Hill End Cottages

Description

Here H. G. Fenwick purchased Hill End Farm in 1910 and employed Lutyens on various buildings: Langley End Cottage has the distinctive chimneys found on Lutyens’s estate cottages at Preston, as do Hill End Farm Cottages, further n. More important, a large new red brick house, Hill End, was commissioned by Fenwick’s wife Violet, c. 1911–12, for a friend. From the road, an irregular service wing half-conceals the almost modest entrance, single-storey beneath a huge roof with dormers, and two-storey cross-wings to l. and r. with hipped roofs. The garden front is more formal, again with hipped roofs but the recessed three-bay centre carried up to a parapet with lead urns. Lawrence Weaver wrote that ‘the garden side is a very just example of the spirit of classical repose in a composition possessing no definite classical features’. Now subdivided. (Bettley et al, 2019, p.345)

2 farm cottages, outhouses, and dairy all linked in one range. Circa 1911 by E.L. Lutyens said to be for Mrs. Fenwick. Dark red brick in English-bond with lighter red dressings and tile heads to vent-slots in dairy. Red tile-hanging to 1st floor in recessed centre. Steep pitched red tile roofs with continuous tiled eaves corbel but without any bellcast to eaves. The cottages form a single 16-storeys rectangular block facing N with upper floor lit by gable windows to E and W and a large gable central behind the chimney on the S but the front recessed in the centre giving a 2-storeys elevation between lower wings. Moulded plank doors, small-pane wooden flush casements painted white, and roofs of small outhouses on frontage linked to main roof over cross-passages. Massive central red brick chimney with clasping corner pilasters and waisted top. Linked to roof of W outhouse a long single-storey dairy building with similar roof and eaves detail and only 3 small ventilation slots along N side to road. (Historic England, list entry 1307860)

Bibliography

Bettley J, Pevsner N, Cherry B (2019) Hertfordshire. The Buildings of England. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Historic England. HILL END FARM COTTAGE, 1 AND 2, AND ADJOINING DAIRY. [Online] Available from: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1307860

Also Cited In

Listing Grade

II

Listing Reference

1307860

Client