| Goddards | |
| Type: | Country house |
| Coordinates: | 51.1975°N -0.3992°W |
| Location: | Abinger Common, Surrey |
| Built: | 18991900 |
| Architect: | Edwin Lutyens |
| Architecture: | Arts and Crafts movement |
| Governing Body: | Landmark Trust |
| Owner: | Lutyens Trust |
| Designation1: | Grade II* |
| Designation1 Offname: | Goddards |
| Designation1 Date: | 7 February 1972 |
Goddards is a Grade II*-listed house in Abinger Common, Surrey, England. It was designed by Edwin Lutyens in 1898–1900 in the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement. It was built "as a home of rest to which ladies of small means might repair for holiday" for shipping magnate Frederick Mirrielees. The west-facing courtyard garden was designed by Gertrude Jekyll. In 1910, Lutyens extended the building and adapted it as a private residence.
Goddards was given to the Lutyens Trust in 1991 and has been leased to the Landmark Trust since 1996. A restoration project took place in the 1990s and the building is open to visitors by prior arrangement. Goddards is the headquarters of the Lutyens Trust.
The land for Goddards was originally part of the Wotton Estate, owned by the Evelyn family. The name is from "Goddards Cottage", which dates from the 17th century and still stands to the southeast of the Lutyens house. The plot is on Abinger Common in Surrey, northwest of Leith Hill, and is almost above ordnance datum.
In 1898, shipping magnate Frederick Mirrielees commissioned Edwin Lutyens to design a "home of rest to which ladies of small means might repair for holiday." Mirrielees specified that the building should consist of two small side cottages linked by a common room.[1] The majority of the women who stayed at Goddards were single and were generally employed as nurses or governesses. At Goddards they were able to socialise, read and enjoy music and games together.[1] The building was also used as a rest home for soldiers injured in the Second Boer War.
In 1910, Mirrielees commissioned Lutyens to convert Goddards into a residence for his son, Donald, and daughter-in-law, Mary Pangbourne. The architect extended the two wings, creating a dining room and a library on the ground floor and two new bedrooms on the first floor. The modifications included partitioning the gallery into three bedrooms for domestic servants. A further bedroom was added in the north wing; central heating and electrical wiring were installed for the first time. Lutyens also erected the timber-framed, 17th century barn, now the house known as "High Barn", which he relocated from Slinfold, West Sussex.
Frederick Mirrielees died in January 1914[2] [3] and Goddards was leased to the banker, Arthur Gibbs. Mirrielees' widow, Mary, died in 1925 and, two years later, Gibbs purchased the house from her family.
Bill and Noeline Hall bought Goddards in 1953. They were responsible for commissioning the detached garage, designed by Wildblood and Hall in 1981. In the same year, the Halls hosted an exhibition on Lutyens, which helped to revive interest both in the architect's work and in the wider Arts and Crafts movement. Their son Lee, an architect, died in 1988 and the couple donated the house to the Lutyens Trust in 1991 in his memory. The plaque in the common room by Richard Kindersley, is also dedicated to him.[1] Goddards was opened to pre-booked visitors in 1991.[1] [4]
The Landmark Trust leased the house from the Lutyens Trust in 1996 and began a programme of restoration to return it to its 1910 configuration. The work included the relocation of the kitchen, which had been moved in 1953, and the removal of partitions that had divided some of the rooms into smaller spaces. As part of the same project, the external brickwork and stonework was repaired, including the partial rebuilding of one of the chimneys on the north side of the house. The house was reopened to pre-booked visitors in 1997. Goddards was given grade II* listed building status in February 1972.
Stylistically, the house sits within the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement and combines Tudor and vernacular influences with contemporary ideas from the end of the 19th century.[1] For Goddards, Lutyens followed the philosophy of his mentor, Randolph Caldecott, in creating a traditional country building and he may also have been influenced by the design of local almshouses. The materials used in the building contribute rustic textures and colours. The walls are constructed of colourwashed rough-cast stone and the prominent chimneys are built of brick. The clay tiles of the main roof are plain, but the lower courses are slabs of Horsham Stone, which form a pentice above the canted bay windows. The house is built around three sides of a courtyard, with splayed wings, likened to a "butterfly", oriented towards the late-afternoon and evening sun. Although the general plan is symmetrical, Daniel O'Neill notes: "No sooner did Lutyens set up a symmetrical scheme than he started to break it down in a way seemingly arbitrary, though actually carefully controlled". For example, the entrance from the west-facing courtyard is positioned at the south end of the common room, rather than in the centre, and this imbalance is accentuated by a dormer window above. O'Neill observes that these and similar asymmetric features temper the dominance of the tall, paired chimney stacks.
