Planning Application Number:P10/0765
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PLANNING APPLICATION NUMBER:P10/0765 Type of approval sought Conservation Area Consent Ward Castle & Priory Applicant Dudley College Location: KUDOS HOUSE, LAND AT CORNER OF PRIORY ROAD & EDNAM ROAD, DUDLEY, WEST MIDLANDS, DY1 1HL Proposal CONSERVATION AREA CONSENT FOR DEMOLITION OF KUDOS HOUSE, FORMER COACH HOUSE, SPORTS HALL AND BOUNDARY WALLS Recommendation REFUSE Summary: SITE AND SURROUNDINGS 1 The application site is 0.4 hectares in size and encompasses a Locally Listed Historic House (constructed in 1864-5 as Priory Villa but more recently re-named Kudos House) along with its extensive grounds which also contain an associated historic Coach House. These elements with their historic boundary walls all fall within the boundary of the Dudley Town Centre Conservation Area. The application site extends beyond this incorporating a part of the Priory Road Car Park and a building housing a former gymnasium at the rear of no. 2 Ednam Road. The gymnasium and boundary treatment along Priory Road (wall, railings and posts) are vestiges of the former use of this part of the site as Dudley Girls Grammar School. Priory Villa itself is in a good condition and is currently being used as council offices (electoral services office). 2 In the context of the current application for demolition the application site itself needs to be understood in the context of the historic evolution of Dudley Town Centre and of the contribution that the historic buildings and their historic layout make to local distinctiveness and the ‘sense of place’ that makes Dudley special when compared to other towns in the Black Country and beyond. 140 3 The Conservation Area Character Appraisal carried out in 2004 that underpins the designation of the Dudley Town Centre Conservation Area and has been formally adopted as Supplementary Planning Guidance analysed the whole area of the town in great detail and concluded that its special architectural and historic interest could be defined in relation to a number of identifiable ‘quarters’. These had differing but complementary characteristics representing the incremental growth of the Town over time and they were all considered to be of equivalent importance in combining to create the overall character of the town as an historic place. 4 The ‘Commercial/Retail Quarter’ essentially comprises the medieval core area of Dudley stretching from High Street/Market Place back to Tower Street and King Street. Historically the land beyond this comprised open arable fields that supplied the Town with the exception that those lands west of Tower Street and north of Wolverhampton Street had been granted to Dudley Priory. These were maintained as areas of open pasture and woodland and they reverted back to Lord Dudley at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This is significant because early in the 19th century when Dudley Council first came into being and effectively took over town governance it was here that building land was made available by Lord Dudley that would allow the start of construction of today’s ‘Municipal/Civic Quarter’. 5 On the ‘island’ of land now bounded by Priory Street, St. James’s, and Ednam Roads and fronting onto Priory Road a new Town Hall was built in the Victorian Gothic Revival style. At a time of great change and social instability fostered by the Industrial Revolution this architectural style consciously referenced medieval church and secular architecture, seeking to invoke echoes of the stability represented by traditional English institutions and attitudes. Fittingly, in the same vein the Town Hall was accompanied by a ‘Baronial Gothic’ Police Headquarters designed so as to mimic the gatehouse of a medieval castle. A further Gothic Revival style building the ‘Dudley Dispensary’ was built adjacent to and north of the Town Hall. As the name implies this was designed to dispense medicines and provide access to medical treatment for the rapidly rising industrial population of Dudley. 141 Whilst the current Council House complex has replaced the Victorian Town Hall and Dispensary the original ‘Old Police Buildings’ still remain on Priory Street and are listed grade II. 6 All of this is highly pertinent in that Priory Villa itself was specifically constructed as part of this early Civic provision as a purpose built dwelling to house the then ‘Surgeon in Charge’ to the Dispensary, Mr John Houghton. He utilised it both as his private residence and for his professional consulting rooms, a dual role that is still clearly evident in the well preserved architectural detail and layout of the building today. The architecture is Italianate emulating design elements, such as the central Cupola lighting a grand central staircase, found in a traditional Tuscan Villa. The building has two formal entrances, a very grand one off Ednam Road leading into the private part of the house with a spacious tiled entrance hall and grand staircase and a Priory Road entrance which is ornate but of a slightly lesser order, being a separate entrance for the use of patients. Overall the architectural composition and consistency of detailing is very good and it is suggested it may be the work of Birmingham architects Bateman and Drury, a notable feature being the linking of doorcase details through to the windows above. 