Surrey Church with Stunning Wall Paintings One of 2021 Listing Highlights
Stunning wall paintings in a Surrey church by little-known female artist, Lord Wandsworth College school in Hampshire, and a huge memorial cross carved into the Kent landscape are amongst some of the captivating historic sites listed across the South East in the past year.
85 historic places in the South East have been added to the National Heritage List for England during 2021. Looking back on the year, Historic England celebrates various sites that have gained protection.
St Mark’s, Upper Hale, Farnham, Surrey – listed at Grade II
St Mark the Evangelist opened in Upper Hale in 1883 to accommodate a growing local population. An extensive scheme of murals was painted on the chancel walls between 1911 and 1920 by Eleanor Catherine Wallace Milroy (1885-1966) – an artist and member of the congregation. As with most female artists of her day, Milroy is little documented. She was known as Kitty and was one of eight children born to the Reverend Andrew Wallace Milroy and Mary Elizabeth Rosher. The family moved from Hampshire to The Oast House in Upper Hale after the death of Rev. Milroy in 1902.
Kitty was an intermittent student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. The Slade was noted for turning out a number of talented young muralists and Mary Sargant Florence, a major woman artist and muralist, led a fresco and tempera painting course there. There are records of Kitty exhibiting paintings both locally and in London, and drawings of the St Mark’s frescos were exhibited in the 1923 Winter Exhibition at the Royal Academy. Her only other known fresco scheme was in the chancel of the chapel at St Elphin’s School in Matlock, Derbyshire, which she painted between 1921 and 1931. These frescos were lost when the chapel was enlarged in the early 1940s.
The side walls and east end of the chancel at St Mark’s are covered in colourful paintings of religious scenes, including the Annunciation. Milroy’s imagery appears to draw on works by Botticelli such as Primavera and Birth of Venus. Her depiction of The Song of Creation blends personifications of elements of the natural world with imagery taken directly from her surroundings, from local landscapes and flora to the faces of fellow congregation members. The figure of ‘Water’ is believed to have been modelled on the Milroy family gardener, Edwin Thomas Warner.
The murals suffered damage over time due to environmental conditions and underwent some retouching in the 1940s by local artist and friend of Milroy, Evelyn Cesar. The frescos have recently undergone specialist consolidation and conservation works.
Lord Wandsworth College, Long Sutton, Hook, Hampshire – listed at Grade II
Lord Wandsworth College is named after Sydney James Stern, a banker and Liberal MP who became a peer in 1895. As the MP for the rural Suffolk constituency of Stowmarket, he took an interest in agricultural affairs and was committed to improving the living conditions of the rural poor. Lord Wandsworth died in 1912 and left a generous bequest to set up a trust to educate children from agricultural families who had lost one or both parents. The Trustees purchased the site in 1913 and the main buildings were constructed in the following years led by architects Reginald Blomfield and Guy Dawber, drawing on vernacular and classical architectural styles.
The Lord Wandsworth Foundation was originally conceived along the lines of a model village, with the intention being that small groups of children would reside in cottages overseen by a housemaster and be taught on the local farm and at a central schoolhouse. By the 1920s the school was changing towards a more conventional public school with boarding houses and communal facilities. Further buildings were added to the site including the Dining Hall and further accommodation for boarders.
Overall, the school site has a varied yet harmonious arrangement of distinguished buildings which the current student population enjoys daily. The Foundation lives on, and has widened its mission to help children who have lost the support of one or both parents through death, divorce or separation and require a caring and supportive boarding environment in which to thrive.
The eight newly-listed buildings and two gates:
- Lodge House
- Administration Block
- Former Power House
- Dining Hall
- School House
- Shepewood House and Associated Garden Structures
- Junior House
- Former Engineering Block
- Main North Gates
- South Gates
Durbins, Guildford, Surrey – house upgraded to Grade II* / motor house listed Grade II
Durbins, Guildford, which was built in 1908 to 1909 to the design of the Bloomsbury Group artist and art critic Roger Fry (1866-1934), has been upgraded.
Fry was a champion of Post-Impressionism and is considered as one of the most influential 20th century British art critics. The house is renowned for its progressiveness and originality of design. It is designed in sections with split level planning. Built on a sloping site, Fry carefully considered the layout, ensuring that it brought the activities of all members of the family together around a galleried double-height living hall, capitalising on views outwards to the Surrey Hills, which were a subject of Fry’s paintings.
The house interior retains original mosaics and murals by Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, which are the earliest known examples of domestic decoration by these Bloomsbury Group artists that are still ‘in-situ’. Many original features survive, inside and out, including its parquet floors, cast-iron radiators, servant bell indicator board, original doors and brass door furniture.
Durbins’ garage, or ‘motor car house’, has also been listed at Grade II. It is a very rare, prefabricated timber structure with a gabled roof, and looks like a timber-framed building of an earlier era. It has had very few alterations since it was erected in the 1920s.
Romano-British Pottery Site, Prehistoric Ring-Ditches and Enclosures, Including Medieval Ridge and Furrow, Lower Farm, Nuneham Courtenay, Oxfordshire – Scheduled Monument
This scheduled site in rural Oxfordshire includes the buried remains of a large Romano-British pottery kiln site dating from the early 2nd century AD to the 4th containing potentially between 40 and 50 kilns.
The Oxford Roman pottery industry was one of the largest of its kind in Roman Britain, with sites mainly on the east bank of the River Thames. Approximately 30 pottery production sites are known in this area.
