Beatrice Webb House
Between 1905 and 1909 Lutyens moved from Arts-and-Crafts vernacular towards a poised classical and neo‑Georgian idiom across gardens, offices, mausoleums and country houses, distinguished by inventive planning, sensitive encasement or remodelling of older structures, and refined manipulation of massing, detail and historic interiors.
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Description
Lutyens added a pyramid-roofed extension to a house by Flockhart, the roof running out to form the pergola. Wrapped round one corner is an outside covered stairway with open timber roof. In the roof is a blank dormer, like Orchard’s. (Amery et al., 1981, cat no. 121)
BEATRICE WEBB HOUSE, E of Belmont, is the house (PASTURE WOOD) which Frederick Mirrielees commissioned in 1893. He was a director of Donald Currie & Co., managers of the Castle Steamship Co., and it is by the Scots architect William Flockhart, who also created their ships’ interiors. Large but rather lifeless, with black-and-white timbering and a big gable on jetties on the entrance front. Lutyens was engaged first here before designing Goddards, creating the garden PERGOLA on tile columns in 1897, before adding in 1906 a pyramid-roofed extension to the service wing, and, curling round it and ascending a whole storey, an exceedingly pretty outside staircase in a timber-framed cloister. His also the timber garden room attached to the main house. It now belongs to Hurtwood House School. (O’Brien et al., 2022, p.106)
Bibliography
Amery, C., Richardson, M. and Stamp, G. (1981) Lutyens, the Work of the English Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944): Hayward Gallery London, 18 November 1981-31 January 1982. London: Arts Council of Great Britain.
O’Brien, C., Nairn, I. and Cherry, B. (2022) Surrey. Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England. New Haven: Yale University Press.
, Nairn, I., Pevsner, N. (1971) Surrey (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England). 2nd edn. Yale University Press.
John C. Trotter