View source for 'The Ruxley Towers Story' by Claude F Luke

In the leisurely days of the nineteenth century, the then Lord
Foley built himself of N the leisurely days of the nineteenth century, the then Lord lodge on his richly-wooded Claygate estate. He had chosen the place with care. Claygate village in those days was a charming rural backwater, a longish coach drive from London, screened by common-land from the hurly-burly of the Portsmouth Road, and protected on all sides by the well-kept homes and estates of the nobility.

Ruxley Lodge, as it was originally known, dominated the Claygate scene, both geographically and socially. It boasted fine stables, smooth lawns, topiary hedges (still preserved), a magnificent avenue of rhododendrons, and a vast conserva-tory the envy of the county. Great house parties were held there, and Queen Victoria is said to have visited Ruxley on one occasion.

The building itself began life as a fairly modest, yellow-brick country residence, with simple lines and of the solid, if undistinguished, architecture of the period. And then, sud-denly, it underwent a strange metamorphosis. The story goes -probably apocryphal that the noble lord visited Hurst-monceaux Castle and was so impressed by its historic grandeur that he returned to Ruxley Lodge muttering: I must have towers and turrets and gargoyles. Be that as it may, the fact remains that this pleasant Victorian home suddenly sprouted two incongruous towers with turrets fringed with hideous gargoyles poking out their tongues at the astonished Surrey landscape; so that today Ruxley Towers (as it was re-christened) is probably the ugliest building in the south of England, an architectural hash of dignity and impudence.

By the turn of the present century, the outward march of London could no longer be stayed. The building rash crept across the green fields. The noblemen departed from this corner of Surrey and the great homes fell empty or were con-verted to other uses. Ruxley Towers was no exception, and after various vicissitudes, the year 1939 found it in the posses-sion of Mr. Robert Campbell Robb, who had converted it into three or four flats".

About this time, with war imminent, the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (N.A.A.F.I.), in common with other large organisations, had been advised by the Government to move