St John'S Lodge

A detached house built around 1894 by the architect and furniture designer Walter Cave (1863-1929). This Arts and Crafts style house is constructed of plain, roughcast render, with a battering effect towards the base, and has slate roofs with overhanging eaves, projecting rafter feet, and a series of rendered chimney stacks, also battered towards the base. It is a roughly L-shaped building of two storeys and attics, featuring irregularly spaced windows with leaded lights and casements.

The principal north-facing elevation is L-shaped, with a large, projecting gable to the left and a further gable facing west, both featuring coping and kneelers. The angle of the L has a two-storey bay with three-tier casement windows and a moulded cornice. This cornice is repeated on the triple dormer with a flat roof above the bay. Most of the original casement windows with leaded lights remain, and most have a narrow, penticed hood moulding supported on wooden brackets. The windows are variously two, three, or four-light, and the west gable has a narrow three-tier window and a four-light mullioned and transomed window to the ground floor. The entrance is positioned between the two-storey bay and the west gable, with a two-panelled door facing west. A flat-roofed porch with bulbous balusters supporting a roof over a rendered wall faces north.

The interior staircase-hall features a well-staircase with paired stick balusters and square newel posts, chamfered to the top and capped with disc-shaped caps. There is oak panelling to plate shelf height and a wooden fireplace with a shelf, panelled overmantel, a deep shelf above supported on brackets, and narrower shelves at the sides for displaying china. The Living Room has a fireplace with attached, elongated, tapering circular columns topped with the same disc-shaped caps. The main chimneys incorporate ornamental metal ventilation grilles, similar to those found in Voysey houses. At least three original fireplaces with display shelves are also present upstairs.

Historical context notes that Hermann Muthesius, in his 1904 publication "Das Englische Haus," considered the external appearance of Walter Cave’s houses almost as successful as those of Voysey. St John's Lodge is considered to be up to the standard of the two Surrey houses illustrated by Muthesius in his book. The house has undergone relatively few alterations.