Underlying the Roman remains at Nuneham Courtenay are a number of probable Iron Age ring ditches and enclosures. The prehistoric and Roman remains survive as buried archaeological deposits revealed by partial excavation and subsequent geophysical surveys.
Overlaying part of the site to the west is an area of medieval ridge and furrow, marks left by consistent ploughing patterns, surviving as earthworks. The high degree of loss of medieval ridge and furrow over the last half century means that surviving examples are nationally significant, particularly if physically associated with other archaeological features like as at this site.
Shoreham Memorial Cross, Sevenoaks, Kent – Scheduled Monument
The Shoreham Memorial Cross was the idea of Shoreham resident Samuel Cheeseman, a father who lost two sons in the First World War. It is carved into the chalk of the hillside and carefully edged with chalk blocks. It was designed to be seen from the Shoreham War Memorial in the valley below and was carefully shaped and scaled to appear symmetrical.
It was conceived as a permanent testament to all those from the parish who lost their lives in the First World War. Men, women and children from the village worked together to complete the cross, which was finished in September 1921. The inscription on the nearby War Memorial reads ‘Remember as you look at the cross on the hill those who gave their lives for their country 1914-19’. Every year after it was completed Mr Cheeseman would pull a small cannon up the hill to the cross in an act of remembrance for his sons.
This is one of only two memorial crosses of its type known to survive and is an eloquent illustration of the impact of the conflict on this community.
Submarine Memorial Chapel of St Nicholas – listed at Grade II and Submariners' Memorial – listed at Grade II, Fort Blockhouse, Gosport, Hampshire
Fort Blockhouse is an 18th-century artillery fort and 20th-century submarine base; a location central to the defence of Portsmouth Harbour over many centuries. As part of the Gosport Heritage Action Zone Historic England reassessed the area, resulting in new listings including a chapel dedicated to St Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors, and a nearby memorial.
The Anglican chapel was erected in 1917 to commemorate submariners who lost their lives during the First World War, the first conflict in which submarines would play a significant military role. Submarines were often tasked with defending Atlantic merchant shipping convoys against German U-boat attacks. It was a hazardous occupation. In the course of the First World War around one third of all Submarine Service personnel were lost: 54 boats, 138 officers and 1225 men.
The chapel is a modest building with an elegant interior. It features a barrel-vaulted ceiling, and good quality stained glass windows dedicated to individual submariners and submarine squadrons. It is exceptionally rare as a chapel built in England specifically to serve as a memorial to submariners, and all the more significant for its location at the principal base and spiritual home of Britain’s Submarine Service during the 20th century, from where so many sailed to serve, and die, for their country.
The memorial has a life-size relief of a submariner, inspired by the one featured on the Combined Services Memorial in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. This was modelled on Leading Seaman Reginald Read (died 1987). He was a torpedo operator during the Second World War and served on HMS Sealion, Seadog, Uther, Storm and Token from 1939 up until he was discharged in 1947. Replica statuettes have been sold all over the world, making Read a worldwide icon and the unofficial representative of the Submarine Service.
The Brown Jug public house, Broadstairs, Kent – listed at Grade II
The Brown Jug was originally constructed as a farm cottage, most likely in the 18th century. The building has seen multiple phases of development which are visible in its surviving historic fabric, and it is still possible see its original, simple two-room plan, particularly at ground floor level.
The building was likely converted to pub use in the late 18th or early 19th century, and documents of 1795 refer to the building as the Queen’s Arms Tap, and in 1813, an auction sale advertisement refers to it as The Brown Jug. Externally, the 18th century fabric of the building survives in the knapped, or shaped, flint walls, a traditional Kent technique.
Inside significant 18th-century and 19th-century features survive, including lath and plaster walls. In the pub’s more recent history its interiors have hardly altered since the 1960s, in line with the wishes of the previous licensee, who ran the pub until it closed in 2019. There are distinctive mid-20th century features in many rooms including fireplaces, cornicing, dado rails and panelling.
Roman Catholic Church of St Boniface, Southampton, Hampshire – listed at Grade II
This inter-war church was designed in 1927 by the notable early 20th-century architect Wilfred Mangan - one of several churches he designed for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth. The church has been listed as a good example of his work. The church was created in a Neo-Byzantine style and has an exuberant and well-detailed design, especially evident on the front of the church. Above the main entrance is a life-size stone sculpture of St Boniface, a replacement from 1954 after the original oak statue disintegrated.
Some of the joinery was undertaken by Robert Thompson, also known as the Mouseman of Yorkshire, and his signature carved mouse motif can be found on the interior of one of the side-doors within the west-end porch.
Windleshaw House, Withyham, East Sussex – listed at Grade II
Windleshaw House was built in 1907-1908, designed by the Arts and Crafts designer and architect W A S Benson as a country residence for himself and his wife Venetia.
It has been listed at Grade II as it is one of the finest surviving houses by the architect. His idiosyncratic design approach appears in surviving details such as the windows, lighting and internal fittings. The elaborate cast-iron windows which survive throughout the house were designed by Benson as bespoke examples of the patent version sold more widely.
The principal rooms remain largely as they were originally planned, retaining features including panelling, window settings, and other joinery, together with chimneypieces, again designed by Benson for the house. The principal staircase features a Benson lamp and provides an elegant and original centrepiece to the house.
While the planning of the house and garden powerfully reflects the couple’s manner of living and entertaining, the house’s features and fittings link to Benson’s influential and prolific design work and to the work of Morris & Co, which Benson was closely associated with for many years.
