Woodhouse Copse | |
---|---|
Location | Holmbury St Mary |
Coordinates | 51°11′45″N0°24′51″W / 51.19583°N 0.41417°W Coordinates: 51°11′45″N0°24′51″W / 51.19583°N 0.41417°W |
OS grid reference | TQ1079445320 |
Area | Surrey |
Built | 1926 |
Architect | Oliver Hill |
Architectural style(s) | Arts and Crafts |
Owner | Monika Saunders |
Listed Building – Grade II | |
Official name: Woodhouse Copse | |
Designated | 4 August 1997 |
Reference no. | 1245123 |
Woodhouse Copse is an Arts and Crafts style house in the village of Holmbury St Mary, Surrey, England. It is a Grade II listed building, [1] with gardens originally planted by garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. Country house opera is performed by Woodhouse Opera at the annual Woodhouse Summer Opera Festival.
Built in 1926, the house was designed by architect Oliver Hill for the stage and film actor Amy Brandon Thomas and her husband William Deane Barnes-Brand. [1] In 1939 Hill built another house for the couple, Burrows Wood in Gomshall, Surrey, which is also Grade II listed. [2]
Woodhouse Copse is a large cottage orné, originally with a thatched roof, [1] built in brick with weatherboarding and a large, central stone chimney. Hill was influenced by Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll in his use of local materials and vernacular architecture. [3] However, his almost sculptural shaping of the thatch was distinctive. [4] He built similar houses elsewhere in the 1920s, including at Croyde, Devon and Knowle in the Midlands. Woodhouse Copse also featured timbers retrieved from an old mill at Coulsdon, as commemorated in a verse engraved in 1925 on a window. [3] The central shaft from the mill was incorporated into a spiral staircase. The house's thatch was later removed. [1]
Hill laid out the garden with its terraces, drystone walls and circular steps. Over 1926–28, Jekyll drew up planting plans for the flowerbeds, and supplied the plants from her nursery at Munstead Wood, Surrey, [5] where Amy Brandon Thomas was a frequent visitor. [6]
Musical performances are organised by Music at Woodhouse, [7] which is led by Monika Saunders, the house's owner. She converted an indoor swimming pool into a concert room and created a lakeside amphitheatre for opera. [8] Besides the annual opera festival, concerts are held throughout the year. There is a focus on using young performers, [9] including some drawn from the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. [7]
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens, was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings. In his biography, the writer Christopher Hussey wrote, "In his lifetime (Lutyens) was widely held to be our greatest architect since Wren if not, as many maintained, his superior". The architectural historian Gavin Stamp described him as "surely the greatest British architect of the twentieth century".
Gertrude Jekyll was a British horticulturist, garden designer, craftswoman, photographer, writer and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and wrote over 1,000 articles for magazines such as Country Life and William Robinson's The Garden. Jekyll has been described as "a premier influence in garden design" by British and American gardening enthusiasts.
The year 1897 in architecture involved some significant events.
Woodhouse may refer to:
Abinger is a large, well-wooded and mostly rural civil parish that lies between the settlements of Dorking, Shere and Ewhurst in the district of Mole Valley, Surrey, England. It adjoins Wotton Common on the same side of Leith Hill and includes Abinger Hammer, Sutton Abinger, Abinger Common, Forest Green, Walliswood, Oakwood Hill and some outskirts of Holmbury St Mary. More than half of the parish lies on the Greensand Ridge, while the remainder is divided between the Vale of Holmesdale and the North Downs.
Holmbury St. Mary is a village in Surrey, England centered on shallow upper slopes of the Greensand Ridge. Its developed area is a clustered town 4.5 miles (7 km) southwest of Dorking and 8 miles (13 km) southeast of Guildford. Most of the village is in the borough of Guildford, within Shere civil parish. Much of the east side of the village street is in the district of Mole Valley, within Abinger civil parish.
Ewhurst is a rural village and civil parish in the borough of Waverley in Surrey, England. It is located 8.3 miles (13.4 km) south-east of Guildford, 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Cranleigh and 4.5 miles (7.2 km) south of Shere.
