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Shalford
Durbins. House Roger Fry built for himself in 1913. Roger Fry was the English discoverer of Cezanne, Picasso, and Marisa leader of the English avant-garde of 1910 and the inventor of the phrase 'significant form', the 1910 equivalent of art for arts sake. In England, unlike Vienna or Weimar, there was no community of spirit between architects and other artists, and the Glasgow school was almost dead. Fry was thrown back on his own critical instincts, and he did what Englishmen have so often done in time of artistic upheaval: he went severely classical. The result is a blunt, four-square block, two storeys plus a big slate mansard roof, containing all the bedrooms. Most of the space below is taken up by an enormous two-storey living hall. The ground rises by half a storey from front to back so that the main (rear) entrance leads on to a neat bit of split-level planning - down a half-storey to the hall and the ground-floor rooms, up the same amount to the first-floor rooms and the balcony. This is not merely the careless layout of a Mereworth, with one enormous room for show and the rest filled in anyhow, but a clear-headed attempt to plan simultaneously very large and very small rooms for different moods, something which gives one a good deal of respect for Fry. Clearly he was no woolly-minded fancier. The outside elevation expressing the hall gives the same feeling of controlled brick pilasters, roughcast between, the proportions of the big small-paned windows worked out exactly, and just one bit of chequer ornament over the door. No decoration inside accept two painted panels facing the main entrance, Matisse-style, and not good; woman by Vanessa Bell, nudes by Duncan Grant.
A path at its river end, leads off to the Portsmouth Road. On the far side of the river is a path to Shalford Road. These two paths, part of the so-called 'Pilgrims' Way', were linked by a ferry. In 1983 Surrey County Council erected the footbridge nearby which has now restored the link and takes the North Downs Way long-distance footpath across the river.
The Grange 1902 adequate by Belcher, 1902, classical details symmetrical composition. Adequate.
Little Croft. Lutyens 1899 small and not inspired. The garden front relentlessly symmetrical with tiny oriels on the corners. Big doorway of careful brickwork
Recent three-storey weather boarded terraces, less fussy than average, by Scott, Brownrigg & Turner, 1965-7. More c19 tile-hung houses hidden away behind. Many early houses by Norman Shaw. Group must also be by Shaw: a tile-hung arched entrance dated 1881 leading to two asymmetrical cottage ranges perpendicular to the road Not a stock solution at all, and hence better.
Pleasant c1 cottages
Brabouef outside asymmetrical Victorian Tudor in Margate stone, a restrained, competent design. This however is simply an encasing of a smaller half-timbered manor house c.1590, and panelling, moulded ceilings, and fireplaces from this remain, along with a cramped, plain late c17 staircase. The house has recently been renovated for the College of Law and a new teaching block added by Scott, Brownrigg & Turner, 1965-6. This is a civilized, reticent building, which does not try to compete with the older house. It has a recessed ground floor in dark brick, and two upper floors with pale grey spandrels and fascia.
Police Divisional Headquarters with extensive additions by the County Architect, R.J. Ash.
Old Friars 1600 half-timbered, with a complete gable of curved braces making quatrefoils. This sort of pattern was doubtedly exposed originally.
Pickards Manor 17th farm with stone s front and two flanking stone was disgracefully remodelled in 1965-6, hardly a detail surviving
Littleholme. Voysey 1907. Cottage at the back is better. For G. Muntzer, the builder and interior decorator, a familiar roughcast block with limestone dressed, rather arid, as a lot of his Surrey work is.
Cottage at the back, built in 1911, is simpler and better
Wey
Towrope Roller. At the right-angle bend in the river here is one of the posts supporting a vertical roller needed to guide the towrope so that the pull of the horses continued to be exerted in the desired direction.
Davis’s Wharf once stood here where barges were loaded with chalk from the Great Quarry behind it.
Guildford Rowing Club's boat-house. On the site of Davis Wharf. There are two lengths of wall built mainly of chalk but with brick along the top and at the ends, which could have been part of the boundary of the wharf. The Rowing Club was formed in about 1880 and engages in serious rowing mostly on the fairly wide and straight stretch upstream from its boat-house.
Sluice. Set in the towpath, discharges from the Navigation into a backwater. This structure was installed as part of the River Wey Improvement Scheme of the 1930s to provide, in time of flood, an extra route for surplus water when the Millmead tumbling bay could not pass enough.
Watercourse. The land on the other side of the river is low lying and is drained by a ditch leading to a tunnel or trunk under the river at this point. This discharges into the backwater on the right a few yards below the sluice.
Penstocks in the bank and another about 150 yards away. These were opened in the winter when frost was expected. The land beyond was thus flooded to make a vast skating rink.
Sandy slope sometimes said to be the site of the 'golden ford’, which probably gave Guildford its name. This is where the Pilgrim’s Way crosses on its way to St.Catherine’s.
Clay Pipes. Made on the opposite bank to the tumbling bay. Guildford was one of the centres of manufacture of these items
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