Saintoft Lodge, including associated garden shed, gate piers and railings, Pickering, North Yorkshire

Summary

Gate lodge, 1888, by W H Herbert Marten for Alderman Frederick Priestman of Bradford.

Description

Gate Lodge, 1888, by W H Herbert Marten for Alderman Frederick Priestman of Bradford.

MATERIALS: coursed quarry-faced stone block walls, with ashlar dressings. Red-tile fish-scale roof with decorative terracotta ridges and finials. Cast-iron rainwater goods.

PLAN: two-bay rectangular-plan with a slightly off-centre entrance to the west elevation. The entrance, via an open porch is direct into the southern bay, this having the unenclosed central stair to the attic. To the rear (east) is a kitchen and pantry under a catslide roof. The northern bay has a veranda to the west elevation.

EXTERIOR: the building is in a cottage-orné, Arts and Crafts style. It is quioned and asymmetric. The windows are generally divided up with a large lower casement set beneath a row of smaller fixed lights, normally three; they have stone sills and Arts and Crafts-style leaded glass lights with stained-glass flowering shrub motifs, except those in the attic gables. The front elevation faces west, overlooking the former carriage drive, with a secondary formal elevation overlooking the road passing to the south.

West: this is of two-bays with a projecting porch slightly displaced off-centre to the south, flanked by two small windows to the ground floor main elevation, that to the north bay looking into the veranda. The porch rises to a gable projecting out from the attic, this having a small window. The porch has an open doorway in the form of a depressed arch with quarry-faced voussoirs, which have an ashlar soffit and moulded edges that terminate in chamfered stops, above a slightly projecting plinth. The interior of the porch has a red quarry-tiled floor with alternate black tile edging and is lit by a lead-glazed window to the left and an open window space to the right that has a raised balustrade, with large engaged vase balusters to the jambs, and two scroll brackets supporting the sill. The half-glazed, timber-panelled front door has a large central clear glass panel separated from margin glazing by narrow glazing bars, this margin glazing being blue stained-glass decorated with clear white leaves, with square red and clear corner panes. Its doorframe features carved detailing and a blanked fanlight. The veranda is of an open timber-frame with similar carved detailing; it has a cat-slide, half-hipped roof with scalloped facia boards. Its raised floor is red tiled with edge tiles decorated with a twisted rope motif, and is partially enclosed by plain timber splat railings.

South: this has a canted-bay window with scalloped facia boards and a hipped fish-scale tiled roof. The attic window directly above has a depressed arch of quarry-faced voussoirs, this having two main lights with a row of smaller panes filling the arched head, this window being one of the few to lack stained glass. To its right is a later inserted bathroom window, which is plain glazed. The attic window sits on a string course, a second narrower string course being above the windows. The upper string course is set below a row of stone corbels, which support an open-framed gable piece, the tie-beam of which is decorated with four-petal florets, the roof verge is fitted with chamfered and stopped barge boards. A tall stone-built chimney rises from the junction between the main roof and the shallower-pitched cat-slide roof over the kitchen. The kitchen window has a pair of casements including stained-glass below a row of four smaller fixed lights.

North: this is similar to the south elevation except that instead of a canted bay, the ground-floor has a central three-light window that has an ashlar surround, beneath a drip mould and a four-centred relieving arch and instead of the kitchen window, the pantry (which is set back) has a small fly-screened window and two ventilation slits.

East: the lean-to kitchen-pantry spans approximately two-thirds of the rear elevation; it has an off-centre five-panelled timber door with a small casement window to the right. The eaves are finished with plain barge boards covering the rafter ends. A rectangular section, stone chimney stack with plinths, architrave, frieze and cornice, rises from each rear corner of the main roof; the right-hand chimney stack has original pale-yellow terracotta castellated chimney pots.

INTERIOR: the ground floor has a simple three-room arrangement with a parlour, drawing room and kitchen. The parlour is entered directly from the front door; it has a mid-C20 fireplace and an open string staircase against the north wall. The staircase is well finished with a pair of turned balusters per step, a plain timber handrail, and has a substantial turned and moulded newel post. A cupboard space is formed beneath in tongue and groove panelling and is accessed by a simple plank door with strap hinges. A door to the left of the stairs, accesses the drawing room; it has a moulded plaster cornice and a late-C19 cast-iron fireplace with a marble mantle and fire surround in the east wall, flanked by an original wall cupboard. The kitchen is accessed from the parlour and the rear door is situated towards the north-east corner. A door in the north wall, gives access to a small pantry; it has shelves against the west and north walls, with a fly-mesh window vent in the north wall, which is closed by a timber shutter on strap hinges, and is lit by a small window in the east wall. The ceilings of the rear rooms have a half-slope beneath the cat-slide roof, and generally, the building retains original joinery including doors and skirting boards.

