Olmeda The Gate Cottage

A pair of estate cottages, dating from around 1900 and designed by Romaine Walker for Mr. Robert Hudson, originally served as a lodge to Medmenham Abbey. The building is in an L-shaped layout. The lower storey is constructed of dressed chalk blocks, some whitewashed, with windows featuring ovolo-moulded chalk mullions. The upper storey is roughcast and whitewashed, with a wooden bressumer and wood mullion windows. The roof is tiled, featuring ornamental wooden bargeboards and remnants of twisted wooden finials; the chimneys are brick with ‘V’ pilasters and offset heads. The asymmetrical west front, with two and a half bays, has a gable on the left side, where the upper storey juts out on brackets. There are irregular leaded casements on the ground floor, and a five-light, leaded oriel window within the gable. The right bay has a board and stud door set within a moulded and stopped chalk surround, featuring a four-centred arch and carved spandrels. The right gable end is also jettied, with an oriel window. A jettied rear wing has similar casements and a door, a gabled semi-dormer, and a 20th-century conservatory at its right end.