Since its original intended use was as a holiday home, the Mirrilees family did not request luxury furnishings. As the writer, Dominic Bradbury, notes: "The restrained and sometimes utilitarian interiors let the craftsmanship shine through." The historian, Jane Ridley, notes that the internal features such as the timberwork, larder ventilators and decorative ironmongery were influenced by ideas later expouned in Gertrude Jekyll's book, Old West Surrey, published in 1904. The common room, modelled on an open medieval hall, is typical of this vernacular aesthetic, with exposed timber beams and a large fireplace at one end.
The skittle alley, in the southeastern corner of the house, is part of the original construction and would have been considered fashionable at the end of the 19th century. The roof of the single-storey arcade is supported by brick arches which lead into the orchard and which, according to Dominic Bradbury, "help to define a functional, yet quietly beautiful space." The carvings on the walls were taken from the demolished Wandsworth manor house and are dated 1707. The original skittles and balls are still kept at Goddards.[1]
The majority of the oil paintings at Goddards are by Charles Augustus Lutyens (18291917) and have been lent to the Landmark Trust by the Lutyens family. Several of the watercolours are by Ethel Hall. In the library is a likeness of Edwin Lutyens by Meredith Frampton, which is an engraving of the portrait in the Art Workers' Guild. In the sitting room is a portrait of Noeline Hall by Will Longstaff. The datestone above the front door bears the letters "MCM" which represent the year of completion of the house (1900) in Roman numerals and also the initials of the Mirrielees' daughter, Margaret Celia Mirrielees. The organ pipes carved into the stone are a pun on the family surname "Mirrielees merry lees".
The west-facing courtyard garden sits between the two wings of the house and is overlooked by all the major rooms.[1] Designed by Gertrude Jekyll, it was intended to be low maintenance and lacks the large herbaceous borders and pergola structures typical of her work. The focal point is a well pond in the centre, surrounded by silvery-grey foliage that adds structure to the space. A vine planted by Jekyll in 1900 still survives.[1] According to Judith Tankard, the "curiously shaped paving stones [in the west garden]… give the space an architectural character."
The east garden is screened from the road by a boundary hedge containing beech, elm, hawthorn and holly, thought to pre-date the house. The original yew hedges, planted in 1898, are still in place. The outer garden is defined by shrubbery on the north side, a ha-ha to the west and the present car park to the south.
Millstones are set into the paving in all three garden areas. The largest, in the east garden, is in diameter and is thought to have come from a bark-grinding mill at Godalming. The smallest stones, in the west courtyard, are in diameter and may have formed part of hand-powered mill. Most of the stones are thought to have originated from quarries in Derbyshire, although five are thought to be burrstones from France.
In his 2005 book, English gardens in the twentieth century, Tim Richardson writes: "Orchards and Goddards, particularly, seem to suggest both grandeur and humility at the same time – the Holy Grail for the English sensibility." In his 2009 book, The iconic house, Dominic Bradbury says of Goddards: "the nature of its use led to the supremacy of an almost Shaker-like simplicity within, rather than the atmosphere of Lutyens' great country houses." He further comments: "This intriguing combination of old and new – within a house that has a foot in both past and future – makes Goddards so fresh and powerful."
In Landmark : A history of Britain in 50 buildings, published in 2015, the architectural historian, Anna Keay, writes: "Goddards embodied the Arts and Crafts ideal of an honest, unpretentious home." The writer, Alan Powers, considers the building to be one of three houses that exemplify the Arts and Crafts movement: "Goddards… is a good representative of the period… when [Lutyens] came closest to the Modernist idea."
Others have been more critical. Daniel O'Neill writes: "The feeling is of congested display and pictorial gymnastics for its own sake. There is so often this conflict in Lutyens' early work – where admiration for his inventive ideas and the rigor of carrying them out are at odds with exasperation at their ostentation." Of the wing extensions added during the 1910 remodelling, he comments: "One cannot help thinking that Lutyens was trying too hard for sculptural effect in the build-up of small roof sections." In contrast, the architectural historian, Gavin Stamp, writes: "These new end wings are superb examples of Lutyens' handling of form, with wall planes stepped back by slated slopes... – a system of sculpting mass similar to that employed on the Cenotaph a decade later."