West Lodge

Cadw's description

Location

To S of A4139, at entrance to drive to Lydstep House. The lodge is about 600m NW of the house.

History

Built about 1912, by Baillie Scott and Beresford, architects, for Lord St David's; built as lodge to Lydstep House, below the lodge, on the coast; the builders were Davies & Morgan of Tenby. M H Baillie Scott (1865-1945) was amongst the most esteemed arts and crafts architects of his day. The building was intended to be coated with colour-wash mixed with tallow for weather-proofing, and to have close eaves, but the owner, however, upset the architect by insisting on an overhanging roof with bargeboards considering "an umbrella better than a mackintosh as protection from weather...thereby attaining the kind of flimsy picturesqueness associated with the cuckoo clock". Some alterations 1940s; extension 1980, by Alex Gordon and Partners. The building was considered important enough to be illustrated in "The Studio" in 1914, and in Baillie Scott's and Edgar Beresford's, "Houses and Gardens" in 1933.

Exterior

Two storey lodge in grey stone, with plain tiled roof with bargeboards; generally small-pane wooden casement windows with brick dressings. The plan consists of 2 blocks at angle of about 120 degrees. Entrance faces garden. Modern panelled door (R) to formerly open porch; flat roofed dormer above. To L, splayed 2-storey staircase tower with gable, and window to each floor. To L again, broad window to upper floor, above shallow brick extension with French doors, to L, upper window set at eaves; modern window to ground floor; corner chimney. Gable end with window to upper floor; link to extension below. Gable end to drive has single casement to upper floor, 2 casements to ground floor. Elevation to road has gabled block, (L) with window to each floor; large stone chimney, small window at eaves. Roof sweeps down over shallow extension. Two-storey recent extension (attached by low link) matches roof slope of lodge; tiled roof, rendered elevations.

Interior

Largely modernised, but retains some doors, pitch-pine staircase in stair-tower, deep slate window sills. Gothic doorway to extension formerly an entrance doorway.

Reason for designation

Lodge of inventive design. Believed to be the only building in Wales by this internationally important architect.