Each year the Lutyens Trust spends a week at the wonderful Goddards in Surrey. In June this year, we were very fortunate to be invited to spend three days with the Trust there. Built by Edwin Lutyens between 1898 and 1900, Goddards is considered by many to be one of his finest works. Arriving at Goddards on a beautiful summer’s evening was very special; the famous Lutyens chimneys peeping over the hedges made for a spectacular welcome. After three months on the road, the prospect of being in one place for three nights was bliss (something I think any SPAB scholar will relate to)!

First stop after a tour around the house was the skittles alley. Goddards was originally built as a holiday retreat for ladies of small means and this was funded by Frederick Mirrielees, Lutyens’s client, who set up a charity in his own name to support the building. As British summers are not always kind, areas for inside entertainment were incorporated into the design. A games gallery (which has subsequently been converted into bedrooms and bathrooms) and skittles alley were the amusements of choice. It took a good few games before any of us managed a strike but this gave us plenty of time to appreciate the meticulous attention to detail throughout the house, from latches to the doorbell to the skittles themselves — everything is a fine example of talented craftspeople and a credit to Lutyens who made time to consider every detail.

Goddards is now run by the Landmark Trust on a long lease from the Lutyens Trust and is available to rent as a holiday let. The skittles alley is still periodically open to the local community as it was in the past. Throughout the stay there was a real feeling of the building being alive with activity and people, which is so refreshing when in so many buildings nowadays (and some understandably so) you are forced to ‘walk between the red ropes’.