curved colonnades, and outer pavilions escaped the fire and remain as original work. Following the fire, the front elevation was reproduced in exact replica by the architects Mewes and Davis (who designed the RAC Club on Pall Mall and the Ritz Hotel on Piccadilly), and the interior was completely reconstructed. Some decorative details appear to have been re-used, including a rococo iron balcony on the south elevation and possibly some of the carved ornament.

The main elevation is constructed in red brick with ashlar dressings. The building is two storeys with basement and attic. A band runs above the basement, with dentilled cornices above the first floor and attic. The façade has five bays: the two end bays break forward slightly and are crowned by pediments above the first-floor cornice. These end bays contain Venetian windows on the ground floor, sashes with glazing bars on the first floor, and two oculi each in the attic. The central three bays are fitted with sashes with glazing bars on all floors. A round-arched central doorway is flanked by paired Corinthian pilasters carrying a full entablature.

The original surviving features comprise a double-flight curved stone staircase with Palladian balusters, an entrance platform carried over an open semi-circular-headed arch, and curved colonnades with round-headed arches and balustrades. The outer pavilions are single-storey structures with basements. They have rusticated arcaded ground floors with bands, four sash windows to the inner face at first-floor level, and three windows facing the park. The pavilions are roofed with hipped slate and feature an elaborate terminal to the attic storey on the inner face.

The estate originally formed part of the lands of Chertsey Abbey. It was purchased by the Mynn family in 1540 and remained in their possession until 1691. In 1648, the Mynn heiress married Richard Evelyn, brother of the diarist John Evelyn (who resided at Wotton House near Dorking). The property served as Richard Evelyn's seat until his death in 1670. Contemporary sources attribute the painting of the Chapel ceiling to the artist Verrio, but this is historically unlikely, as Verrio did not arrive in England before 1671, after Evelyn's death. The library ceiling was also attributed to Verrio, though both the library and probably the Chapel were constructed around 1750, long after Verrio's death; the paintings may, however, have been relocated from an earlier structure. Upon the death of Mrs Evelyn in 1691, the property passed by bequest to the 4th Lord Baltimore, who was maternally descended from the Mynn family. It is uncertain whether the 6th Lord (died 1751) or the 7th Lord commissioned the reconstruction by Isaac Ware.

Ware created an interior of spectacular quality, containing the finest Rococo rooms in England until their partial dispersal in 1911. From 1785 to 1856, the estate was owned by the de Teissier family, one member of which was created a baron by Louis XVIII in 1819. The RAC purchased the property in 1911, and subsequently sold some of the interior rooms, which were thereby preserved from the 1934 fire. The Morning Room is now housed in the Boston Museum in the United States.