Dormer Cottage and garage

Dormer Cottage and Garage

Dormer Cottage is a detached house built around 1927 by local Woking developer Evelyn Ricks. It is accompanied by a garage added in 1949.

The house is constructed of brick cavity walls, with the front elevation faced in multi-coloured red brick and the side and rear elevations finished in unpainted roughcast render over a smooth render plinth. Windows are multi-light steel casements set in timber sub-frames; those in more exposed positions have shallow clay-tile hoods. Doors are timber throughout. The roof is covered in clay tiles with painted timber barge-boards, and rainwater goods are a mixture of cast iron and plastic.

The building stands one-and-a-half storeys high, with upper rooms contained within the deep pitch of the gable-ended roof. It is set back from Bonsey Lane with its principal elevation facing south. Externally-expressed brick chimney stacks rise at either end.

The plan follows a loosely symmetrical, four-square arrangement. Two principal rooms occupy the front (south), while a kitchen and study or third bedroom occupy the back (north), divided east and west by a central hall and stair. Between the kitchen and study, at the back of the hall, are a larder accessed from the kitchen and a WC accessed from the hall. The straight stair leads to a small landing towards the back of the plan, from which access is gained to two bedrooms, one east and one west, and a bathroom occupying a dormer-like space projecting upwards through the centre of the rear roof pitch.

The principal elevation presents a symmetrical arrangement of a central entrance flanked by square bay windows, with dormer windows above in the roof. The brickwork is laid in stretcher bond using red-brown brick interspersed evenly with bright red bricks. The deep roof pitch extends down over the heads of the bay windows, sheltering the main elevation. At either end, shaped timber brackets support the eaves, with boarded and painted timber soffits. This deep eave creates a shallow entrance porch, almost vestigial veranda, between the bay windows. The porch floor is a low brick and tile plinth reached via a central brick step. The front door has a high mid-rail with six glazed lights over three vertical panels, paired with side-lights. A cast iron integral knocker and letter-box, probably contemporary, is fitted to the door. The glazing in door and side-lights is obscured stipple-effect glass. The two roof dormers are gabled with clay-tiled cheeks and gable ends clad in black-stained, waney-edged weather-board.

The rear elevation is defined by its roof form: the steep pitch is interrupted at its centre by the dormer-like bathroom projection, which breaks through the eaves and rises to a first-floor gable end in roughcast. The bathroom and each ground-floor room is lit by windows, including a small symmetrical pair of casements at the centre lighting the larder and WC.

The side elevations feature brick chimney stacks that divide into two flues below eaves level. Arched recesses between the flues accommodate a window to the east and a door to the west. The western door gives garden access from the south-facing principal living room; it is half-glazed with a flush panel of vertical boarding below and appears possibly not original, though its frame and the accompanying semi-circular stone and brick steps almost certainly are. The east elevation also has a side door with square brick steps giving garden access from the kitchen. This door is identical in style to the front door, including stipple-effect glazing.

Interior

Each room except the kitchen and bathroom has a tiled fireplace in shades of brown, green and grey. In the larger, south-facing ground-floor rooms, the fireplaces have arched rather than square openings with timber surrounds and shaped brackets supporting mantle-shelves; the western room surround is slightly grander and panelled. These two rooms feature stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops. The stair has a closed string, square newel, rounded hand-rail and pairs of stick balusters. Simple moulded skirting boards, picture rails, curtain pelmets and architraves remain throughout. In rooms with larger windows, the timber sub-frames have chamfered edges with run-out stops. Internal doors have a high mid-rail with a single upper panel and three long vertical panels beneath, a style repeated in the kitchen where two sets of full-height built-in cupboards and the larder all feature doors of this type. Almost all joinery except that in the kitchen is stained with dark brown-black varnish.

Late twentieth or early twenty-first century insertions include modern kitchen units, sanitary-ware and larder shelving.

The Garage

The garage, added in 1949, is executed in a similar material palette to the house. Its front gable-end elevation is faced in red brick laid in stretcher bond with a shallow clay-tile hood over a pair of side-hung, vertically-planked, timber garage doors. The sides and rear are faced in unpainted roughcast render over a smooth render plinth. The main part is lit by a steel-framed window, and a timber planked door (currently unhinged) leads to a rear store.

The area immediately to the rear of the house is laid with crazy paving, possibly an original feature as such paving became popular during the interwar period.

A late twentieth-century timber garden shed standing to the north of the garage is not considered to be of special architectural or historic interest.