Ravenswood School

Ravenswood School

A country house built in 1883 as Stoodleigh Court by the architects Sir Ernest George and H E Peto for T Carew Daniel. Now in use as a school. The building is constructed of stone rubble with Ham Hill stone dressings, featuring some tile-hung and timber-framed gables beneath a red tile roof with some modern concrete tile replacement. The chimneys have tall stone shafts. The design employs a free mixture of Elizabethan and Old English styles.

The house is arranged on an L-shaped plan. The principal rooms occupy the east range, with the library and morning room to the left of a central two-storey open hall, and the drawing room to the rear overlooking the south-facing gardens. To the right of the entrance porch lies an axial corridor providing access to the dining room and billiard room, with nursery accommodation above on the first floor. The west wing contains smaller rooms, originally offices and service accommodation on the ground floor with guest rooms above. A rectangular service yard behind the west wing is now roofed over, dating from the 1980s. The house was notably designed for electric light from the outset, with its own generator, and features ornamental radiators and cast iron pipes indicating that central heating was integral to the original design. Beyond the repartitioning of the morning and drawing rooms and the roofing over of the service yard, the fabric has remained largely unaltered.

The exterior rises to two storeys with attic accommodation, deliberately designed to evoke an evolved building. Most windows are stone-mullioned with square leaded panes, enlivened by timber-framed and tile-hung gables and occasional timber casements. The asymmetrical north-facing entrance elevation of the east range features an approximately central three-storey gabled entrance porch with a segmental stone doorway, beneath which sit two tiers of stone-mullioned windows. The porch is flanked to the left by a buttressed open hall with a projecting polygonal hall bay entirely glazed with tall mullioned windows featuring four transoms. To the right stand two timber-framed gables and a two-storey lean-to. A single-storey polygonal butler's passage occupies the angle between the east and west ranges, lined with mullioned windows. The eight-bay west wing displays three gables to the front and a segmental arched carriage entrance providing access to the former service block, with stone-mullioned and transomed windows throughout. The garden elevation of the south range is asymmetrical, featuring three gables with a gabled projection at approximately the centre containing a drawing room bay, a shallower projection at the right end, and a painted sundial. The exterior remains very largely unaltered except for replacement leaded pane glazing in a small number of windows.

The interior is remarkably complete. Entry from the porch leads into a small panelled room accessing the five-bay great hall, which contains queen strut collar and tie beam roof trusses with curved braces and wind braces. A massive ashlar hooded chimneypiece dominates the hall, with a tall panelled dado supporting a frieze of carved heads. A fine stair at the right end features Jacobean balusters and carved gryphon finials, ascending to a gallery overlooking the hall with three segmental arched openings and a timber corner oriel projecting into the space. Elaborate wrought iron and brass light fittings above the dado frieze may be original. The L-shaped drawing room retains an ornamental plaster ceiling with moulded ribs and Renaissance details of arabesques and grotesques, together with a contemporary carved chimneypiece. The morning room is panelled and was subdivided in the twentieth century with a twentieth-century chimneypiece. The library preserves its original chimneypiece and bookcase fittings. Other notable survivals include a complete set of veneered fitted cupboards and drawers to the master bedroom, original joinery and door and window furniture, numerous original chimneypieces, wall friezes in the nursery rooms, and timber fitted cupboards, dressers and a desk in the secondary and service rooms. The ground plan and entrance elevation were published in the Building News of 13 July 1883, though some variations exist between the published elevation and the existing details of the west wing.