Home Place, Kelling

Home Place, also called Voewood, is an Arts and Crafts style house in Kelling, near Holt, Norfolk, England, designed (1903–5) by Edward Schroeder Prior. It is a Grade II* listed building. The gardens, also designed by Prior, are Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

Home Place is perhaps one of the greatest achievements of house design of the Arts and Crafts movement. More than almost any other building of the period the house fulfils the ideals for architecture developed by John Ruskin and William Morris. The design of Home Place saw Prior return to and extend further the aspects of design that had preoccupied him in The Barn, Exmouth. In the designing and building of Home Place many of his philosophical ideas found physical expression.

Its design and construction were characterised by the use of radical planning and forms, innovative technologies, such as the use of reinforced concrete, extensive external decoration, a distinct building philosophy involving craftsmanship and the use of quality local materials and the integration of the building and its interiors with the garden and its surroundings.

Home Place, High Kelling was originally named Voewood and subsequently Kelling Place. It was built for the Reverend Percy Robert Lloyd (1868–1937). Lloyd was the tenth son of the famous publisher and paper manufacturer Edward Lloyd (1815–1890). He was born in Water House, Walthamstow - coincidentally the childhood home of William Morris - and educated at Eastbourne College. In 1887 he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford. Both at Eastbourne and Oxford he was a noted athlete, although he suffered periodically from unknown health problems. After taking his degree in 1891 he went to Ely Theological College and was ordained three years later, taking a curacy at St Andrews, Lincoln. He stayed here for six years, during which time he married Dorothea Mallam (1874–1907). She was the eldest child of James Thomas Mallam (1850–1915) of Oxford, a family which had connections with the Pre-Raphaelites. With the help of his wife he translated and arranged in English a Tibetan novel by Albert Arthur Yongden, "Lama Yongden", entitled Mipam. He also co-authored a work on the Habsburgs and Italy. In around 1900 he left Lincoln to undertake work with the Norwich diocese. It is at around this point that he presumably commissioned E.S. Prior. The money used to pay for the house - £60,000 - most probably derived from a stake in the family business, now run by his elder brother Frank.

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