Kingston Hill

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Coombe

Surrey experience here - bricks and leaves amalgamate.  Rich enough not to have to put on airs.

Coombe House - lots of PMs lived there and royalty and bankers.  1880 became a hydropathic establishment.  Still had royalty there.

Coombe Park

Birch Grove a large house by Vernon Gibberd, c. 1970.  Its special feature is an elevation with a regular grid of brick piers, enclosing a first-floor terrace.

Coombe Ridings

Private estate was the entrance to Coombe Wood Nursery and lot of very posh plants there.  James Veitch bought it and created the nursery.  Site inspired by the willow pattern design.  ICI own it and Hugh Hammersley did it up.  Banker Hammersley had built Warren House.  Paget family lived there until 1954 when ICI bought it.  Ballroom, etc etc.  ICI use it for training and have kept it going

Kingston Hill

Tree lined road on the edge of Richmond Park. On the Zodiac it is Sagittarius’ hand. The National Freehold Land Society developed a number of villages along its route in the late 19th.

Galsworthy House.  Parkfield, now specialist centre called Galsworthy House for treatment of alcoholism.  Where Galsworthy was born - birthplace of the novelist.  Mid c 19, five bays, stuccoed, with prominent upper windows cutting into the roof.

Fairlight also mid c19, has decorated bargeboards.

Kingston Hill House became Kingston Technical College.- house supposed to belong to Lily Langtry. Now Kingston University.

Kenry House.  formerly Gypsy Hill Training College, is  now part of Kingston Polytechnic. The old house is a minor Gothic villa, built soon after 1832 by William Ogle Hunt.  Edward built school. London Sinfonetta and Medici String Quartet based there,.  Splendid site, hostel, communal block, arts building, and 1966 by the Surrey County Architect's Department R. J. Ash.. 

Gothic lodge. 

Stables, pedimented brown brick. relief - Coade stone? - of a reclining female figure.

Coombe Hurst, Earls and bankers again, Uncle of Florence Nightingale who stayed there, modernised by Parkes of Wandsworth Greyhounds

57 Albert Arms Large, imposing pub on a corner site, often busy with those working at or visiting the hospital opposite.  The decor is a mixture of wood panelling and wallpaper.

Kingsnympton Park. Gothic gatepiers and lodge. The larger houses have mostly gone.  Grounds here are now filled with plain blocks of flats of the immediate post-war era by John Apse, Borough Engineer of Malden, and Coombe - an ambitious local authority enterprise for its date.

Kingston Hill Place, set back, a large, plain, stuccoed mid c 19 house, with gatepiers.

 

Dorich House Museum, of sculpture and Imperial Russian art which is run both as a museum Dorincourt.  Later c 19, an extravagant silhouette with timber-framed bellcote and Dutch gables.

Dorich House.  1935-6 by the sculptor Dora Gordine for her own use, is of brick, three storeys, with a roof garden, and large lunette windows specially to light the sculptures.  A studio on the side.  An idiosyncratic creation slightly reminiscent of some German Expressionist buildings.  Interior equally original, with long vistas through plain round-arched and three-quarter-circle openings. The living accommodation was at the top to give better views and the stairs rise up through a tower. Part of Kingston University, following her death and the house, left to a trust, had become derelict. It is adjacent to Richmond Park.   Display of her sculptures on the ground floor.

Harewood.  Gabled.

 

 

Richmond Park

Broomfield Hill

Ladderstile Gate. This name of a gate is said to recall the means of gaining access used by John Lewis, leader of a campaign against the Crown in the early 18th century to win a public right of way through the park.


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