RIPPLE TR 34 NW 7/54 Ripple Court and outhouses in rear 11.10.63 courtyard GV II* House. 1796 to 1802 for colonel John Baker Sladen extended late C19 and c.1930. White brick with ashlar and coade stone dressings and slate roof. Rear wings roughcast. Three storeys and basement with moulded plinth supporting 4 Corinthian pilasters with Coade stone capitals, with rendered frieze and ashlar dentil cornice to attic storey. Sunk panelled pilaster strips and cornice to parapet. Central double stacks with arcaded bridging piece. The whole centre piece projects slightly from the main face of the elevation. Regular fenestration of 3 glazing bar sashes on attic and first floors, and 2 on ground floor with moulded architraves and pediments on scrolls. Central half-glazed double doors with rectangular fanlight in slightly projecting porch with Doric pilasters and pediment and flight of 4 steps. Basement openings to left and to right. Left return elevation: scrolled architraves and pediment to ground floor windows. Right return: tented verandah with valencing on clustered iron piers around ground floor bow, with pilaster- moulded tripartite glazing bar sash and single glazing bar sashes on 2 upper floors. The verandah originally extended along the whole elevation, but was replaced c.1930 by single storey drawing room, with elliptically bowed front, 2 glazing bar sashes and central double French doors. Rear wing, late C19, built as coachhouse with nursery over, the main feature an octagonal stair turret in the re-entrant angle with a leaded cupola. The rear courtyard includes also a small bakehouse and stable block, and arched headed doorways to a series of barrel vaulted cellars which lie to the east of the house, not below it or any other contemporary structure. The interior of the coachhouse/stable block retains the stable fittings, and gymnasium fittings used by the children from the nursery wing above. Interior: fairly simple interiors with tall round-arched openings to passages and corridors and simple elliptical stair with wreathed handrail and top landing. Moulded Neo classical fire surrounds and plaster ceiling friezes and cornices. The elevation and many details of the house and plan are reminiscent of Sir John Soane, normally the least copied of Neo-Classical architects. The facade in particular is related to Simonds Brewery, Reading (1794) and Shotesham Hall Norfolk (1785-9) and some work at the Bank of England. Soane designed Ringwould House (1813) 1 mile to the east, and worked at nearby Walmer in 1812. There is no known connection with Ripple Court (see D. Stroud, Sir John Soane, Architect, 1984). Listing NGR: TR3493048811