Forest Lodge House

Forest Lodge House is a private house on Epsom Road, designed between 1964 and 1966 and built in 1967. It was designed by architect Michael Manser with engineer Jack Dawson.

The building is a single-storey steel-framed box raised from the ground on short stilts resting on concealed concrete block foundations. The steel frame forms the external boundary and is painted dark green (Manser's preferred colour, rather than the original black). The frame is filled with various glazed components within ARC aluminium frames, originally intended to be interchangeable. These comprise panels, louvres, sliding panels and doors in tinted glass, together with dark green coloured opaque glass panels. The materials dictate the appearance of the facades, which read almost identically except for a small canopy over the main entrance. The roof is felted with small pyramidal roof lights above corridor and bathroom spaces.

The house has a rectangular plan and is accessed via protruding wooden decking platforms that form a bridge to the drive on the east (entrance) facade and provide steps down to garden level on the north and south (garden) facades.

The interior is more divided than the transparency of the exterior might suggest. The house is divided linearly into sleeping and living accommodation by a row of bathrooms and cupboards along the central north-south axis. The living room, entrance hall, dining room and kitchen are arranged from left to right along the east front. The west part contains four bedrooms, reached via a narrow corridor. Room divisions are lightweight stud walls made of resin-bonded plasterboard and hardboard, designed to be flexible (although remaining in their original position) while retaining good sound insulation. Sliding walls between the living room, entrance hall and dining room allow the living spaces to operate in a semi-open-plan manner.

The interiors are designed simply, comprising a series of glass, mirror, wood, carpeted and painted planes. Doors are full-height, and the rooms enjoy uninterrupted views of the garden through substantial glazing and large sliding panels that blur the boundary between house and garden. This is especially effective in the living room and main bedroom, which have corner windows. The interior has a high level of finish, closely supervised by the client.

Original fitted furniture remains throughout, as do bathtubs and cupboards. The kitchen retains its original wooden fitted units, painted bright orange according to the original scheme and specified by the client. These provide the only splash of colour in an otherwise visually quiet house. Floors are carpeted except for the tiled kitchen and bathrooms. The architect designed original cylindrical light fittings. The timber throughout is of excellent quality, evident in the ceilings, doors, sliding panels and joinery. Hot air heating is provided through vents in the floor. Windows are screened by simple blinds.

The garden was designed by John Brookes, with whom Manser frequently collaborated, and his planting largely remains. It incorporates part of the old garden wall belonging to the neighbouring Forest Lodge (not included in the listing), in a deliberate attempt to retain something of the site's history. The house is set back from the road and was designed to nestle in the garden.

The house is exceptionally well finished and survives little altered. It is an important and rare example of a modern steel house by a key architect of the genre. Manser, often working with Dawson and Brookes, was the most prolific designer of steel houses in the 1960s, most of them for clients near his own residence outside Leatherhead. He had been introduced to the work of Philip Johnson by Ove Arup when a student, and had gone on to take a special interest in steel structures and classical proportions. Manser acknowledges Forest Lodge House as one of his finest and least altered works.