Summary

Detached house, later subdivided. The main part was designed by the architect E R Robson and built between 1881-2 in Queen Anne Style. The south-east wing was added in matching style, possibly also by E R Robson, between 1895 and 1916. The property was renovated and subdivided after 1983.

Description

Detached house, later subdivided. The main part was designed by the architect E R Robson and built between 1881-2 in Queen Anne Style. The south-east wing was added in matching style, possibly also by E R Robson, between 1895 and 1916. The property was renovated and subdivided after 1983.

MATERIALS: the house is in red brick in English bond with timber and roughcast gables. Its tiled roofs have clustered brick chimneystacks set on edge. Casement windows are timber, some with leaded lights and one with stained glass.

PLAN: the Sales Particulars of 1983 include an entrance lobby, inner hall with staircase, drawing room, morning room, dining room, billiard room, domestic offices and loggia on the ground floor. A library and six bedrooms and three bathrooms is recorded on the first floor, with a further bedroom on the half-landing and two bedrooms under the eaves. Subsequently this plan was converted into 8 bedsits, two flats and a meeting room.

EXTERIOR: the north-west entrance onto Mycenae Road is of two storeys with four casement windows to the first floor and an attic timber and roughcast gable with carved barge-boards and a five-light window. The ground floor has a projecting single-storey porte-cochere with a round-headed porch with balustrading above and a door with six fielded panels. There are three casement windows adjacent to the north.

The south-west front facing Westcombe Park Road was originally of four bays before the later south-east wing was added. To the east is a projecting full-height gabled bay with carved barge-boards, roughcast infill. It has a casement window with a three-light mullioned and transomed window on the first floor and a nine-light canted bay on the ground floor with a dentilled cornice. The set back range has a tall staircase window subdivided into three sections by two transoms, articulated by a broken floral scrolled pediment above and a lunette shaped glazing bar below supported on a console bracket. There are also two first floor mullioned and transomed casements. The ground floor below these windows has a large projecting square bay with seven lights and a dentilled cornice. The adjoining projecting south-east wing is of two bays, the first with a mullioned and transomed window on the first floor with a moulded brick apron below and an oval fixed window on the ground floor, the second projecting with an attic timber and roughcast gable, a first floor mullioned and transomed casement and a ground floor canted bay with a dentilled cornice.

The north-east or garden front has a single-storey flat-roofed loggia with balustrading, and a tessellated floor and steps at the western end. Adjoining to the east is a projecting full-height gable with carved wooden barge-boards and roughcast infill with a casement window, two mullioned and transomed windows on the first floor and two taller mullioned and transomed casements on the ground floor. Adjoining is a narrower bay with a similar gable and a three-light mullioned and transomed window to both ground and first floor. The remainder of this front is set back slightly with some casement windows and there is a massive brick chimneystack. The rear door is half-glazed with a rectangular fanlight and a fixed oval window adjoins it.

INTERIOR: the interior was not inspected (2015) so the following information is from other sources. The original doorways have narrow reeded architraves and five panelled doors with a horizontal rather than vertical central panel divided into three smaller panels.

The staircase hall has a dogleg staircase with slender turned balusters and a dado rail. The staircase window is leaded, with stained glass with geometric shapes and stylized rose designs.

The drawing room retains decorative plasterwork and joinery decoration including a fireplace with tapering Ionic pilasters and an overmantel with miniature Ionic columns and a segmental-arched niche with wooden filigree decoration.

Further interior fittings mentioned in the 1983 Sales Particulars may also survive.

History

Glenwood was designed by the distinguished School Board architect Edward Robert Robson FRIBA FSA FSI (1835-1917) and built between 1881-2.

The client was Thomas Wilde Powers of Drapers Garden in the City, who did not live in the property: it was sold to Herbert Townsend, a tea broker of 17 Vanbrugh Park. The building appears on the 1896 2nd Edition 25 inch Ordnance Survey map (but of course without the later south-east wing).

Townsend moved out and the property was sublet until the lease was sold in 1895 to the Rt Hon Sir Thomas Edward Scrutton PC KC LLB MA and Lord Justice of Appeal (1856-1934) who lived in the property between 1895 and 1924. He added the south-east wing, which included a billiard room and further bedrooms and is shown on the 3rd Edition 25 inch map of 1916.

From 1925 until his death in 1936 Sir James Alexander Cooper KBE, Director of War Materials Finance at the Ministry of Munitions and Director of the British /Australian Wool Realisation Council, lived here and Glenwood remained in his family until it was sold in 1983.

In 1983 Glenwood was purchased by a charity and was converted into 8 bed-sitting rooms, a 2 bedroom and a 1 bedroom flat and a meeting room for single older working women at a cost of £196,000. The building was officially reopened on 17 April 1986.

Recent photographs show original fittings in the staircase-hall and Drawing Room. However the 1983 Sales Particulars additionally refer to a mahogany mantelpiece with tiled sides in the Morning Room; a window seat, recessed fireplace with corner seats, tiled sides and overmantel with mirror panels, built-in shelves for books and a glass cupboard in the Dining Room; oak panelled walls, an oak beamed ceiling, an oak mantelpiece with green tiled sides, and fitted oak corner seats and cupboard in the Billiard Room. On the first floor these Sales Particulars also mention the Library retaining a beamed ceiling, fireplace and recessed bookshelves and bedrooms retaining mantel-pieces with tiled or marble surrounds.

The architect of Glenwood, Edward Robert Robson FRIBA FSA FSI (1936-1917), was particularly renowned for designing London Board schools from the 1870s onwards. Born in Durham he was apprenticed in Newcastle to the architect John Dobson who worked in a Classical style and later worked under Sir George Gilbert Scott, exponent of the Gothic Revival style. For some time he was architect and surveyor to the city of Liverpool but from that post he was the surprise appointment as Chief Architect to the newly formed School Board of London in 1871. His ideas for school planning, informed by extensive continental and American travel, were laid out in his book 'School Architecture' published in 1874. Robson designed several hundred schools in London in brick and terracotta in Queen Anne style, many of which are statutorily listed. However, he built very few domestic buildings. These include a sandstone lodge to Stanley Park in Liverpool of 1868 (Grade II), the sandstone Mowbray Almshouses in Sunderland (Grade II), and a stock and red brick detached house in Wandsworth, 26 Bolingbroke Grove (Grade II).

Reasons for Listing

Glenwood, a large detached house of 1881-2 in Queen Anne designed by the architect E R Robson, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: a rare domestic commission designed by this architect, with varied elevations built of good quality, well-crafted brickwork and joinery with inventive decorative features;
* Degree of survival: the exterior is unaltered, apart from an extension added between 1895 and 1916 in matching style and materials which may be by the same architect. Original interior features include doorcases, the main staircase and a stained glass staircase window, and decorative plasterwork and joinery in the drawing room.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q27087692

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.

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