Baston Lodge is a residential

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house that provided an escape from urban life. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the f ...

St Leonards-on-Sea St Leonards-on-Sea (commonly known as St Leonards) is a town and seaside resort in the borough of Hastings in East Sussex, England. It has been part of the borough since the late 19th century and lies to the west of central Hastings. The origin ...

Hastings Hastings ( ) is a seaside town and Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to th ...

East Sussex East Sussex is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Kent to the north-east, West Sussex to the west, Surrey to the north-west, and the English Channel to the south. The largest settlement ...

, southern

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. The building was designed by

Decimus Burton Decimus Burton (30 September 1800 – 14 December 1881) was one of the foremost English architects and landscapers of the 19th century. He was the foremost Victorian architect in the Roman revival, Greek revival, Georgian neoclassical and Reg ...

(1800–1881) as a seaside villa for John Ward, a friend, and completed in 1850. The architecture is in the

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

style, with coursed stone, chamfered

quoins Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th-century encyclopedia, ...

, and plain stone

architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; , also called an epistyle; ) is the lintel or beam, typically made of wood or stone, that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can also apply to all sides, including the vertical members, ...

s and bands. It has low-pitched slate roofs with two main storeys, an attic, and a basement. There is a three-storey tower with a low-pitched pyramid-shaped roof. Baston Lodge was the childhood home of the World War II codebreaker

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...

(1912–1954) and there is a

blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom, and certain other countries and territories, to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving a ...

on the front of the building commemorating this. Alan Turing and his elder brother John Turing were wards of Colonel and Mrs Ward. The building was

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

in 1973. The blue plaque commemorating Alan Turing was unveiled on 23 June 2012, the centenary of Turing's birth. The villa is located at 1 Upper Maze Hill and is close to St John's Church to the north. Immediately to the west is St Michael's Hospice and to the south is St Leonards Gardens. The building is now divided into apartments and the freehold of the building is owned by Baston Lodge Freehold Ltd.

References

1850 establishments in England Residential buildings completed in 1850 Grade II listed buildings in East Sussex Houses in East Sussex Buildings and structures in Hastings Apartment buildings in England Villas in the United Kingdom Italianate architecture in England Alan Turing {{EastSussex-struct-stub

See also

References