Mock Tudor.......Not!

There are enough Mock Tudor houses with their black and white facades and false beams round here to give any self-respecting architect a fit. However, we do also have the real thing. This is Queen Elizabeths Hunting Lodge, on Rangers Road, Chingford. It was built in 1542-3 for King Henry VIII. He called it his Great Standing and it was a platform from which the aged king could either view a hunt or from which he could shoot deer as they were released from pens and chased across Chingford Plain.
In Tudor times the lodge looked very different. The walls of the main body of the building were completely open allowing the hunters more freedom with their bows. The roof was tiled, as now, and the timbers and bricks were probably painted red.
To suit the tastes of the day, Victorian builders stripped off the plaster that had enclosed the building for hundreds of years, and painted the timbers black with a paint that did not allow the wood to breathe. Slowly the oak began to rot and in the early 1990's a decision was made to restore the hunting lodge. White limewash now protects the timbers from insects and the weather.
It is a very functional, basic building, so to emphasize the features it does have, I have given it an ink and watercolour wash effect which I think works quite well.
If you want to visit the Lodge, see here.