Le Bois des Moutiers

Description

The Mallets were Protestant bankers who came to Lutyens through knowing Mrs Earle, Lady Emily’s aunt. Lutyens retained the 19th-century Normandy villa but made many alterations adding a new music room to the west and a staircase and great chimney to the front elevation. The staircase projection has four oriels, like the ones at Rosneath but much longer, and probably derived from both Shaw and Mackmurdo’s at No.25 Cadogan Gardens. Behind this projection the rest of the house runs through as a flat-faced block, with leaded mullion windows under a great tiled roof. This smoothness is soon broken by a great chimney breast which projects forward to form an enclosure to the entrance court. By contrast the East elevation is an early example of Lutyens’s more extreme Mannerism, comparable to the work of Bereford Pite of exactly this date. A curved chimney, used as a gable end runs up two storeys offering a blank face. Below are two small gabled wings, tile hung, with stone cornices curving down in a semi-circle. Between the gables at ground floor window height is a balcony striped with red tile courses and beneath this a stone cornice with great Michelangelesque voussoirs. It is difficult to understand why this delightful house is so little known. As Hussey remarks: ‘In this design whether deriving from Paris or Glasgow occurs one of rare instances in his work of the influence of nouveau art modernism’. (Amery et al., 1981, cat no. 119)

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.

Also Cited In

Gradidge, R. (1980) Dream houses: The Edwardian ideal. London: Constable & co. ltd.

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.

Listing Grade

Monument Historique

Listing Reference

PA00101078

Client

Guillaume Mallet