About Ashdown:

Factsheet and Bibliography

Location

1 mile E of Forest Row, East Sussex, England, off the B2110 road. 2 miles south of Hammerwood Park (1792–95), Latrobe’s only other independent work in Europe.

PRINCIPAL BUILDING AND REAR STABLE/SERVICE BLOCK

Design and construction

Built c. April 1793 – c. July 1795. Built by Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764–1820), his second independent work in Britain.

Clients

John Trayton Fuller (c. 1743–1814) and Anne Fuller (c. 1754–1835; née Eliott).

Builders and suppliers

C. Sandys, supervisor; John Stricker, construction foreman; Mr. Russel, carpenter; Stephen Hobbs, stonemason for portions of the portico; John Waddilove, stonecutter or mason; James Messenger, London, ironsmith for the stair and balcony railings.

Eleanor Coade/Coade Manufactory, London (column and pilaster capitals and bases; dome); A. & T. Spencer, H. T. Boorman (brick); Joshua Drummond Smith (lumber); J. Molineaux (hardware); Seddon, Sons and Shackleton, George Phileaux, Willi Stephens, all London (cabinet-makers); George Vornall (wallpaper); Esther Tonkins & Turner, London (carpets, drapery, upholstery).

Subsequent ownership

Passed to Anne Fuller on John Trayton’s death in 1814. Inherited by their son, Augustus (1777–1857), on her death in 1835. Leased to William Randall Lee from Clara Tapps Gervis (1831–1910), grand-daughter of Augustus Fuller, in 1886. Estate broken up upon Clara’s death in 1910. Passed through a succession of private owner-headmasters to a registered charity, Ashdown House School Trust Limited, in July 1975 (wound up August 2010). Passed to the Cothill Educational Trust, subsequently renamed the Prep Schools Trust, in 2009. School closed June 2020. Sold to Even Ashdown Ltd, a development firm beneficially owned by Nicholas Lebetkin, Olivier Levenfiche and Alon Herschkorn, for £5.95m in November 2021.

National Heritage List for England listing

1286907, Grade II*. Listed 26 November 1953; amended 31 December 1982.

TUDOR PARTS

c. late C15th, erected under the ownership of Sir Thomas Sackville, K.G., Lord Buckhurst. Extant and well-developed by 1597: Sackville’s papers note that: “John Brooker, yeoman, holds by indenture dated the last of Nov., 40 Eliz. [1597-98] for 21 years, First the said manor house of Lavertie, being built with brick, covered with Horsham stone and Shingle, with a brick wall enclosed, and the several court yards, gardens, orchards, closes, rooms, two old dwelling houses, a great barn, a stall stable, hayhouse, dove house…”. Owned by the Newnham family from January 1690 to late 1792. Listed as curtilage.

CHAPEL

c. 1930. Built as a war memorial by Norman Evill (1873–1958), a cousin of Arthur Evill, a longstanding C20th headmaster and owner of Ashdown (1910–39), in memory of the latter’s son(s) and Old Ashdownians killed in the First World War. Also contains memorials to OAs killed in later conflicts. Listed as curtilage.

SUBSEQUENT ADDITIONS

Wing adjoining the principal building to the east by Norman Evill and Aidan Wallis, c. 1930. A perspective drawing (‘New Class Rooms-N. Evill, FRIBA’) survives. Listed as curtilage.

Various unlisted houses, cottages and ancillary buildings, 1972–90s, by Edward Hill and Chris Mitchell.

Bibliography

Baker, J.H. (2019). Building America: the life of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bradbury, O. (2017). Sir John Soane’s Influence on Architecture from 1791. Oxford: Taylor & Francis. pp. 126-27.

Brigden, T. (2019). The Protected Vista: An Intellectual and Cultural History. Routledge Research in Architectural Conservation and Historic Preservation. Oxford: Routledge.

Brownell, C.E. and Cohen, J.A. (1994). The Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Series II: The Architectural and Engineering Drawings, vol. 2: The Architectural Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Parts 1 and 2. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kelly, A. (1990). Mrs Coade’s Stone. Upton-upon-Severn: Self Publishing Association.  

Curl, J.S. (1993). Georgian Architecture. Exeter: David & Charles, p. 176.

Curl, J.S. (2015). The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture. Third Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 429.

Del Mar, T.F. (1994). Ashdown House: Sussex, the Fuller family and the work of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Norwich: School of World Art Studies and Museology, University of East Anglia (BA thesis; unpublished).

Fazio, M.W. and Snadon, P.A. (2006). The Domestic Architecture of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. This work, which contains more than 50 pages on Ashdown, represents the most comprehensive study of its origins, context and significance. It also contains extensive critical reference to earlier scholarship and primary sources which are omitted from this bibliography for conciseness. See Colour Section I; pp. 141-81; 714-22; 750-51.

Hamlin, T. (1955). Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pevsner, N. (ed. Nairn, I.) (1977). Sussex. London: Penguin. pp. 66, 505.

Pickles, D. (2018). Vacant historic buildings: guidelines on managing risks. [online] Swindon: Historic England. https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/vacanthistoricbuildings/heag183-vacant-historic-buildings/

Placzek, A.K. (1982). Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, vol. 2. New York: Macmillan USA. pp. 612–17.

Richmond, C. (1991). A History of Ashdown House. Forest Row: Ashdown House (privately published).

Trinder, M. (1994). Mythic Landscapes and Hellenistic Detail: Latrobe’s early work in Sussex. Cambridge: Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge (BA thesis; unpublished).