Building record 0857600000 - Chiltern House, 21 The Woodlands

Grade II. House. Built in 1907 for Arnold Bidlake Mitchell by Messrs. Hill Bros. of Northwood (Middlesex) for E G Eardley-Wilmott. Brick ground floor, red tile-hung first and second floors, with plain red-brown tile roof dropping steeply to heads of ground-floor windows, two tall and narrow brick chimney stacks.
PLAN: Rectangular, with the main facades being the south gable facing onto The Woodlands, and the longer east side. Entrance on the west side with subsidiary door to the north leading into the kitchen area. Three storeys, upper two contained within the roof which has cruciform plan. Narrow painted barge boards. South front with bow-window to ground floor (parlour), two painted small-paned two-light timber windows to first floor with one to attic. East front with bow window to ground floor (dining room) flanked by larger window to left (parlour) and smaller one to right (kitchen). Three in-line casement windows to first floor and one to attic. West front with simple round-headed recessed porch with original studded oak front door; hall window to one side. Above two casement windows to first floor and one to second. North front with door to basement; bay window to ground floor, two casement windows to first floor and one to second. Extending northward from the north-west corner of the ground floor is the 1930s extension (below).
INTERIOR: The front door leads into a spacious, panelled (now painted; originally limed), entrance hall with heavy plaster cornice, fireplace, and with staircase rising off it on the west side. Panelled doors with original furniture lead off the hall to the parlour and dining room and via two doors to the service room to the rear (the latter, including kitchen, considerably remodelled). Parlour to south with Jacobethan plaster cornice with moulded foliate decoration; fireplace in north wall. Dining room with plaster oval with foliate decoration to ceiling. Fireplace in north wall. Staircase to first floor has straight, chunky spindles with broad moulded handrail. Continues to second floor via winds; straight spindles, curvilinear bannister rail with simple rounded profile. Doors to first- and second-floor bedrooms simple and four-panelled. Attached to the north-west corner of the house is a long, single-storey, brick extension of the 1930s of a semi-industrial character now converted to residential use. This is not considered of merit and is not included within the listing.
HISTORY: The property stands in a residential area on the edge of Gerrards Cross on the corner of The Woodlands road (originally the house was called 'Corner House'). Gerrards Cross and Beaconsfield grew rapidly after the arrival of the railway in 1906, and among the new houses were a number designed by renowned architects. Chiltern House was by A B Mitchell, FRIBA (d.1944), a well-regarded Mayfair architect. It was evidently quite a substantial household, the house being provided with approximately six family bedrooms plus perhaps another two for servants in the second-floor attic (the precise original allocation is uncertain), and as well as the garden around the house had a large summer garden on the opposite side of Woodlands road (sold off for development in the later 1970s).
SOURCES: A S Gray, Edwardian Architecture (1985) p262 (B1).