Tettenhall Court, Tettenhall Regis, Wolverhampton

Summary

A large suburban house, in a Domestic Revival style, built in 1913-1914 to designs by William Weller (1877-1960).

Description

A large suburban house, in a Domestic Revival style, built in 1913-1914 to designs by William Weller (1877-1960).

MATERIALS
Brick and timber frame, with stone ground-floor dressings, plain clay tile roofs and brick stacks.

PLAN
The main range runs parallel to the east-west Wergs Road, with an additional range to the rear. The overall plan is irregular. The principal rooms are arranged, pinwheel fashion, around a large central reception hall. The front forecourt is bounded on one side by the garage or coach house, which adjoins the house at a 45 degree angle, and on the other by a screen wall and privy block, set at a similar angle to the house. A service court lies to the rear of the garage block.

EXTERIOR
The house is in a Domestic Revival style, drawing on local vernacular building traditions, with steeply-gabled, two-storey elevations of brick with stone dressings, and timber framing to some first-floor bays. The roofs are covered in plain clay tile. The elevations and fenestration are irregular; windows are stone mullioned and transomed, of various numbers of lights, and timber mullioned and transomed in the timber framed bays; all have rectangular leaded casements. The cast-iron rainwater goods include hoppers with fleurs-de-lys in relief, and the date 1914.

The entrance elevation has three irregular bays: the central, projecting entrance bay is timber-framed, and gabled, and forms a porch over a recessed entrance on timber uprights, leading to double doors with flanking windows. To the right, a narrow one-window bay, then a projecting bay with a double-height canted bay window tucked under the gable, which has applied timber framing. To the left, a cranked bay with castellated parapet, with two nine-light windows to the full-height room within. Left again, at a 45 degree angle to the house, is a covered entrance to the courtyard beyond, with a gable and applied timber framing, with a pair of iron gates. This links the garage to the main house; the single-storey garage has a half-hipped roof with a gablet. This is balanced on the other side of the house by a screen wall with a covered gateway to the garden beyond, joining a small, single-storey building formerly housing privies.

The principal elevation is the garden front, to the south. This has a main range of three gabled bays, with timber framing applied to their gables. To the left, set back from the building plane, a gabled and timber-framed cross wing, with square framing, carried over an open loggia to the ground floor. The left return elevation has long rows of single lights to the first and second floors. To the far left, set back again with a large, rectangular stack set within the plane of the elevation, is a bay set at 45 degrees to the elevation, with a two-storey, polygonal bay of timber frame with large bay windows, under a gable with oversailing eaves. The rear of the garage block has a timber, plank pedestrian doorway alongside double plank doors for the vehicular entrance.

INTERIOR
The interior scheme is in an Arts and Crafts, Domestic Revival style, with extensive exposed timber and plaster decoration, and architectural set pieces including deep inglenooks fitted out as cosy corners in the principal rooms. The fireplaces, each different, are generally extensively carved from dark timber, with metal hoods of various designs. Doors are timber, fielded with moulded panels; those to the upper floor painted white. The entrance porch leads into a large, central reception hall, which is double height, top-lit by a multi-paned, flat lantern with timber mullions and transoms, set into a ceiling with exposed beams and joists. A galleried landing, with splat balusters forming the balustrade, between upright timbers with curved brackets, runs around two sides of the hall. The rear corner extends into a partly-enclosed seating area with bench seats and panelling under the windows. The main hall houses the stair, which has a short flight of five steps with a gradual curtail to the left, and then rises through two offset stages to the landing. The balustrade is formed from Jacobean-style newels with splat balusters between them. A small, two-light squinch window looks over the hall from the adjacent billiard room on the first half-landing. The dining room has a wide, canted bay window and a deep inglenook, canted, with a small fire window to one side, timber lined and with a built in fire surround and overmantel in the panelling. The drawing room has a similar arrangement but with the fireplace projecting, the whole tucked under a low ceiling in a panelled bay. The opposite end of the room has a second fireplace with copper inset and heavily carved surround, and terminates in a cosy corner set in the corner bay, which is set at 45 degrees to the house. This has fitted bench seating with panelling. The third of the principal rooms was constructed as the billiard room. This double-height room has a high, deeply-coved plaster ceiling with extensive plaster decoration, and a large, rectangular lantern formed from curved panels of etched glass with foliate motifs. The top lights are later replacements. There is further coloured glass in the clerestory lights. This room has a low, deep fireplace bay, the division from the rest of the room marked by classical pilasters and columns with Corinthian capitals on high plinths, with a plain entablature, above which is a plaster frieze depicting the story of Saint Wulfuna, after whom Wolverhampton is named. The nook thus created has a broad fireplace with tile inserts and built in shelving. The decorative plaster ceiling of the inglenook includes cartouches with coloured glass. The nook is flanked by doorways with elaborate, classical doorcases. One of the doors gives access into a bathroom, with an historic panelled timber partition to the WC, which includes coloured glazing. The former service rooms are ranged at the rear of the building, beyond a baize door, with the original kitchen and scullery now combined into a single space with modern fixtures and finishes. A quarry-tiled enclosed loggia forms a further working space. A pantry is lined in glazed brick.

