Marsh Lounge, Scargill House Religious Retreat, Kettlewell

Marsh Lounge, Scargill House Religious Retreat, Kettlewell

Meeting room designed by George Pace, completed 1964–1965. The main house and 1995 sun lounge, to which the meeting room is attached, are not included in this listing.

Materials and Construction

The building employs concrete, limestone rubble-stone, stone slate sills, and an aluminium-sheeted roof.

Plan and Layout

Ground level falls away to reveal a partial basement, which extends the full depth of the building on the west side. The meeting room itself has a truncated octagonal plan with a shallow roof pierced by four dormer roof lights arranged in a cross pattée pattern. A flat-roofed link block on the north side connects the meeting room to the south-west corner of the main house. The interior of the meeting room contains four slender posts positioned around the four central roof lights. The link block includes an original entrance lobby with an east-facing doorway, a connecting corridor, and two rear rooms built against the north facet of the meeting room. (The 1995 sun lounge continues northward along the line of the link block's outer western elevation.)

Exterior

The building occupies the lower part of the complex, projecting into the south-west corner with unobstructed views across and along the valley. The basement is constructed of board-marked concrete, appearing as a visible plinth only on the eastern side; on the western side it reaches full depth and contains a doorway with a plank and batten door and vertical strip windows. The ground floor is built of rubble-stone with a deep concrete ring beam at eaves level; this beam incorporates two projecting gutter spouts at the corners between the south facet and the two adjacent angled facets, each supported by a metal pole. Five of the six external facets feature a very large, square, full-height picture window flanked by narrow vertical strip windows on either side. The south-south-west facet has only the two outer vertical strip windows, allowing for interior screening. Window lintels are formed by the concrete ring beam, and each window has a narrow stone slate sill; inset window frames are of cedar. On the east side, the east facet runs straight to meet the link block, with a narrow vertical strip window near its right end on the higher meeting room wall. The roof is covered in ridged aluminium sheeting with a slight slope and shallow step towards the centre. At the apex stand four mono-pitched dormer roof lights, also aluminium-clad, forming a prominent cross pattée.

The flat link block roof steps down from this. The link block has a deep concrete wall plate. Its east elevation presents a concrete plinth with a square window to the left (beneath a vertically-boarded concrete apron) and a wide doorway to the right, flush against the south-west corner of the main house. The doorway contains timber and glazed double doors with a rail, now with an external metal-handrailed ramp. The west elevation has a rubble-stone plinth with a square window to the left and three vertical strip windows to the right. To the left of the square window, the wall has been extended to accommodate the 1995 sun lounge; the boundary between the two phases is marked by the cessation of the rubble-stone plinth, absent on the sun lounge.

Interior

Both the meeting room and link block have exposed rubble-stone inner walls. The meeting room features a wide doorway in the north-east corner with double doors of vertical cedar boards. The floor is laid in varnished wood blocks set in a geometric pattern. Four slender cedar-boarded posts arranged in a square support narrow, deep joists that divide the ceiling into rectangular and triangular panels faced in narrow cedar boarding. The central square has facetted boarding rising into the four dormer roof lights, topped by an octagonal boarded pendant at the centre. A central suspended circular cast-iron candelabra hangs from this feature. The link block has a stone flagged floor and narrow cedar board ceiling.