The Salutation

Description

The Salutation is a completely new building designed for two bachelors. It is a rectangular house in the Queen Anne style with quoins, cornices and elaborate doorways. Its North side has a deep recess for internal lighting purposes, and it is linked to a lower servant’s wing which is in a vernacular style, giving the impression that the house is a late 17th century addition to a much earlier structure. The house is not simply imitation Georgian but has an ingenious and complex plan. A formal hall leads by a sequence of lobbies to the staircase, placed on the cross axis as at Homewood. The staircase rises to a book-landing, for the owners not only required a library downstairs but also an extension on the first floor. It is lit by the recess on the North front, and is overlooked by a balcony on the first floor landing. Each exterior elevation is varied, all have a central door but their surroundings are different; the centre of the entrance front projects for a width of 27 feet. The garden is now open to the public. (Amery et al., 1981, cat no.173)

The complexity of plan of the house and garden, the large, hipped roof and gigantic chimneystacks are completely un-eighteenth century, even though the house is Queen Anne in style and built in two shades of red brick with stone quoins. The service wing is articulated as a single-storey extension and on the north side the cubic mass of the house is cut above the ground-floor level to allow windows to light the large staircase concealed in the centre of the building.

At the end of the village street a wide gateway with a roof on a deep plaster cornice spanning the gap between two outbuildings and contained by a pair of dormer windows forms a picturesque entrance. The house is set off axis and a route marked by three additional brick gateways extends the entrance axis through the gardens crossing the south lawn which is raised to the level of the reception rooms. (Inskip, 1986, p.94)

1897–8 by Lutyens but little known and rarely published. It is one of his houses, between the early Surrey vernacular and later classicism, in which the influence of Art Nouveau and the more avant-garde English architects, such as E.S. Prior, may be identified. Designed for Archibald Grove, editor of the New Review and M.P.; Lutyens and his wife were family friends and often stayed here. The site was merely fields on an exposed hilltop, and Lutyens used the existing field boundaries to structure his design. Highly characteristic are the high walls to the main road, roughcast with a tile capping and silent about what lies behind. They curve in to a gatehouse range, long and low with a half-hipped tile roof. To the r., the lodge, indicated by chimneys, a dormer and just one window, tucked under the eaves. Steps up to an arched doorway with voussoirs of tile creasing. l., the stables, with a high loft dormer and an oculus. In the middle, the entrance is flanked by low rounded turrets, almost pushing themselves out of the walls, with tiny square windows under the eaves and conical roofs finishing in lead spikes. Above is a gabled dormer with a clock, and a weathervane. The composition is a vernacular version of Lutyens’s Georgian gatehouse at The Salutation of 1911. (Newman, 2013, p.539)

Bibliography

Amery, C., Richardson, M. and Stamp, G., (1981) Lutyens, the Work of the English Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944): Hayward Gallery London, 18 November 1981 – 31 January 1982. London: Arts Council of Great Britain.

Inskip, P. (1986) Edwin Lutyens: Architectural Monographs 6. 2nd edn. London: Academy Editions.

Newman J (2013) Kent: Northeast and East. The Buildings of England. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Also Cited In

Gradidge, R. (1982) Edwin Lutyens: Architect Laureate. London: Allen & Unwin.

Weaver, L. (1913) Houses and Gardens by E L Lutyens. London: Country Life.

Aslet, C. (1982) The Last Country Houses. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Butler, A., 1950. The architecture of Sir Edwin Lutyens: the Lutyens memorial series. Vol 1: Country Houses, Country Life: London and Scibners: New York.

Listing Grade

I, II, II, II

Listing Reference

1069643 1000940 1069644 1069645

Client

Gaspard Farrer