Description

TQ 53 37
16/503

SPELDHURST
OLD GROOMBRIDGE
GROOMBRIDGE HILL (off east side),
Buildings of the service courtyard adjoining south of Groombridge Place including the walls of the Herb Garden

20.10.54

GV
I
The service courtyard to south of Groombridge Place (q.v.) is enclosed on two sides by various service buildings, mostly built as stables and coach houses. The third side is a small walled herb garden. Circa 1660, contemporary with the main house, some later modernisations. Brick built, mostly English bond but not regular, some of it on sandstone footings. Brick stacks and chimneyshafts. Peg-tile roof.

Plan: basically three ranges facing into the courtyard with their back walls down into the moat. The east range was built as stables and has a carriageway through from the east bridge over the moat (q.v.). The long south range is mostly taken up by the coach house but there is, at the western end, a pair of small one-room plan cottages. The first cottage has a rear lateral stack and the second has a gable-end stack. These cottages are in the small walled herb garden on the western side of the courtyard.

In the early C20, when horsedrawn carriages were replaced by motor cars, most of the stables were converted to a billiard room and a southern gable-end stack inserted. The coach houses were also converted to garages.

Exterior: five windows in the south east corner of the courtyard (three in the east range and two in the south range) are early C20 mullion-and-transom windows containing diamond panes of leaded glass. Full height carriageway contains studded double doors of uncertain date. Each side are the original stable doorways, round-headed brick arches, now blocked. Lower stable to left now a service room, billiard room to right (south). In the south wing there is a row of six full height double doorways. The right hand four are probably C19 and the eaves above include a row of pigeon holes. The left two are C20 garage doors broken forward from the main front. To left of these a doorway containing a fielded six-panel door with overlight is presumably into the former tackroom and a loading hatch to the former hayloft rises from the eaves. An attractive octagonal lantern rises from the ridge of the coach house roof. It has moulded timber mullions, contains small panes of leaded glass including a top tier of Y-tracery panes with an ogee roof and weathervane.

To right (west) of the coach house is the low pair of cottages. Nearly symmetrical two window front of C18 or C19 casements, the hipped dormers containing diamond panes of leaded glass. Paired doorways contain plain plank doors and roof is gable-ended. Herb garden in front enclosed by tall brick wall. Doorway to the courtyard has stone lintel with a timber dovecote above supported on carved oak acanthus leaf consoles. Garden walls pierced by cross shaped gaps looking somewhat like gun ports.
Interior: has plain carpentry detail where exposed.

The service courtyard forms part of this superlative group of listed buildings in the vicinity of Groombridge Place (q.v.).

Listing NGR: TQ5336037590

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17524652

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings
• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)
• 
  Renovating Old Houses: Bringing New Life to Vintage Homes (For Pros By Pros)
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Oxfordshire: North and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)