Peaslake, Hoe and Colmar's Hill are in the centre of the Surrey Hills AONB and mid-west of the Greensand Ridge about 5 miles (8.0 km) ESE of the county town of Guildford, England point-to-point. Surrounded by denser pine and other coniferous forest-clad hills, the three conjoined settlements have a small core in Peaslake itself with the amenities of a village but are otherwise lightly scattered settlements at a higher elevation than the centre of Shere, the civil parish.
Hestercombe House is a historic country house in the parish of West Monkton in the Quantock Hills, near Taunton in Somerset, England. The house is a Grade II* listed building and the estate is Grade I listed on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.
Busbridge is a village and civil parish in the borough of Waverley in Surrey, England that adjoins the town of Godalming. It forms part of the Waverley ward of Bramley, Busbridge and Hascombe. It was until the Tudor period often recorded as Bushbridge and was a manor and hamlet of Godalming until gaining an ecclesiastical parish in 1865 complemented by a secular, civil parish in 1933. Gertrude Jekyll lived at Munstead Wood in the Munstead Heath locality of the village. Philip Carteret Webb and Chauncy Hare Townshend, the government lawyer/antiquarian and poet respectively owned its main estate, Busbridge House, the Busbridge Lakes element of which is a private landscape garden and woodland that hosts a wide range of waterfowl.
Oliver Falvey Hill was a British architect, landscape architect, and garden designer. Starting as a follower of Edwin Lutyens, in the 1920s he gained a reputation as a designer of country houses. He turned towards architectural modernism in the 1930s, though in doing so he did not abandon his appreciation of natural materials. His plans made abundant use of curving lines. He also became known for luxurious interior decoration. Hill was the architect of the Midland Hotel in Morecambe, Lancashire and of the British pavilion at the Paris Exposition of 1937.
Seale is a village in Surrey, England. Seale covers most of the civil parish of Seale and Sands and the steep slope and foot of the south side of the Hog's Back as well as a large hill which exceeds it – as such is part of the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Amy Marguerite Brandon Thomas was an English film and stage actress. She was the daughter of the playwright Brandon Thomas. She is also known as Amy Brandon-Thomas.
Munstead Wood is a Grade I listed house and garden in Munstead Heath, Busbridge on the boundary of the town of Godalming in Surrey, England, 1 mile (1.6 km) south-east of the town centre. The garden was created first, by garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, and became widely known through her books and prolific articles in magazines such as Country Life. The Arts and Crafts style house, in which Jekyll lived from 1897 to 1932, was designed by architect Edwin Lutyens to complement the garden.
Joldwynds is a modernist style house in Holmbury St Mary, Surrey, England, designed by architect Oliver Hill for Wilfred Greene, 1st Baron Greene. Completed in 1932, it is a Grade II listed building.
Orchards is an Arts and Crafts style house in Bramley in Surrey, England. It is on Bramley's boundary with Busbridge and 1 mile (1.6 km) south-east of Godalming town centre. Described by English Heritage as the first major work of architect Edwin Lutyens, it is a Grade I listed building. The gardens are Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The property is privately owned.
Marylands is a Spanish-style country house on Pitch Hill, a rural part of Ewhurst, Surrey, England. It is a Grade II* listed building, designed during 1929–31 by architect Oliver Hill. The gardens were planted by Gertrude Jekyll.
Tigbourne Court is an Arts and Crafts style country house in Wormley, Surrey, England, 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Witley. It was designed by architect Edwin Lutyens, using a mixture of 17th-century style vernacular architecture and classical elements, and has been called "probably his best" building, for its architectural geometry, wit and texture. It was completed in 1901. English Heritage have designated it a Grade I listed building.
Busbridge War Memorial is a First World War memorial in the churchyard of St John's Church in village of Busbridge in Surrey, south-eastern England. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, it is a grade II* listed building.
The Jekyll Memorial, Busbridge, Surrey, England commemorates the gardener Gertrude Jekyll and members of her family. Designed by Jekyll's friend and collaborator, Edwin Lutyens and constructed in 1932, it is a Grade II listed structure.