Tudor Grange, East Cliff and Springbourne, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

Summary

Hotel, originally a private house, 1928, by WH Mackenzie and RA Phillips for Mrs CG Knight.

Description

Hotel, originally a private house, 1928, by WH Mackenzie and RA Phillips for Mrs CG Knight.

MATERIALS: brick, timber framing, brick nogging and hung tile, with tiled roofs and brick chimneystacks.

PLAN: the house stands on the east side of a large plot on the south side of Gervis Road. It has an irregular oblong footprint, and its principal elevation faces west.

Internally, the house was planned with a central hallway leading to the principal rooms, with service accommodation in the north-east corner, an open-well stair, bedrooms leading from a first floor landing, and servants’ accommodation in the attic.

EXTERIOR: a picturesque Arts and Crafts-influenced Tudor Revival building of two storeys and an attic. Elevations are varied, with projecting timbered gables and bays, half-timbered jetties, and projecting chimneystacks. The brick nogging is laid in a mixture of patterns, with herringbone-work, stretchers and headers combined with tile to create varied infill panels. Windows are metal casements in timber mullioned frames; they contain an assortment of leaded glazing: circular, rectangular, diamond and geometric patterns, often with stained glass elements.

The asymmetrical principal elevation has a roughly central porch recessed beneath a projecting gable. The porch is timber-framed and has brick nogging around the base and arched timber screen with barley-twist detailing; its doorway has a Tudor-arched lintel. The front door is a ledge and plank construction, with a flat-arched head, decorative handle and strap hinges, and a leaded window. The upper storey has decorative timber-work with rendered infill panels. There is a mullion and transom window of six lights. The gable has deep moulded barge boards with an apex pendant. It is flanked on the first floor by recessed planes of hung tile; a window has been inserted on the right. To the left of the porch is the wide gable end of the cross wing. Again, it is timber-framed with decorative nogging on the ground floor and render above. It has a canted bay on the ground floor with a large mullion and transom window lighting the lounge within. The roof of the bay is a balcony with a brick and timber balustrade. To the right is an external chimneystack; it incorporates diaper-work and is topped with a pair of star-plan chimneys. The right hand side of the building has another canted bay window on the ground floor, and a jettied upper floor. The south-east extension is recessed from the elevation; it is brick on the ground floor and timber-framed and jettied above.

The north and south elevations share similar characteristics: half-timbering, jettied bays, and have angle-set chimneys and dormers. The east elevation, which stands close to the plot boundary, is mainly brick, with hung tile on the upper storey. It contains a large mullioned window lighting the stair hall.

INTERIOR: the interiors are carefully detailed and incorporate abundant timber panelling and oak flooring, and retain a good proportion of panelled doors with bronze fittings, and windows which retain their historic ironmongery.

The porch leads into a small panelled compartment with leaded lights, and then into the entrance hall. There is a large chimneypiece with a limestone fireplace with a depressed arch and moulded spandrels and chamfered jambs, with a panelled over-mantle with moulded detailing. An open-well stair occupies the rear of the hall; it has heavy newels incorporating thick barley-twists and ball finials; a moulded handrail; and barley-twist balusters. A large five-light window with mullions and transoms lights the hall, and has geometric leading and stained glass Tudor rose motifs.

The lounge, marked on the architect’s plans as the dining room, has a vaulted ceiling with geometric linear relief moulding. It has three-quarter panelling, and a stone chimneypiece with panelled over-mantle. The windows have stained glass heraldic shields.

The dining room, marked on the architect’s plans as the drawing room, has dado panelling, and a limestone chimneypiece with mouldings to the spandrels. It has a cornice with foliate mouldings, and relief mouldings to the corners of the ceiling.

On the first floor the stair emerges onto a landing, and a balustrade with a moulded handrail and barley-twist balusters steps and curves around the stair void. The landing is panelled to three-quarter height, and there is a deep ceiling beam with moulded consoles. A short flight of stairs, consistently detailed, leads to the four-poster bedroom. A second stair, with plain square newels and stick balusters leads to the attic, which was originally servant’s accommodation, and has been reconfigured to form a number of bedrooms.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: in front of, and aligned with, the front entrance is an octagonal brick sundial, standing on the junction of intersecting axes of garden paths.

To the west is the former motor house, converted to hotel accommodation. It is a pitched range of a single-storey and an attic. It has brick elevations and gables with paired leaded casements. The gable end of the ground floor has been rebuilt in brick, replacing the original folding timber doors. There is a paved area to the front, intended for washing the car.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 20/09/2019

History

Tudor Grange was built in the late 1920s as a private house. It was designed by WH Mackenzie and RA Phillips for Mrs CG Knight; plans are dated 1927, and planning approval was granted the following January.

The building has a small extension which was granted planning approval in 1936. It was designed by notable local architects AJ Seal and Partners, who designed a number of interwar buildings in the town. By that time ownership had passed to the acclaimed physician Dr Henry Granger, and his wife, and the plans show that the ground floor of the extension was designed for use as a surgery, with the adjoining study used as a waiting room. The building appeared in a series in the ‘Bournemouth Graphic’ magazine entitled ‘Beautiful Homes Around Bournemouth’ in 1937.

The house was converted to a guest house in the 1964. This resulted in the subdivision of two of the bedrooms and the reconfiguration of the attic in order to create 13 en-suite bedrooms in what was originally a six-bedroom house. The building was refurbished in the early C21.

The principal architect was William Hector Mackenzie (1877-1957), whose home and offices were at ‘Clive’, 20 Grove Road, very close to Tudor Grange. Mackenzie was articled to John Pond Macdonald of Inverness in 1892, and continued as an assistant until 1898. He then obtained a position in the Glasgow offices of Thomas Lennox Watson, enabling him to attend classes at Glasgow School of Art. After two years he left Scotland and moved to Plymouth, where he became chief assistant in the office of the Borough Engineer, and a year later moved again, this time to Bournemouth to work as assistant to the Borough Architect, Engineer and Surveyor Frederick William Lacey. Mackenzie began his own practice in Bournemouth in 1926, and worked in partnership with Ronald A Phillips. Commissions were mainly for domestic and leisure buildings and churches in and around the town. Mackenzie was admitted LRIBA in 1933, and elevated to Fellow early the following year. Phillips (1904-1983) became a well-known local architect; he was newly-qualified when he entered into partnership with Mackenzie, and in 1935 began his own practice.

Reasons for Listing

Tudor Grange is listed at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* a picturesque neo-Tudor composition drawing on Arts and Crafts traditions, incorporating good quality, varied building materials, expertly applied with great attention to architectural detailing;
* a high-quality design, carefully proportioned and massed to create a distinctive and lively exterior;
* the principal internal rooms and circulation spaces are extremely well appointed, with good-quality oak panelling throughout, and plasterwork, joinery, chimneypieces and glazing which combine to create interiors of particular sumptuousness;
* the plan form and layout of the house remain legible, notwithstanding the reconfiguration of the some of the first floor bedrooms and the attic.

Historic interest:

* an excellent representation of an architect-designed private house of the 1920s, exemplifying a popular style of the period.

Group value:

* continuing the tradition for architectural distinctive buildings in the locality, and having group value with Ascham House (Grade II - National Heritage List for England: 1324737), to the north.

External Links

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