Visit to East Court, Ramsgate, with lunch at Royal Temple Yacht Club

Saturday 12 July 2025,  either 11-2pm or 12.30 to 3.30

East Court, 1 Brockenhurst Road, Ramsgate CT11 8ED and Royal Temple Yacht Club, CT11 9HY

East Court, image copyright Thanet News

William Henry Wills, later Lord Winterstoke (1830-1911 ), the pioneer of cigarettes manufactures and a moving force in the Imperial Tobacco Company (after 1901), gave up active management in 1880, although he continued as Chairman of the family Tobacco Company in Bristol. He was a benefactor of the arts and of civic matters in Bristol and served as a Liberal Member of Parliament firstly for Coventry and later for South Bristol. East Court was his seaside home shared with his wife Elizabeth who died in 1896. Wills was childless when he died in 1911, and the house passed to his niece Janet Stancom-Wills. In 1952 the house was bought by the Church of England’s Children’s Society. After 1983 the house became a school for dyslexic children and has reverted to being a meticulously restored private house.

Sketch image, copyright Chris Mullen’s Fulltable blog

                                                     Image, copyright Chris Mullen’s Fulltable blog

Sir Ernest George (1839-1922) was in partnership with H.A.Peto (1854-1933) as one of the most successful and fashionable London architectural offices. Known for his picturesque massing on his large houses for clients, East Court was not influenced by his Flemish town house style, but something wholly original with unusual geometric layering, with daring silhouettes as layers protrude over layer, all faced in green Westmorland Slate laid in fish scale patterns. Wills commissioned him in 1889, and the house is dated 1890.The theme of themes from the Book of Revelations explored in the interior is not unusual for a man who was founder of the London Missionary Society plus the British and Foreign Bible Society. The house may present a bold slabbish facade to the seawinds but is generally unostentatious and in its garden compact for an older childless couple seeking a seaside home for a short period of the year.

The story of the rapid rise to fame of the young Edwin Lutyens in the 1890s is well known. With a series of superb romantic vernacular houses to his credit, Sir Edwin enjoyed a considerable reputation by the first years of the new century and in the 1920s he was a national figure. The influence of his early contemporaries Richard Norman Shaw and Philip Webb has been agreed but how much Sir Ernest George affected Lutyens’ designs has always been minimalised as Sir Ernest is not seen as being at the same height as the other two architects. Sir Herbert Baker downplayed any George and Peto influence on Lutyens by writing ‘who, though joking through his short pupillage quickly absorbed all that was best worth learning: he puzzled us at first, but we soon found he seemed to know by intuition some great truths of our art, which were not to be learnt there’. Lutyens himself in later years distanced himself from George of whom he said disparagingly that he was ‘an architect who took each year three weeks holiday abroad and returned with overflowing sketchbooks. When called on for a project he would look through these and choose some picturesque turret or gable from Holland, France or Spain and round it weave his design”.

However, in 1889, Lutyens received his first major commission: Crooksbury, a country house on Farnham’s outskirts, when still apprenticed to Ernest George. Initially enrolled in the South Kensington school of architecture at 16 years old, where he studied for two years, Lutyens joined George and Peto at 18.  Janet Allen in her review of Hilary Grainger’s excellent and long overdue book on Sir Ernest George writes ”this study of the life and work of Sir Ernest George is long overdue especially for those with an interest in his most famous articled clerk, Sir Edwin Lutyens. In the late nineteenth century domestic architecture in England was dominated by the office of Richard Norman Shaw, closely followed by that of Ernest George; the young Lutyens had hoped to enter the office of Shaw, but instead joined George’s practice in 1887, where he stayed for just over a year. He learnt much and met the cream of young architects, among whom were Herbert Baker, Guy Dawber and Robert Weir Schultz. ……Reluctant to admit it, Lutyens must have learnt a great deal in his brief time with Ernest George and established professional friendships.”.  In her book Hilary Grainger recognises a change in Peto’s work beginning just before Lutyens arrival “The house (Batsford Park of 1887-93) represents an important change in George and Peto’s work. Described as having the general style of a Tudor Manor House, ‘Cotswold Elizabethan’ a clever working up of the Dorset-Tudor-Gothic, it was built of local Broughton stone and looks disarmingly like a genuine Manor House…” .

East Court is exactly the time of that change, showing the more casual influence of American Stick and Shingle style on the formal English Queen Anne revival movement but it is also exactly when Sir Edwin was in George and Peto’s office so it is tempting to think that  young Sir Edwin may have worked on the designs.

Advert image from Country Life, 24 Apr 1933

Advert image from Country Life, 1 Oct 1948

Tours will be either before lunch or after to ensure small numbers going around the house.  Lunch will be at the nearby Royal Temple Yacht Club, designed by the ecclesiastical architects Pugin & Pugin in 1896.  There is plenty to explore in Ramsgate, not least the work by AW Pugin cluster of buildings around his home, The Grange.

Royal Temple Yacht Club  and The Grange.  Images copyright Paul Waite

Important information

The house is not accessible for wheelchair users as we will be visiting all floors

Online bookings

Please make your booking online through PayPal using your credit/debit card or PayPal account.at https://www.lutyenstrust.org.uk

Please note:    there are two options with a maximum of 12 for each: either visit from 11am then lunch, or lunch from 12.30 then visit at 2pm.  The tickets are detailed accordingly.

Manual bookings

If you wish to pay with a cheque, please use the online booking facility, and then choose the “pay by cheque” option on the payments screen. This will reserve you a ticket(s) and give you instructions on where to send your cheque. All cheques should be made payable to “The Lutyens Trust” and made to the appropriate amount, and to include an additional £3 banking charge per cheque.

Any questions please telephone Paul Waite on 07483 224 653

or email pjdwaite@hotmail.com or deborahmays@lutyenstrust.org.uk.