Ruckmans

Description

Lutyens had enlarged an existing farmhouse in 1894 to create Ruckmans, interesting for his first use of three gables on the garden side. He was asked to add a music room in 1902 since it was said that the earlier rooms he had built were too low to hear music in. He joined the music room, which is on a podium, to the main house by a low covered passage. Thus it stands proudly from the main house and is in a different style with tall, arched, many-paned sash windows which contrast with the horizontal leaded windows of the earlier house, although the simple hips of the roof marry perfectly with the earlier roofs. (Amery et al., 1981, cat no. 129)

RUCKMANS, an enlargement of a row of existing cottages by Lutyens, 1894, his second full job after Crooksbury; they survive as the entrance hall and staircase to the new house and, as in many of his earliest houses, old and new are almost indistinguishable on the entrance side. Roderick Gradidge thought this ‘one of the first houses which really show the Lutyens style’. The new work on the garden side is a deep addition, tile-hung all over, three storeys with a ground-floor loggia behind arches and three tall gables. At the base of the gables strip windows running round corners, long casements below, all characteristic of his earliest phase. The music room, added to the end of the old part, in 1902, is equally characteristic: Neo-Georgian, of local stone with brick dressing and tall sash windows with segmental heads. Part of the Jekyll gardens survives. Lutyens also designed (c. 1895) part of the courtyard of farm buildings, including a cottage, and also an isolated cottage with a big square chimney on the other side of the drive. (O’Brien et al., 2022, pp.562-3)

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.

O’Brien, C., Nairn, I. and Cherry, B. (2022) Surrey. Pevsner Architectural Guides: 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.

Nairn, I., Pevsner, N. (1971) Surrey (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England). 2nd edn. Yale University Press.

L, W., 1913. A LESSER COUNTRY HOUSE OF THE XXVIITH CENTURY: RUCKMANS, OAKWOOD HILL, SURREY, AND ITS ENLARGEMENT BY MR. E. L. LUTYENS. Country Life (Archive : 1901 – 2005), 34(863), pp. 7-8, 11.

Listing Grade

II,II

Listing Reference

1028826 1189533

Client

Miss Lyell