Bashley Lodge

The current house was built in 1887, replacing an earlier house or cottage on the site. It is now run as a holiday centre. Unfortunately no images of the earlier house survive, though it was described by John Beame in the 1850s as follows:

“The house, or cottage, was a low two-storeyed building painted white with pointed Gothic windows, a veranda and two gables each with a wooden cross on it; the whole having a sham Cockney-Gothic look about it only partly redeemed by a profusion of roses and myrtles growing all over the front. There were some 180 acres of baddish land, ornamental grounds, two long and beautiful avenues – each half a mile long, it was said, but I never measured them – leading up to it, and a magnificent view across the Solent, with the Isle of Wight and the Needles in the distance. Inside the rooms were low, small and inconveniently arranged, but my grandmother furnished it in the most expensive style of those days – costly but tasteless. The books, however, and the collection of china were valuable and beautiful.”

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