Ellem Lodge

Ellem Lodge

A late 18th to early 19th century house of distinctive circular plan, expanded with later additions and alterations. The building sits on a sloping site and comprises a 2-storey circular-plan central block with flanking wings: a single-storey 3-bay entrance wing incorporating a gabled porch to the front, a single-storey wing with basement, and a bowed projection at the rear.

The exterior is finished in whitewashed harl with some painted margins, flush cills, and sandstone dressings to the porch addition. The entrance elevation faces southeast and features a gabled porch with beak skewputts flanking the gable and a ball finial above. The entrance door is a 2-leaf part-glazed timber panelled door with a small-paned round-arched fanlight, offset to the right of centre. Single windows occupy 2 bays to the left, while a 3-light stone mullioned canted window sits in the re-entrant angle to the right. The circular-plan house adjoins at the rear with a later timber-mullioned bipartite window at ground level to the right and a blinded opening with painted imitation window above. The outer right features a 2-bay wing with single windows in each bay, and the outer left shows a slightly recessed 2-bay wing also with single windows in each bay.

The southwest side elevation contains a single window centred in the south wing. The northwest rear elevation shows the circular-plan house offset to the left of centre with single windows at both floors offset to the right, and a bipartite window at first floor offset to the left. The adjoining bowed projection has a round-arched window centred at ground level with a single window in the return to the right. The outer left features a 2-bay wing with a 2-light basement window in the outer bay, a lean-to projection obscuring the right bay, and single windows in both bays above. Stepped ranges ascending the hill to the outer right contain single windows in all bays. The northeast side elevation shows the north wing with a part-glazed boarded timber basement door offset to the right of centre.

Windows throughout are predominantly 12-pane glazing in timber sash and case frames, with some small-pane casement and fixed windows, some lying-pane glazing, and some lattice-pane metal glazing. The canted porch light features small-pane upper and 8-pane lower timber windows. Grey slate roofs cover the building, including a conical roof over the circular-plan house. The north wing has raised stone skews, and cast-iron rainwater goods are fitted throughout. A harled and coped circular stack surmounts the conical roof, with corniced ridge and apex stacks and various circular cans elsewhere.

The circular portion is thought to date from around 1800 and may originally have been a lodge or tollhouse. Boundary walls enclose the site, constructed of rubble and shared in part with the adjacent Ellem Old Inn. The main entrance is flanked by square-plan tooled sandstone gatepiers with pyramidal caps and hooped iron gates. A secondary entrance is flanked by ball-finialled iron gatepiers with a wrought-iron gate.

Ellem Lodge, Ellem Old Inn, and Woodside Cottage together form a group of properties now owned by the health care service Care For Mission, whose headquarters are located here. All three properties lie within the boundaries of the designed landscape at Whitchester. A comparable circular-plan house can be found in the nearby parish of Abbey St Bathans.