[2] His father had previously engaged Samuel Sanders Teulon to build the Calthorpe's main country house, Elvetham Hall in Hampshire and Gough-Calthorpe engaged Teulon to redesign the existing house at Woodlands Vale as a seaside retreat.

Building went on for the next forty years, firstly under Teulon and subsequently under the direction of Stephen Salter, and outlasted the sixth Lord Caltorpe, being continued by his younger brother, Somerset Gough-Calthorpe, 7th Baron Calthorpe, following his succession in 1910.

[3] Teulon's, and subsequently Salter's, efforts transformed it into a Renaissance Revival house, "distantly derived from French château precedent.

[8][b] The critic Henry-Russell Hitchcock considered Elvetham Hall "so complex in its composition and so varied in its detailing that it quite defies description".

[7] In its survey of 1912, shortly after the house was largely complete, the Victoria County History described Woodlands Vale as one of the "principal residences" of the parish.