Building record 1251200000 - PASSMORE-EDWARDS HOUSE, CHALFONT CENTRE

Grade II. Administration block for the National Society of Epileptics. 1903-4 to the designs of Charles Grieve. Red brick with tile hanging to first floor, tiled hipped roof with projecting timber-framed gables. The original plan was an `L'-shaped, two-storey building with offices and stores on the ground floor and bedrooms above; since extended. Three bay front with projecting windows and central entrance porch. This has a segmental pediment projecting from the bay above with squat columns and a frieze bearing the date 1904. Central door under arched head in timber and glass surround. Timber casements to ground floor, uPVC units above. Extensions to side and rear not of special interest.
The administrative block was named after Passmore Edwards, a noted architectural patron in the 1890s and the principal benefactor of the former Chalfont Colony founded in 1894 to give a normal, healthy village life to epileptics. The colony pioneered the concept of a village community for mental patients, which was widely adopted, firstly for other epileptics and in the inter-war period for other mental disabilities. Passmore Edwards is best known as the proprietor of the Building News, a magazine that supported the Arts and Crafts Movement, and for building public libraries. Passmore Edwards House lies in a prominent, central position at the core of the site, as befits its status. The buildings at the Chalfont Centre form an important group, for their historic interest in the treatment of epilepsy and as examples - if altered - of Arts and Crafts architecture designed to give a domestic feel to a hospital institution.
Source Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, unpublished report NBR no.100291 (B8).
Passmore Edwards House, originally the Administration Building by Charles Grieve (1903) was not completed. A significant part of Grieve's design, notably the Gothic style water tower, was not built. [Original design illustrated as Appendix 13]. Proposed ammended description of 18th August 2004 copied in report (B4).