1879 – House at Wimbledon Park, London

Architect: T.W. Cutler

0399

Published in The Building News, November 28 1879: “The house is built on high ground, commanding fine views, especially from the garden front. The basement and ground-floor is buUt with thin red bricks as a facing, with a 3in. hollow space between it and the internal wall. The upper floors are timber, framed and covered with tiles. The exposed framing is of oak and fir, coated with Stockholm tar, and rendered between with Portland cement. The roof is covered with Broseley tiles ; the ground and first-floor is pugged and laid double. The principal staircase is constructed entirely of walnut, and polished.

The doors, &c., are] of picked pine, stained and polished. The house is warmed and ventilated on Drs. Drysdale and Hayward’s system. Fresh air is admitted into a chamber, warmed when necessary, is conveyed by spacious tubes to gratings in the floors of the passages, and thence to rooms and staircases. Ventilating-flues from every room are connected in a chamber to the roof, and drawn down an extract shaft to the foot of kitchen chimney, which acts as the exhaust power to draw the vitiated air from all rooms and passages, and causes a continuous current, and secures an imperceptible and perfect ventilation, whereby the house is cool in summer and warm in winter. The plan of house, as shown, ia arranged for two members of the same family, but is constructed so that it can form one house when desired. The small dining and drawing- room being convertible into large dining-room, and the passage being continued past principal staircase, the secondary staircase would become the servants’. The whole of the works, consisting of house, stables, and lodge, were executed by C. Aldin and Son, contractors, of South Kensington, under the direction and from the designs of Mr. Thomas W. Cutler, .5, Queen- square, W.C. “