Goddards

Goddards is a country house built in 1899 as a “Home of Rest for Ladies of Small Means” by Sir Edwin Lutyens for Sir Frederick Mirrielees. It was subsequently extended and altered into a private dwelling by Lutyens in 1910 for Mrs D Mirrielees. The house is colourwashed rough cast with brick and stone dressings, and has plain tiled hipped and gabled roofs with courses of Horsham slabs over the eaves to the rear. The plan is roughly U-shaped, forming a quadrangle with arms splayed apart, originally with a common room connecting the arms from north to south; the western ends of the arms were built in 1910.

The house is two storeys high, with tall brick stacks to the ends, featuring corbelled tops. Elaborate coupled diagonal stacks are on the ends of the wings, with tiled offsets and stringcourse decoration. The east-facing main elevation is largely symmetrical, with single-storey wings projecting to the ends, paired diagonal stacks to the left and right, and two gables in the centre. It features mullioned and leaded casement windows with chamfered surrounds—one four-light window on each first-floor gable, and smaller two-light windows on the ground floor. There are two small windows on the end wings and a hip-roofed dormer over the front door to the left. The front door itself is panelled, studded, and partly glazed, set within a round-arched brick surround with a keystone and a stone plaque above.

The south-facing return front includes a cat-slide roof over a skittle alley to the right, with two hip-roofed dormers above. A square brick bay rises through two floors to the left. The north-facing return front has two dormers to the left, and a roughcast-clad square bay to the right with a brick upper window range. The rear (west-facing) elevation includes a small Horsham slab roof dormer to the left, and two angle bay brick windows under deep continuous eaves, each with six mullioned and transomed lights. A round-arched entrance, with a keystone rising to a cambered relieving arch, is situated to the left.

Inside, the skittle alley along the south side has white walls and round brick arches. Original skittle rack and balls remain. The end rooms of the wings feature large brick, stone, and oak inglenooks, original staircases, and extensive high-quality oak framing in the central hall range. Garden terraces, originally laid out by Gertrude Jekyll, survive largely intact.