7 Internally the Council have been sensitive in their conversion of the building to offices and although some lightweight partitions have been added the historic plan form survives intact. Most original features have been retained, most interestingly including the arrangement of surgery rooms to the Priory Road frontage, and grander, private rooms to the south-west side. Whilst the surgery rooms do not possess any particular features that could provide a greater understanding of how they were used the private rooms still contain window shutters, cornices, ceiling roses, dado rails and picture rails. Original sash windows survive in most locations. At the service end of the house a high corridor leading towards the original kitchen area still has an array of meat hooks suspended from the ceiling. The wine cellar still contains its original slate lined wine bins and brick stillages for the storage of other goods. 8 Through adopting an Italianate architectural style that clearly references Classical as opposed to Gothic architecture Priory Villa was very evidently designed to be strikingly different to its neighbours. This would be entirely in keeping with the 142 profession of its occupant as representing an architectural expression of scientific rationalism, perceptually linking back to the roots of modern medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome. This is why Priory Villa now still ‘stands out’ as a striking feature in the street scene and there is no other example of a house in this architectural style within the Conservation Area. 9 Designed originally to be a very prestigious stand alone building serving the Dispensary and sharing the same grounds, Priory Villa became even more of an iconic structure when it became part of the wider Priory Fields development. This came about in the 1870’s as Lord Dudley released more building land this time laid out as a series of extremely spacious building plots serviced by a new network of roads, including for the first time Ednam Road. The Dudley Herald of 1876 hailed this venture as being akin to the creation of a new ‘West End’ for Dudley to rival that in London. Within this new layout Priory Villa gained a prominent corner location dominating the crossroads of Ednam and Priory Roads as it still does today. New grounds were then also laid out with a walled boundary running alongside Ednam Road and with a new Coach House being constructed and accessed from it. All of these features remain today including some minor changes to the house, such as the addition of a bay window to overlook the new gardens. 10 The subsequent history of Priory Villa, almost up to the present, serves to emphasise the buildings significance being important not only in architectural terms but in being a physical reminder of how municipal governance and public health services evolved in Dudley at the height of the Industrial Revolution and beyond. Through its’ historical associations with notable local people over a long period the building also serves to illuminate the social history of Dudley. 11 John Hyde Houghton continued in his role with the Dispensary until his death in 1879 by which time he was also Honorary Surgeon of the new Guest Hospital that had been erected in 1871. He had been an important local man, married to the daughter of the Vicar of St. Thomas’s Church and a grave memorial to him, his wife and son can be seen in ‘Top Church’ today. His son-in-law Mr Mathew Arden Messiter, also a consultant surgeon, then took over both at the Dispensary and the 143 Guest Hospital. Whilst residing at Priory Villa he also became a prominent Borough Councillor. He was in turn succeeded by his son Dr Cyril Casson Messiter who took over the title of Honorary Surgeon in 1918 and retired in 1943 by which time a new ward ‘The Messiter Ward’ had been built at the Guest and dedicated to his father. As a 1974 History of the Guest Hospital noted this was, ‘A truly remarkable record of family service- extending to an unbroken period of over seventy years’. 12 The final male Messiter to reside at Priory Villa, Ian, was not a medical man but he instead found national fame as a BBC producer creating the now world famous radio 4 panel game ‘Just a Minute’. It was in the 1960’s, after Ian’s mothers death, that Priory Villa was purchased by Dudley Council. 13 As regards the wider surroundings of the application site, the building plots offered for sale in Priory Fields were aimed at the rising business and professional classes of Dudley, from whose ranks Council members and officers were increasingly being drawn.