Deep in the Surrey countryside stands a cluster of buildings that might, at first glance, be taken for the remnants of some ancient abbey: a great tithe barn, perhaps, next to a medieval fishpond, and a handsome, asymmetric gatehouse such as might offer hospitality at the entrance to a great estate. An ancient abbey, Waverley, did once stand near this site, but these buildings belong to more recent times.

In 1843, Lord Midleton, a young Anglican aristocrat, commissioned Augustus Pugin to dress his farm at Oxenford with a great barn, outbuildings and a gatehouse, to guard the entrance to his adjacent Peper Harow estate.

It was a chance to recreate the sort of honest, utilitarian buildings that Pugin so admired from the Middle Ages, a time when he felt that ‘in matters of ordinary use, a man must go out of his way to produce a bad thing’.

With ample funds, for once, and at the height of his powers, Pugin produced a group of buildings generally agreed to be among his finest work, using good local materials in a Picturesque style that adapted that of the Middle Ages for his own time.

Peper Harow House, to which this gatehouse once formed an entrance, was divided into flats some years ago, and the gatehouse reverted to serve, in a residual way, Oxenford Grange, on whose lands it stands.

In lovely countryside and amid Pugin's other buildings, the gatehouse still serenely surveys the coming and goings of a working farmyard, whose owner turned to us for a use to ensure its future.

View our history sheet for this Landmark

The Grange was also designed by Pugin. In addition to open days at The Grange, this year there are a number of other events in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Augustus Pugin. For more information, please visit the Pugin Society's website.

Sleeps: 4