Sartor re Sartus

An elaborately-decorated house built by Lord Lovelace in 1866 on the site of a 17th Century cottage owned by a family of tailors.

This Grade II listed building within the East Horsley Conservation Area was constructed in 1866 by LordLovelace on the site of a medieval cottage which had been home for over 200 years to a family of tailors called Webb.

When Lord Lovelace acquired the cottage in 1842, it was used initially to house workers from his East Horsley Park estate before he rebuilt it years later as a larger house in his typical style of flint and decorative terracotta brickwork. The outside decorations are particularly fine with elaborate dentils and string courses of moulded terracotta. It is also the only Lovelace house in this area to feature a bay window.

The house has the unusual name of ‘Sartor Re Sartus’, which comes from a Thomas Carlyle essay and means in Latin ‘the tailor re-tailored’ - perhaps a reflection of Lord Lovelace’s dry sense of humour since the first peron to live in this new building is thought to have been his own tailor