Willmer House is a grade I listed building in

Farnham Farnham ( /ˈfɑːnəm/) is a market town and civil parish in Surrey, England, around southwest of London. It is in the Borough of Waverley, close to the county border with Hampshire. The town is on the north branch of the River Wey, a trib ...

, Surrey, in England. Built in 1718 for a local hop merchant the building later became a school and dental surgery. Since 1961 it has housed the

Museum of Farnham The Museum of Farnham is located in Willmer House, an 18th-century town house completed in 1718 with a decorative brickwork façade on West Street in Farnham in Surrey. Events were held in 2018 by the museum to celebrate the 300th anniversary of t ...

. The building was purchased by

Waverley Borough Council Waverley may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Waverley (novel), ''Waverley'' (novel), by Sir Walter Scott **Overtures by Hector Berlioz#Waverley, ''Waverley'' Overture, a work by Hector Berlioz inspired by Scott's novel * Waverley Harrison, a cha ...

from Surrey County Council in 2012. Willmer House is

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

in style and features an elaborate red-brick façade, described by the

Pevsner Architectural Guide The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of Great Britain and Ireland. Begun in the 1940s by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 46 volumes of the original Buildings of England series were published b ...

as one of the finest in the country. Architectural historian Nathaniel Lloyd, in 1929, described the pilasters at either end of the façade as "perhaps the most beautiful example extant of the Doric order interpreted in brick". A restoration of the façade in 2017 revealed it was in need of more significant repair than had been thought. Since 2018 scaffolding has been in place to protect the public from falling masonry. The council applied for

Arts Council England Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three s ...

funding in 2022 to part-fund the repairs.

Description

Willmer House is a

Baroque-style The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including th ...

three-storey building with a facade of five

bays A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a narr ...

facing West Street in

, Surrey. It is constructed of red brick with detailing in moulded bricks. At either end of the façade are Doric-style brick pilasters. Architectural historian Nathaniel Lloyd described them in 1929 as "perhaps the most beautiful example extant of the Doric Order interpreted in brick". At the top of the first-floor level a

string course A belt course, also called a string course or sill course, is a continuous row or layer of stones or brick set in a wall. Set in line with window sills, it helps to make the horizontal line of the sills visually more prominent. Set between the ...

is formed in moulded brick while a brick

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

runs along the top of the second floor. At the edge of the roof is a brick parapet, with piers between the bays. Ian Nairn, Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry in the

for Surrey describe Willmer House as having "one of the finest cut brick façades in the country", though note that while the individual features are impressive when combined together they are somewhat lost in "a bewildering and rather forbidding tour de force". The central bay protrudes towards the street and features the main entrance at ground-floor level. The door is wood with eight panels, it is surrounded by panelled pilasters, painted white, and surmounted by an

entablature An entablature (; nativization of Italian , from "in" and "table") is the superstructure of moldings and bands which lies horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of classical architecture, and ...

featuring a central cusp. The door is reached by two stone steps, though step-free disabled access is possible by an adjoining building. Because of the historic nature of the structure it has not been considered appropriate to install a lift or stair lift to provide step-free access to the upper floors. The windows are of the sash type. The windows on the upper two storeys have

bolection A bolection is a decorative moulding which projects beyond the face of a panel or frame in raised panel walls, doors, and fireplaces. It is commonly used when the meeting surfaces are at different levels, especially to hold floating panels in pl ...

moulded brick surrounds; those on the first floor are capped with segment-shaped moulding and those on the second storey with straight moulding. The ground-floor windows have plain surrounds. ''Exploring Museums: The Home Counties'', a 1990 work by Nell Hoare and Geoffrey Marsh for the Great Britain Museums and Galleries Commission, describes Willmer House as "one of the finest houses in the town". The interior features elaborate an Ionic pilaster and entablatured archway in the hall. A second doorway dividing a front and back room has Corinthian pilasters and carved spandrels. There is a fine oak staircase and period wood panelling and fireplaces. The garden features a bust of reforming local 19th-century member of parliament William Cobbett.

History

Willmer House was built in 1718 as a house for the local hop merchant John Thorne, on land parcelled off in 1710. The site has earlier occupation as building work in 1992–93 revealed a late mediaeval chalk wall, probably used to retain a garden terrace, a brick-lined Tudor period well, a rubbish pit and a 17th-century cobbled surface and associated

Purbeck Marble Purbeck Marble is a fossiliferous limestone found in the Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula in south-east Dorset, England. It is a variety of Purbeck stone that has been quarried since at least Roman times as a decorative building stone. Geology Strat ...

flagstone path. Pottery from the 13th and 14th centuries was also found. By the early Victorian period the house had become a private boarding school for boys. It later housed a girls school and a dental surgery. The structure was first granted statutory protection as a listed building on 26 April 1950. It is currently grade I listed and forms a group with other listed buildings on the street. The eastern garden wall, of red brick, was separately listed, in grade II, on 29 December 1972. Since 1961 the structure has housed the

. Events were held in 2018 by the museum to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the building.

21st-century repairs

The structure was purchased by

from Surrey County Council in 2012. The new owners began a £92,000 restoration of the façade but this was halted in 2017 when the condition was found to be much worse than thought. The council was notified that significant repair work was required in 2018 and since then scaffolding has been erected to protect the public from any falling masonry, this has partially obscured the façade. The costs of the repairs prohibited immediate work and had the potential to threaten the future of the museum in the building. In October 2021 Waverley Borough Council indicated that it intended to relinquish ownership of the museum to an independent trust, as it was judged to make applying for grants easier. In September 2022 the council bid for more than £600,000 of funding from the

to restore the façade. If granted this would still leave a shortfall of around £200,000, towards which local councillors started a crowdfunding campaign.

References

{{coord, 51.2132, -0.8045, format=dms, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Buildings and structures completed in 1718 Grade I listed buildings in Surrey Farnham Grade I listed houses