The Lodge, Loudwater

The Lodge is a gatekeeper’s lodge built around 1874 for Sir Philip Rose, designed by the architect Arthur Vernon as part of Rayners House. It is a building of group value, reflecting its historical association with the main house.

The lodge is constructed from white Suffolk bricks with blue brick dressings and panels of knapped flintwork, incorporating buff bricks using Pethers’ patent design for ornamentation in the strings, arches, and cornices. The roofs are covered in red clay tiles. The building follows a compact, offset ‘T’ plan with two floors, containing two principal rooms on the ground floor and three rooms on the first floor. A 20th-century extension adjoins the rear, and an attached porch includes an integrated gate pier.

The exterior features cambered heads to all windows and entrances (except those in the 20th-century extension), incorporating moulded brick lintels with floral motifs. A wide moulded brick band in the shape of a fleur-de-lis runs from the string course to sill level between the floors, with further decorative bands, including moulded egg and dart stringing, below the eaves. The roof is half-hipped, with a central chimney featuring four diagonal stacks.

The south-facing entrance front, overlooking London Road, has a large tripartite bay window on the ground floor and a two-light window above. The east front, facing the historic driveway to Rayners House, has four single-light windows on the ground floor and two two-light dormer windows with chevron ornamentation on the gables above. A brick porch, now enclosed, dominates the ground floor of the east front, positioned asymmetrically and featuring a single-light window to the left; decorative floral bricks are incorporated into the lintels both inside and outside the porch. A buttressed gate pier with stepped blue brick copings is integrated into the porch, mirroring a linear pattern of three fleur-de-lis bricks at the base and one at the pinnacle; an iron hook remains on the east side. The north side has a tripartite window on the ground floor and a two-light window above, with a projecting rear wing and a west extension. The rear, west elevation incorporates a later single-storey gabled extension of matching brick and flint construction, with a two-light window with chevron ornamentation to the gable on the rear wing.

Inside, an iron bell pull for the gate and the bell itself remain, located adjacent to the entrance door and within the primary living room. The rooms are generally plain, with four-panel doors. The ground floor includes a modest fireplace in the primary living room, and an ornate painted fireplace and the replaced staircase in the second living room. The two first-floor bedrooms have simple fireplaces with cast-iron register grates.

A dwarf wall with diamond-shaped openings and blue brick coping is attached to the south elevation.