Horsley Towers

William Currie was a banker and distiller, who had inherited a substantial fortune from his father, on the latter's death in 1781. In 1820, Currie engaged Charles Barry to replace the existing Georgian manor house on his East Horsley estate.[1] It was an early commission for Barry, then aged 25, who opened the London office of his architectural practice only in 1821.[2] Following Currie's death in 1829, the Horsley estate was bought by William King, who was raised in the peerage to Earl of Lovelace in 1838[3] and served as Lord Lieutenant of Surrey from 1840 until his death in 1893.[4] King had married Augusta Ada Byron, Lord Byron's only legitimate offspring in 1833.[5]

Lovelace, who began his career as a diplomat, turned to scientific investigation and engineering after inheriting his title. A roof truss in the great hall he designed at Horsley carries an inscription recording that Lovelace had moulded the beam with the use of steam.[4] Ada gained even greater prominence for her scientific endeavours; through her friendship with Charles Babbage she wrote a commentary on his analytical engine, arguably the earliest mechanical computer. Her commentary has been described as containing "one of the earliest computer programmes".[6]

In 1919 the third earl sold the East Horsley estate to Thomas Sopwith, the aviator and businessman for £150,000.[7] While resident at the Towers, Sopwith named one of his aircraft, the Hawker Horsley, after the house.[8] After World War II, the house was purchased by the Electricity Council for use as a management training college.[9] It is now a wedding and conference venue operated by De Vere.[10]

Pevsner describes the approach to the Towers as "one of the most sensational in England".[11] The core of the present house is Barry's building of 1820–1829, undertaken in the Tudor Revival style.[12] This is enveloped with a great hall, built by Lovelace in 1849, and by even larger flanking towers, in Romanesque and Rhenish styles, and a chapel, all dating from 1859 and after, and drawing inspiration from a long European tour Lovelace undertook following Ada's death in 1852.[12] The whole is encircled by a complex of walls, tunnels, arches, bastions and a lengthy cloister.[lower-alpha 1][11][12] The construction materials are mainly local flint and brick, Lovelace purchasing a brickworks at Ockham to ensure a ready supply.[4]

Horsley Towers is a Grade II* listed building.[12] The flanking walls and pavilions to the northwest[14] and southwest,[15] the entrance walls and lodges,[16] one of which Nairn describes as "particularly violent",[lower-alpha 2][11] and the walls to the former kitchen garden, all have their own Grade II listings.[18]

Neither Barry nor Lovelace's efforts have been much appreciated by critics. The Victorian Web notes that "the building, like much Victorian gothic, displays a good deal of eccentricity and mixes many styles".[19] Ian Nairn, the main author of the Surrey Pevsner, wrote of Barry's Tudor Revival house; "a sober, dull design with the [...] lack of enthusiasm which taints so many of Barry's non-Classical buildings".[lower-alpha 3][11] Of Lovelace's work, Mark Girouard, the architectural historian, described the "extraordinary embellishments, in flint and polychrome brick made by the Earl, working to his own designs".[20] The writer John Julius Norwich considered the whole "a grotesque Victorian Disneyland which has to be seen to be believed - and may not be even then", concluding that, unusually, his inclusion of Horsley Towers in his study The Architecture of Southern England, should serve as a warning rather than an inducement.[17]

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  The entrance front - Pevsner called the approach to the house "one of the most sensational in England"
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  View from across the lawn - The Victorian Web described Lovelace's Romanesque tower as "a church tower to which someone has attached cylinders"
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  The rear frontage of the house - the central block is by Barry, the towers Lovelace's additions
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  A view of one of the gatehouses, the design of which Ian Nairn described as "particularly violent"
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  Horsley Towers - the Church inside the Tower building

• Brodie, Antonia; Felstead, Alison; Franklin, Jonathan; Pinfield, Leslie; Oldfield, Jane (2001). Directory of British Architects 1834–1914 Volume 1:A-K. London: RIBA. ISBN 9780826449634. OCLC 491544613.
• Girouard, Mark (1979). The Victorian Country House. New Haven, US: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300023909.
• Nairn, Ian; Pevsner, Nikolaus; Cherry, Bridget (1971). Surrey. The Buildings of England. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-300-09675-5.
• Norwich, John Julius (1985). The Architecture of Southern England. London: Macmillan. ISBN 9780333220375. OCLC 473443897.
• Robertson, Bruce (1970). Sopwith: The man and his aircraft. Letchworth, UK: Air Review Ltd. OCLC 156428.