St John'S Lodge

ST JOHN'S, ST JOHN'S HILL ROAD, St John's Lodge

GV II

Detached house. Built c1894 by the distinguished architect and furniture designer Walter Cave (1863-1929). Arts and Crafts style house of plain roughcast render battered towards the base under slate roofs with overhanging eaves with projecting rafter feet and a series of rendered chimneystacks, also battered towards the base. A roughly L-shaped building of two storeys and attics with irregularly spaced windows, casements with leaded lights. EXTERIOR: The principal elevation facing north is L-shaped and has a large projecting gable to the left side facing north and a further gable facing west, both with coping and kneelers. The angle of the L is filled by a two storey bay with three tier casement windows and moulded cornice. This cornice is repeated on the triple dormer with flat roof above this bay. Most of the original casement windows with leaded lights survive and most have a narrow penticed hood moulding above supported on wooden brackets. The windows are variously two, three or four-light and the west gable has a further narrow three-tier window and a four-light mullioned and transomed window to the ground floor. The entrance is between the two storey bay and the west gable, with two panelled door facing west but the flat-roofed porch with a series of bulbous balusters supporting the roof over a rendered wall faces north. INTERIOR: The staircase-hall has a well staircase with simple but elgant joinery with paired stick balusters and square newel posts, chamfered to the top and crowned with disc-shaped caps. There is oak panelling to plate shelf height and a wooden fireplace with shelf, panelled overmantel, deep shelf above supported on brackets and narrower shelves at the sides for the display of china. The Living Room has a fireplace with attached elongated tapering circular columns with the same disc-shaped caps. The main chimneys have ornamental metal ventilation grilles, similar to those in Voysey houses. There are at least three original fireplaces with display shelves upstairs. HISTORY: Walter Cave was at first articled to Sir Arthur Blomfield but set up his own practice in 1889. Hermann Muthesius, writing in 1904 in "Das Englische Haus" considered the external appearance of Walter Cave's houses almost more successful than Voysey's. St John's Lodge is externally and internally well up to the standard of the two Surrey houses by Cave Muthesius chose to illustrate in his book.

A little altered Arts and Crafts style house with fine interiors by the distinguished architect and furniture designer Walter Cave.

[Hermann Muthesius "The English House" reprinted in English in 1987 pp 43-5. A Stuart Gray "Edwardian Architecture" pp 137-8.]