The attic floor is accessed from a small landing at the top of the stairs. A narrow passageway to the right is formed by a panelled timber screen and gives access to the master bedroom and a secondary bathroom. A door to the left leads into the second bedroom. The master bedroom has an irregular plan, with projections over the stairs and the porch; the north wall adjacent to the stairs is formed by a panelled timber screen. The second bedroom has a corner fireplace with a late-C19 cast-iron fire surround in the north-east corner. The bathroom has been formed by partitioning off part of the master bedroom and has modern bathroom fittings. The ceilings of all of the attic rooms are formed within the slope of the soffit of the roof.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: includes a garden shed, a wrought-iron five-bar deer-park fence with a wrought-iron gate set between faceted cast-iron gateposts, and a pair of low curving stone walls terminating in stone piers, which support decorative cast-iron spear railings on either side of the former carriage road gate.

Garden shed: has single-storey rectangular-plan, with a gabled red fish-tile clad roof that matches the lodge. The main elevation has a central plank stable door, flanked to either side by small windows with hit and miss panels, and the remaining elevations are all blind. It has a cast-iron flue rising off a brick plinth that vents a corner set-pot hearth within. The interior has an earth and stone floor, and an un-lined common-rafter roof.

History

Saintoft Lodge was built as a gate lodge to the Elleron Lodge shooting estate in 1888. The origins of the shooting estate are unclear, a map surveyed between 1848 and 1849 shows an area of low moorland with relatively small fields and a small farmstead; however, by 1864, the estate and a hunting lodge called Elleron Lodge was the property of John Watson, a solicitor from Pickering, who had set about developing a designed landscape around the house that was largely complete by the early 1870s.

In May 1882 the estate was sold to Frederick Priestman, a wealthy Quaker mill owner from Bradford whose family originally hailed from Thornton-le-Dale near Pickering, and who used it as his country residence. The original carriage drive through the designed landscape was a modest 1.25km in length and did not have an entrance lodge. Priestman extended it to 2km by building an extension through the Roman Camps Plantation as an aggrandisement to meet both his own aspirations and the expectations of the visitors to a country estate of this period. Saintoft Lodge was the gate lodge set at the start of this new drive with a bay window and a veranda overlooking the entrance. It was designed by the Bradford architect W H Herbert Marten in the fashionable cottage-orné Arts and Crafts-style, set within a substantial cottage garden that was enclosed by deer park railings, and is shown in a contemporary 1888 illustration in the respected journal: The Architect.

The design of the lodge appears to have been influenced by Priestman’s philanthropic beliefs as the size of rooms were much more generous than other contemporary lodges. Priestman sold the estate in 1908 and it has passed through numerous ownerships since. Saintoft Lodge has remained relatively unaltered, but the former carriage drive now terminates approximately 140m north of the lodge.

Frederick Priestman (1836-1934) was the second son of the highly respected Quaker worsted mill owner John Priestman, and lived at Pierrepoint House, Bradford. He inherited his father’s business in 1854 and very actively used his wealth for philanthropic purposes. He was a progressive man who was largely responsible for Bradford becoming the first municipal authority to obtain electric lighting. He promoted education and was a supporter of the Day School movement, and in 1883 on becoming mayor of Bradford, he arranged at his own cost, for three trains to take his 1,100 employees on a day trip to Scarborough. He was actively involved in the running and formation of numerous local and national charitable bodies, including the Bradford Band of Hope, the Friends Provident Institution, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the association that later became the Royal National Institute for the Blind, and the Bradford branch of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute.

Reasons for Listing

Saintoft Lodge, including associated garden shed, gate piers and railings, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a good-quality, relatively early exemplar of a gate lodge in cottage-orné style, which became a fashionable architectural choice for gate lodges in the late C19;
* it is a well-considered design that exhibits the five main principles of Arts and Crafts architecture (clarity of form, variety of materials, asymmetry, traditional construction, and traditional craftsmanship) and was individually recognised and illustrated in The Architect in 1888;
* the interior remains largely unaltered and retains notable features, including fireplaces, built-in cupboards and an open-string stair;
* the associated gate piers, railings and contemporary garden shed in matching cottage-orné style together form a visual, contextual and historical group.

Historic interest:

* the lodge’s atypically generous and well-proportioned rooms reflect its Quaker owner’s Frederick Priestman’s philanthropic beliefs and attitudes to his workforce, and his wider progressive work in bettering not only the living conditions of his employees, but also the working class in Bradford.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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