The Lodge

The Lodge

Large house in Effingham, Lower Road, now used as a school and nursing home. The original east wing was built between 1835 and 1841 by Captain William Manning. In 1897 the railway engineer George Saunders Pauling, who had made his fortune in South Africa and Rhodesia, added a massive porte-cochère and a few rooms to the east and a large galleried wing to the west. The building is in Italianate style.

The original house is stuccoed with incised lines to imitate masonry and features wide wooden bracketed eaves cornice. The rest of the building is stuccoed with bands of rustication. The roof is slate and the chimney stacks are stuccoed.

The original house consists of two storeys with four windows to the north-east and five to the south-east. A contemporary three-storey service wing has four sash windows to the north-west. Other windows are twelve-pane casements to the first floor and mullioned and transomed French windows below. The south part of the garden front has a right-side projecting pediment with first floor casement and four-light French window below. The central bay is recessed with a similar casement to the first floor and a French window with cornice and brackets above to the ground floor. To the left is a shallow curved bay with three casements to the first floor and three French windows with cornices and brackets.

The north-east or entrance front has to the left a two-storey curved bay with casement to the first floor and French window with cornice and bracket below. The first floor has three other twelve-pane casement windows. The ground floor is obscured by a massive porte-cochère of 1897, stuccoed with balustraded parapet, Tuscan column and two round-headed arches to the front. The doorcase has a curved pediment and side lights, and two side windows have shell moulding above. To the right is a one-storey, one-bay addition of 1897, and a two-storey, one-bay addition of 1897 to the right of this with rusticated ground floor and mullioned and transomed casements with cornices and brackets to the ground floor windows.

To the south-west is a large 1897 wing of two to three storeys. To the extreme right is a three-storey canted bay with lookout on the second floor and three twelve-pane casements to the upper floor and one window on the ground floor. To the left, set back, are three further twelve-pane casements with a curved bay to the ground floor with three four-light French windows with cornice and brackets. The left corner has a shallow two-storey bay with three twelve-pane casements to the first floor and three French windows to the ground floor. The south-west side has a probable 20th-century flat-roofed extension in matching style. The north-west front has seven windows including three in a two-storey canted bay. Facing at right angles is the earlier service wing, now pebbledashed but with six-pane sashes to the upper floor and twelve-pane sashes to the ground floor.

Interior

The original building contains a huge ground floor reception room, comprised of three rooms. The corner room has an oval ceiling and underneath the pedimented projection a ceiling painting depicting cherubs. Around 1840 marble fireplaces and circa 1897 built-in seat with delicate carved wooden display cabinet above are features. The central room has a ceiling painting of a lady reading a book flanked by cherubs. The next room has a painted ceiling depicting Venus in a chariot drawn by doves with five cherubs bearing garlands. Door surrounds to these rooms have cornices with brackets, swag and paterae friezes and paterae to architraves. A columned feature divides the rooms. All have six-panelled doors. The principal first floor bedroom has a cornice with oak leaf moulding. The earlier service wing retains a servants' staircase with stick balusters and column newels.

Other internal features date from circa 1897. The large panelled entrance hall has a stone four-centred fireplace with elaborate overmantel with swansneck pediment and an oval cupola. A massive staircase hall contains an oak Jacobean-style staircase with two round-headed wooden niches at first floor level with plastered surrounds and gallery. At the base of the staircase is a built-in L-shaped seat and fireplace with tiled surround. The large dining room is panelled with a deep plastered cornice with swags and wave strapwork ceiling and a stone four-centred fireplace with pilastered overmantel. Reception Room three has a circa 1897 circular metal and glazed dome and a wooden fireplace with eaved architraves and swags probably resited from the earlier wing. Reception Room four has a later 19th-century four-centred arched stone fireplace. At the centre of the 1897 wing is an elaborate two-storey gallery with curved balconettes at each end, elaborate door surrounds with cornices and brackets with swag moulding and an original Poulton tiled floor.

George Saunders Pauling was a local benefactor who built and endowed the local Roman Catholic Church "Our Lady of Sorrows" in 1913.