A new image has just been acquired of one of the Kings Weston Estate’s 23 individual Listed Buildings. Seen above, this is a pencil drawing of Wood Lodge dates to 1956 and was sketched by local artist, and Bristol Savage, George Holloway. This view looks towards the Grade II Listed building from the east and shows a number of features that have since been lost including the blocked windows and the stone drip-mouldings above others.
The lodge owes much of its ornamental appearance to Philip Skinner Miles during the Victorian era. It was in the 1860s that Miles undertook the refurbishment of a number of the estate’s buildings, including Wood Lodge, and added rustic wood work, decorative barge-boards and a clay pantile roof; Kingsweston Inn Sea Mills Farm, and Henbury Lodge also received similar alterations at this time. However, Wood Lodge has a much earlier origin.
The lodge has always had an important role on the estate; guarding the private parkland to the east from the publicly accessible common land on Penpole Point in the west. It is first depicted on an estate plan of 1772 and is seen in the smaller accompanying image here, by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, in 1788 (Copyright of the British Library). This earlier view shows the front of the building as it would have appeared from the west. What is obvious is that the present building has very different proportions when viewed from the side, and appears to have shrunk from its original width. The projecting bay on the Penpole Lane side is likely to be the same one as seen today.
From the general appearance of the building, and some of the features shown in these two illustrations, it is possible to attribute this lodge to the architect, garden designer, and mathematician Thomas Wright. We know that Wright was working on designs with Edward Southwell III of Kings Weston House from 1761 and there are strong stylistic similarities between Wood Lodge and some of his other work on the Badminton Estate, Gloucestershire and Tollymore Park in Ireland. At what time the building was so drastically altered it’s not known, and although the thatch has a far more picturesque effect, its present tiled roof must be far easier to maintain!