NHER 58819 (Building record) - South Lodge to Cromer Hall

July 2012. Listed. Grade II.
List description (S1):
Estate lodge, dating from c.1879, of knapped flint with limestone dressings.
HISTORY: To the south-west of the town centre lies the Cromer Hall estate. Cromer Hall was erected in circa 1829. In the late C19 the Bond Cabbell family, owners of the estate, initiated a number of estate building projects including the construction of new lodges at the north and south entrances to the estate on Hall Road. They are believed to have been designed by the architect David Brandon who is known to have worked on a number of Norfolk country houses, including Cromer Hall. Brandon designed Chesterfield Villas and Chesterfield Lodge; a terrace of houses and a detached house on West Street in Cromer which were completed in 1879. South Lodge shares many of the details and the palette of materials of the West Street houses and therefore appears to date from circa 1879. It survives relatively unaltered externally, with a small, single-storey, C20 lean-to rear extension, and remains in residential use.
MATERIALS: South Lodge is built of knapped flint with ashlar limestone dressings. It has a plain-tile roof covering and incorporates tall, brick chimney stacks with ribbed shafts and corbelled caps. The gables are embellished with decorative timber barge boards carried on short curved braces, and the apex to the principal south gable has decorative timber-framing.
PLAN: the building is L-shaped on plan, a taller principal range aligned east-west, with a lower wing extending to the south.
EXTERIOR: the building is designed in a Tudor Gothic style, with steeply-pitched roofs and chamfered, mullion and transom windows. The main range is of two storeys, with two and three-light windows, with flush stone surrounds and casement frames. The gable apex has square framing with shaped diagonal bracing to the base section above a brattished storey beam. On the east elevation, at the junction of the main and subsidiary ranges is a single-storey gabled porch with transomed two-light windows to each side wall, the windows with cusped lights. At the south end of the south wing is a wide canted bay window set beneath a steeply-pitched roof.
The Lodge is approached through an entrance gateway flanked by tall gate piers of ashlar limestone, each with knapped flint inset panels and a moulded cornice, above which is set a seated lion bearing a shield with the Bond Cabbell coat of arms. Extending from the piers are low, flanking walls of flint with red-clay copings, that to the east curving round to define the road frontage. The wall is depicted on the map as an offset line, and the square gatepiers are depicted as circles.
Compiled by H. Hamilton (HES), 24 May 2013.