St Mary's Homes, Godstone

In 1872, Sir George Gilbert Scott completed an amazingly picturesque group of eight almshouses and a chapel immediately to the south of Godstone Church. These were built for Mrs Augusta Nona Hunt of Godstone as a memorial to her daughter, Mabel Fanny, who had died aged fourteen. It is a delightfully informal composition of little houses stepping up to the chapel, which is crowned with a fleche, and then carried on along the top of a bank. All are in a Tudor timber-framed style with decorated plaster panels, with the exception of the chancel of the chapel, which is Norman in style and built of stone with mosaic interior floors. The whole design has a romantic, almost playful, character and is certainly not a typical product of Spring Gardens, but a fitting memorial to a much loved child. Again it seems that Scott, when left to himself, could produce something very different to the ‘consistent style’ that Jackson refers to as emanating from the office.

Pevsner, N., and Nairn, I., Surrey, Buildings of England (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 260.
Stamp, G., An Architect of Promise, George Gilbert Scott Junior (1839-1897) and the Late Gothic Revival (Shaun Tyas, Donnington, 2002), p. 93.
Jackson, B. H., Recollections of Thomas Graham Jackson … 1835-1924 (Oxford University Press, London, 1950), p. 59.