New Place, Haslemere, Surrey

Originally called Hurtmore.

The entry in Pevsner's Surrey (with Charles O'Brien, Ian Nairn and Bridget Cherry, 2022) reads:

NEW PLACE (originally Hurtmore) built in 1897-8 for the publisher A.M.M. Stedman, later Sir Algernon Methuen. [Footnote says “The entry has been revised without the benefit of a visit”.] A good and very typical Voysey house but one approaching the scale of a country house rather than the villa proportions of its contemporary, Norney Grange ..., with which it shares many features. Long and low, roughcast with flush stone windows, thin raking buttresses, and slate-roofed, not small enough to look over-designed, not so big that Voysey felt bound to complicate the severe lines with extra details, as he did at Norney; very successful. On the garden (S) side the door is set off-centre between wings of different heights. The l. one, as at Norney, has a tall bow of stone-framed windows supporting a triangular gable but here the sloping site allows for this bow to be three-storeyed, with the ground floor set below the level of the garden terrace. Balancing to the r. the single-storey E wing with a semi-domed polygonal bow lighting Stedman’s study. Simple hood on brackets for the garden door but this bay given life by a chimney-breast starting immediately above and punctuated near the top by a bellcote in a continuation of the roofline. The face of the tall W range is cleverly manipulated through the placing of windows and other openings to diminish any sense of height, so the door with its round-arched C17-style hood is raised on steps, and on the l. a square bay for the dining room has a solid base. Chimney to the r. with a round pediment and two little windows at the foot; these lit the billiard room on the lower ground floor. (Central living hall inside as the axis for the plan with the rooms compactly arranged around it. Round arches as a screen to the stair.) Restored in the early 1980s by Roderick Gradidge and Michael Blower. Gertrude Jekyll collaborated on the garden. Also by Voysey a LODGE next to the garage, 1904.

Image by John Trotter.