THE RIFFEL, Woolton Park also c.1859.
Architect unidentified, but the designer of the lodge.

A large house (now occupied as two) all of stone, with the entrance facing the road, the garden front to the east is the most satisfactory part of the design. A large 2-storey canted addition has been made at the north west corner, and a single storey cloakroom added at the south west corner.

Stylistically many features link The Riffel with its lodge:

1. The polychromatic tiling on the porch, the 'Sussex hip' of the porch, and its overscaled brackets - the porch is a typically heavy job!

2.1 Bargeboards (some have been damaged and some altered) but in their largeness, cusping and carving they are of the same type as the lodge.

2.2 The double height bay on the garden front has typical quatrefoil panels (and a block has been left uncarved for a coat of arms); the roof has characteristic diamond slating.

3. Here the chimney pots are of a Tudor Gothic octagonal form - as probably were those originally on the lodge.

4. The window shapes with their pointed arches.

Also the rustic feature of the rockfaced masonry.

Now, turning to the cloakroom addition, we can appreciate differences. The addition has plain red roof tiles and the windows have 'bottle glass' features; both indicate a date in the 1880s relating to the Domestic Revival.

And the canted wing addition, clearly proclaimed an addition by the jointing with the main house; with its square-headed windows and much lesser bargeboards is also work suggesting a date in the 1880s.

The brick-built coach house and stable block is of remarkably little architectural significance.

As to the gate piers, those for the main house have a suitable Gothic motif; the lesser ones to the stable yard are rustically utilitarian. (The boundary wall to the right of the main gate has been rebuilt within the last 10 years).

continued . . .