Details
GOUDHURST BEDGEBURY ROAD
TQ 73 NW (east side)
5/88 Beresford Lodge
20.6.67
GV II
Former gatelodge, later house. Built between 1836-1841 by Alexander Roos (circa 1810-1881) for the Beresford Family of Bedgebury Park as the north lodge. Designed in a pared down Schinkelesque version of the Italianate style. The large north extension of 1991-2 is not of special interest.
MATERIALS: Sandstone ashlar with pyramidal tiled roof, renewed in the late C20, with wide overhanging eaves on wooden brackets. The roof is surmounted by an elaborate metal weathervane with stone chimneystack on the north side of the tower with plain triple circular chimneypots.
PLAN FORM: The original plan form was a south square tower of two storeys and attics with open loggia to the south facing the carriage drive and one storey north side wing of two bays.
EXTERIOR: Two storey and attic south tower has plinth and two stringcourses, carried across the side wings to form parapet cornices, with similar stringcourses to compressed attic storey. The south side had three circular windows to the attic but the central one has been replaced by a larger wooden casement. The first floor has a French window with cornice and console brackets, the French windows replaced. The balcony over the ground floor loggia has four piers, divided by wrought iron railings with intersecting rods with central paterae. The ground floor has a projecting loggia with three roundheaded arches with keystones with impost blocks, filled-in with C20 French windows. Inside the loggia is a wooden ovolo-moulded cornice, original architrave with double French windows and hexagonal tiled floor.
The west side of the tower has three circular windows to the attic, a first floor paired round-headed window with keystones and impost blocks and C20 replacement windows. The ground floor has an original 12-pane sash window with moulded architrave. The original one storey section to the north retains three piers to the balustrading but the iron balustrade was replaced by two windows in the 1990s. The two ground floor windows, round-headed sashes in reveals with impost blocks, were reduced in height in the 1990s. Attached to the north is the 1990s extension. The east elevation of the tower has three blocked circular openings to the attic, a paired round-headed window with keystone and impost blocks to the first floor, replaced casements to the first floor and a twelve-pane sash window to the ground floor. The one storey section to the north has a round-headed sash window which was reduced in height when the 1990s north extension was added. This projects above the height of the original parapet and has three windows facing south and east, sashes, some with vertial glazing bars, and central French window to the east. The north side currently consists of the 1990s extension.
INTERIOR: A very plain straight flight staircase. Some ground floor windows retain wooden shutters. No original fireplaces remain and all doors have been replaced on the ground floor except for the French windows to the loggia
HISTORY: Beresford Lodge was built as the entrance lodge to Bedgebury Park and was part of a remodelling of Bedgebury Park between 1836-41. The architect Alexander Roos was a pupil of Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Berlin, who came to England in 1835 and immediately became responsible for work on several properties owned by the Beresford Hope Family; The Deepdene near Dorking in Surrey (1835-41), which is no longer extant, Bedgebury Park (1836-41) and 4 Carlton Gardens (c.1836-7). The Bedgebury Park estate was bought by the Beresfords in 1836, partly with the inheritance Lady Beresford had received from her deceased first husband, Thomas Hope. Roos enlarged and re-cased the existing house as an Italianate palazzo. This former entrance lodge has a tower which may have been used for the keeper to signal the main house about approaching visitors. It adjoins separately listed gates, piers and quadrant walls by the same architect. The lodge has similarities to the Roos drawing for the Gardener's House at Deepdene (probably not executed) and even more so to the Ipswich Lodge at Shrubland Park in Suffolk which was built in 1841 and has the same square tower with pyramidal roof, circular windows in the attic, paired round-headed windows and front arcaded porch.
In the late C19 a single storey sandstone ashlar lean-to was added to the north. In the 1920s the lodge came into separate ownership from the main house. In 1972-3 a first floor extension was built over the north loggia, contained within the parapet height. As a result, the ceiling height of the ground floor was dropped and the arched windows and heads of the masonry surrounds reduced in height. The existing north lean-to extension was altered and a single storey extension added to the east. In 1988 an additional first floor extension was add to match the 1973 first floor extension. In 1991-2 the 1973 and 1988 north extensions, already suffering structural failure, were demolished and a considerably higher and larger extension was built to the north and north-east.
SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: A rare example of an entrance lodge by Alexander Roos built in a pared down Italianate style influenced by the works of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. This former lodge, together with the adjoining gates, piers and quadrant walls, are part of the works Roos carried out at Bedgebury Park between 1836-41. The gates, piers and quadrant walls are listed separately.
SOURCES:
Pevsne & Newman - The Buildings of England. West Kent and the Weald. 1980 P.354. Richard Garnier - 'Alexander Roos , c.1810-1881' in Georgian Group Journal, XV, 2005-6, pp. 11-68.
Bibliography
85360 The Buildings of England, West Kent and the Weald (John Newman), 1980, Vol. 1, Page(s) 354
