Description

RALPH ALLEN DRIVE
656-1/67/1366 (East side)

11/08/72
Top Lodge
Formerly Listed as:
RALPH ALLEN DRIVE
Lodge and Gate Posts)

GV II

Lodge to Prior Park. c1740 (appears on Thorp Map of 1742). Probably by John Wood the Elder.
MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar, double Roman tile roof.
EXTERIOR: A small gabled single depth lodge, immediately adjacent to gatepiers (qv) giving to North Road. Main front, to north, with two oval windows above a Palladian window with plain mullion pilasters and full entablature and with glazing bar sashes. Ground floor treated as a 'rustick' or basement, with a trio of arched windows with keystones and impost band, with small-pane casements; the central window is wider than outer ones. Full height channelled pilaster quoins; moulded eaves band. Gables not coped; each has an ashlar chimney stack in the form of a pedestal. To right, beneath the continuous deeply moulded plat band, is a single storey wing with glazed door and large twelve-pane sash. The right return is faced in rubble, with a central arched light with broad impost band; beyond the wing is a wall extending as far as one of gate piers, with arched light to keystone and impost. The rubble-faced rear has a small square light in the centre immediately below the eaves band.
INTERIOR: Not inspected.
HISTORY: This lodge is very similar in design to that at the corner to Church Street (qv The Lodge), at the north (or bottom) end of the Prior Park estate. Its distinctive architectural vocabulary would have announced the traveller's arrival at a very distinctive enclave.
SOURCE: Gillian Clarke, `Prior Park. A Compleat Landscape¿ (Bath 1987), 40.
Listing NGR: ST7608362678

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26673664

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  This Old House: Restoring, Rehabilitating, and Renovating an Older House
• 
  Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds: Cotswolds Pt. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
• 
  Hampshire: Winchester and the North (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)