TREASURE DESCRIPTION: A Georgian mansion built in 1788 for John Rucker, adjacent to his calico printing factory. Next to it is the coachman’s house, which is rendered brick, castellated with interesting windows details. The Lodge was built in 1824 as the gatehouse to Wandle Villa. Adjacent to this property is Everett’s Place – a gothic lodge folly in a row of workmen’s cottages built in 1824 to house mill workers for Woods Silk Works.
When subsidence affected the labourers cottages on Phipps Bridge Road, the owner of Wandle Villa built a castellated and ‘ruinated’ cottage as a buttress at the end of the row at Everett’s Place to shore them up. After the decline of the calico industry, Peter Wood’s Silk Works moved on to the site. This was Welch & Morgetson of Cheapside and the mill was run by the Asprey Brothers of Bond Street. To the rear of the mill, the ‘Parent Steam Washing Factory’ opened in 1811 in an effort to modernise the calico industry. Run by John Tyrell who was bankrupt by 1828. In 1846 the building was a block printing factory and later a stocking factory.
These treasures were made as part of The Building Exploratory, Wandle Treasures project. This project was part of the wider Living Wandle Landscape Partnership Scheme, funded by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund.
