page_title: Home Place, Kelling
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: Home Place, Kelling / History / Construction
caption_attribution_description: English: Photographs of Kelling Place (now called Home Place, Kelling), Norfolk, England
context_page_description: Home Place, also called Voewood, is an Arts and Crafts style house in Kelling, near Holt, Norfolk, England, designed 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.
context_section_description: 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.
  Work began in 1903, with the construction of various outbuildings, including thatched semi-detached gardeners' cottages and a complex of gardens. Initially experiments with construction techniques using materials derived from the site were carried out, for example in the construction of the walls of vegetable garden. The main house was not begun until 1904, when the sunken flower garden, 1-acre (4,000 m²) and 6 ft (1.8 m) deep, was excavated to provide aggregates for the construction of the house itself. Pebbles were used for facing the walls, gravel for concrete and sand for general building purposes. Surface earth was used for the terraces. The excess ballast produced was sold to local authorities. Local carstone  was employed, quarried near Sandringham,  as were tiles made of local Norfolk clay, though some materials had to be got from Cambridgeshire when supplies ran out.  Oak was also obtained locally. The house is constructed of mass concrete made of local lime and the materials derived from the site. The flint facing is tied to the external walls with carstone and fixed to the core with bricks. The lace coursings of tile-bricks binds and reinforces the structure. Galletting with flints was widely used.  The floors are of concrete reinforced with iron chains.  The roof is covered in local pantiles.
  The patterning and modelling of the wall surfaces and the colours and texturing of the building are pronounced.  The exterior surfaces are highly decorated. The patterning makes reference to the local tradition of diaper and zigzag patterns in the brickwork of cottages and farm buildings.  Tiles were extensively employed, forming the surrounds of the first floor windows, as lintels in herringbone patterns  and as decorative bands and patterns.  Tiles and narrow courses of brick were used in twisted neo-Tudor chimney stacks. Prior did not employ a general contractor in the building. Electrical services were executed under contract, but the main construction work was supervised  and labour and materials purchased by Prior's site clerk, Randall Wells (1877–1942) and Mr Blower, a local bricklayer. Prior believed that contract systems would result in "only the most mechanical expressions of design"  being brought to fruition. Randall Wells had been discovered by William Lethaby in 1902 and had acted as his resident clerk of works at Brockhampton Church, Herefordshire.  Randall Wells  had received a practical training in joinery, founding as well as architecture.  He ran his own practice as well as working for other architects.
  Unfortunately a new isolation hospital was constructed next door shortly after completion of Home Place. It is believed that Mrs Lloyd, concerne
caption: Kelling Place in 1914
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