Blue Ryde Lodge

Constructed in 1846, this was the first lodge built by Lord Lovelace on his East Horsley Park estate.

After he acquired the East Horsley Park estate in 1840, Lord Lovelace still lived for some years at Ockham Park and so he created a private driveway to connect his house there with the building that would become Horsley Towers, a drive of some four miles. Blue Ryde Lodge, built in 1846, and the nearby North Forest Lodge, built in 1874, both straddled this newly made driveway.

The Blue Ryde Lodge building has a vernacular character, traditionally timber-framed and plastered, with a pitched tiled roof, it retains the scale and form typical of rural lodge cottages. The outward appearance also displays characteristics that would regularly feature in later Lovelace buildings including the use of flint wall facings, decorative terracotta brickwork including a patterned balustrade band and arched window frames made of metal.

It is likely that Blue Ryde Lodge replaced an earlier medieval cottage at this location. According to local historian Pam Bowley in her book ‘East Horsley: the Lovelace village’ the cottage appears as ‘Brewesruden’ in old documents, meaning ‘land cleared by Brewes’ and she cites records showing that in 1206 some land in the area was owned by John de Brius, from which the name may have originated.

LOCATION: The northern side of The Drift, some 0.35km from its junction with Ockham Road North. This building has very limited visibility from the public right of way.