“If one were asked to sum up in a few words the scope and purposes of Mr. Voysey’s work, one might say that it consists mainly in the application of serenely sane, practical and rational ideas to home making.” — architect M.H. Baillie-Scott, The Studio magazine, 1908
Located in Surrey, about an hour’s drive southwest of London, the house known as Norney Grange was designed by one of the greatest English architects of all time, Charles Francis Annesley Voysey (1857-1941). While he mostly produced large country houses in the Arts and Crafts style, his influence can still be found in almost any 1920s-1930s English suburb today. A multidisciplinary creative, he also designed furniture, wallpapers, fabrics, carpets, tiles, metalwork, ceramics, bookplates, and more, often to complement the house he was architecting.
Norney Grange was designed in 1897 for a well-off clergyman, the Reverend Leighton Crane. Any clergy now interested in buying it would have to be very well-off indeed, as the 21-acre property is available with Savills estate agents Theo James-Wright and Alastair Mercer for princely sum of around $11 million. In addition to the 11-bedroom main house, there’s the two-bedroom Norney Lodge, and a three-bedroom stable cottage. (In the context of an English country house, a lodge is typically a smaller house that often acts as a gatehouse and may well shelter a gardener or gamekeeper. Norney Lodge was built before the main house, and Reverend Crane lived there while the main house was being built.)
Norney Grange exhibits many of the characteristics for which Voysey is best known: long, low proportions, which he believed was more homelike than tall, narrow buildings, as well as asymmetry. Symmetry is associated with classical architecture, while Voysey preferred the look of older vernacular English homes. Hence, inside the house and the garden, Voysey mixes circles, bays and ellipses with straight lines and rectangles, and he juxtaposes curves and straight lines, making for a lively composition.
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Image Credit: Savills Another of Voysey’s hallmarks was simplicity in materials: a slate roof, stucco exterior, and limestone trim. Inside, the woodwork is of local oak, left unfinished and unpolished, as Voysey preferred.
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Image Credit: Savills -
Image Credit: Savills -
Image Credit: Savills -
Image Credit: Savills -
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Image Credit: The British Architect, 1899 With only four owners in its history, Norney Grange is well preserved with a wealth of its original features and characteristics. Voysey was known to design each and every single aspect of his buildings, including the fireplaces, the door latches, and heart shaped key escutcheons. (Many of these are quite valuable on their own, today, as collectible antiques.)
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Image Credit: Savills As many other Arts and Crafts houses built at the time were, the 10,800-square-foot house was designed with a family wing and a service wing. This allows for privacy for both the family and the domestic staff. The family wing, above the main floor public rooms, is good-sized but not huge, with five principal bedrooms and three more secondary bedrooms, while the service and servants’ areas behind the kitchen rambles over two floors and contains another three bedrooms.
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Image Credit: Savills The gardens of Norney Grange were also designed by Voysey. They include an elevated terrace with garden and woodland views, a thatch-roofed summer house and a sunken garden with a rectangular lily pond.
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Image Credit: Savills Given his propensity to design everything, Voysey unsurprisingly also designed this sundial that stands at the center of a sunken garden. Grotesque profiles were another of Voysey’s favorite design tropes, and this fountain’s profile is perhaps based on the Reverend himself.
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Image Credit: Savills For anyone with deep pockets who loves the quirks and craftsmanship of authentic Arts and Crafts architecture, Norney Grange is a dream come true as a home.
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Image Credit: Savills