The upper-floor rooms have a range of more modest fireplaces, each different in a variety of historicist styles, and moulded cornice and skirtings. The principal bedrooms have bespoke built-in cupboards and other storage furniture, including extensive overmantels with shelving, and small glazed cupboards. The first-floor corner study has a broad fireplace with overmantel and built-in cupboards and shelving, and has large, folding panels creating a moveable partition which allows the room to be opened to incorporate the large landing space. The principal bedroom has a small, two-light squinch window which looks over the hall below.

A partial basement runs under the former billiard room, with a brick-built setlas lined in quarry tiles in a smaller room at one end, alongside a wine cellar with a batten door, and a large open workshop space.

Attached at the north-western corner of the house is the coach house, which has garaging and storage on the ground floor, with further unimproved rooms above.

History

Tettenhall Court began as a C19 villa, in classical style, occupying a large plot on Wergs Road in Tettenhall, a suburb north-west of the centre of Wolverhampton. The building was one of a group of large houses ranged along the south side of Wergs Road, some set in large plots, including Tettenhall Court. The earlier house, with a simple, two-room plan and service rooms to the rear, was owned in the early years of the C20 by Frank Cooke, a local surgeon, and his wife Frances. At some point between 1904 and 1913, the Cookes engaged a local architect, William Johnson Harrison Weller (1866-1960), to remodel the front of the house, bringing its appearance more in line with current fashion.

William J Harrison Weller (1877-1960) was a member of a dynasty of Wolverhampton architects, founded in the late C18 by John Weller, who was a builder and canal engineer. His son established a firm of architects in 1855, in which he worked sometimes in partnership, sometimes as a sole practitioner. Both his sons, John Weller III and William Johnson Harrison Weller, joined him in his practice as John Weller and Sons at the beginning of the C20. William completed his apprenticeship in 1898, and thereafter undertook a wide range of commissions in his long career, including public buildings, social housing in the post-war period, commercial and industrial buildings. He is best known for his domestic buildings, of which he designed several dozen, including a number of large suburban houses; three of these are listed at Grade II. Weller worked in an Arts and Crafts style influenced by the likes of William Bidlake, a regional architect who worked extensively on similar commissions in the West Midlands, though Weller drew more closely on English Domestic architecture for his designs; and Edward Ould, who designed nearby Wightwick Manor, and collaborated on a book with J Parkinson, entitled ‘Old Cottages, Farm Houses and other Half-Timber Buildings in Shropshire, Herefordshire and Cheshire' published in 1904. William Weller is known to have possessed a copy of Ould and Parkinson’s book.

Weller’s remodelling of Tettenhall Court included the addition of a new timber-framed front to Wergs Road, extending the three bays forward in three stages, and adding a new gabled bay to the right. The ground-floor room in the new bay included a deep inglenook and cosy corner, in Arts and Crafts style, influenced by the local vernacular tradition, which was based on timber framing. The Cooke family did not remain at Tettenhall, and in 1913, the house was sold to Robert and Jane Lewis. Robert D Lewis was a manufacturer, specifically of ventilating air tubes, who had hitherto lived in nearby Bilston. Mr and Mrs Lewis commissioned William Weller to remodel and extend Tettenhall Court. Although Weller worked to some extent with the plan of the existing house, it was almost entirely rebuilt in a consistent, Domestic Revival style and with a single, coherent decorative scheme internally. The new house had irregular, timber-framed and brick elevations, with deep gables and tall stacks. The design included a pinwheel plan for the principal rooms, with service rooms ranged to the rear around a courtyard. The house was made to appear larger than reality by linking the coach house or motor house to the entrance elevation, and adding a screen wall on the opposite side of the house linking to a privy block. A small bothy or potting shed dating from the C19 was retained, and a sunken rock garden added to the lower portion of the rear garden.

The house has been little altered since its completion; the only significant change has been the removal of a partition between the former kitchen and scullery, and slight reordering of the pantries, to create a large kitchen-dining space.

Reasons for Listing

Tettenhall Court, an Arts and Crafts house constructed in 1913-1914 to designs by William Weller (1877-1960), is listed at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as a good Birmingham-style Arts and Crafts design by William Weller, a recognised regional architect of the period, with excellent massing, variety and detailing in its exterior, demonstrating real quality in architectural style;
* for the remarkable quality of the wealth of well-considered detail in the interior, which is full of deftly-handled architectural set-pieces, including cosy corners, squint windows onto the double-height hall and a fine staircase and gallery;
* for the very high quality of the craftsmanship demonstrated across the whole building;
* for the overall lack of alteration in the house, which survives almost exactly as it was when constructed.

Historic interest:
* as one of a number of houses built in similar style in suburbs in the West Midlands for successful industrialists, a distinct strand in the development of architectural design in the region.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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