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.^[a][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",^[b][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".^[c][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