Hillsgreen Lodge including garden walls and gate piers, Corsham, Wiltshire

Summary

A house of C17 or early C18 date in the Cotswold vernacular tradition that has origins as part of a farmstead on the Hartham Park Estate. It has been restored and extended.The C21 extensions to the north-east and west end of the house are not included.

Description

House of C17 or early C18 date with garden walls and gate piers, and with C20 alterations. The C21 additions are not included.

MATERIALS: constructed of Cotswold rubble with ashlar dressings. The roofs are covered in stone slates in diminishing courses with swept valleys, ashlar stacks and coped gables. The windows are C20 metal-framed casements with leaded panes.

PLAN: roughly on an east/west orientation, this three-bay house has been extended by one bay to each end, and to the rear, forming an elongated C-plan. Of single storey plus attic and with a basement to the west end.
EXTERIOR: in the Cotswold vernacular style, the principal elevation is of four bays with gabled dormers, and ashlar dressings to the corners and openings, and labelled hood moulds above the windows. To the ground floor are two doorways (that to the right is sealed) with stone jambs and timber lintels and three windows, one with a flush cyma-moulded mullion and two with ovolo-moulded mullions. The two-light casements to the dormers also have moulded mullions: two are flush cyma and one is ovolo. To the left of the façade is an attached single-storey bay of 2011 in a sympathetic style, which is not of special interest. The east elevation has the 1930s addition to the left. There is a wide coped gable to the left with a two-light mullioned window to both floors and a sealed door with flat stone hood supported by console brackets and single-light window to the right.

To the rear there are three dormer gables with three-light windows. Two are ovolo-moulded and one is flush cyma-moulded. To the ground floor are three-light and two-light windows with some disruption to the stonework across the elevation and two steel tie ends to left of centre, which indicate some degree of structural modification. There is a basement opening to the right bay.

INTERIOR: the principal front entrance opens to a modern main staircase. The rooms to each side have mid-C20 joinery including timber window shutters, doors and architraves, and boxed beams. The room to the left of the stair has an adapted late C19 limestone chimneypiece and hearthstone, and to its left an historic doorway that leads to the 2011 kitchen extension. A set of concrete steps in a winder stairwell below the main stair gives access to a basement. The floor to the basement is covered in stone flags and the exposed historic timber structure of the ground floor above has been strengthened in the late C20/21. To the right of the main staircase are two further rooms with fireplaces and modern chimneypieces. The far room has a chamfered C17/C18 ceiling beam and a reconfigured C17 staircase to the rear wall with square newels and twisted barley-sugar balusters. The room opens into the 1937 end bay. To the first floor are exposed C17/C18 roof trusses and purlins below inserted ceilings. At the west end of the first floor, a substantial chamfered tie beam with run-out stop at the north end is in situ. The tie beam at the east end of the house appears to have been much altered during the 1937 alterations.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: a coursed rubblestone garden wall with stone coping and ramping, and some repaired sections, extends around the front garden. There are two ashlar gate piers with stone ball finials and a modern timber gate to the front path.

History

Hillsgreen Lodge was built in the C17 or early C18, probably as part of a farmstead, and historically was part of the Hartham Park Estate. The estate was owned by Lady Anne James by the end of the C18 and she engaged architect James Wyatt to design a new country house as her residence (Grade II).

Hillsgreen Lodge is shown on the 1840s tithe map with three detached structures to the north east, probably farm buildings. Those buildings had been removed by the time of the First Edition Ordnance Survey Map of 1886 and a circular dewpond had been created nearby. New outbuildings are shown to the west of the house and the attached garden walls extend around the front gardens. The house had acquired an attached structure at its east end, which by 1900 was incorporated within the house. Hillsgreen Lodge is shown on a 1919-20 estate map for Hartham Park when it was under the ownership of John Dickson-Poynder, 1st Lord Islington, who employed Harold Peto to create a new landscape design for the park in the early C20. Hillsgreen Lodge was restored in 1937 and in the later C20, following a period of disuse.

The interior arrangement of the house, and the number of door openings to the front elevation, indicate that at some stage it was arranged as a row of cottages, but it has since been returned to a single dwelling house. Both ends of the house were extended to the north in the C21.

Reasons for Listing

Hillsgreen Lodge, a C17/18 house with later alterations, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as a well-constructed and legible example of an historic rural dwelling of C17 date; built in the Cotswold vernacular tradition it has distinctive steep stone gables, coped roof verges and mullioned window openings;
* it is well-preserved as an evolved historic dwelling and retains a high proportion of historic fabric with a largely intact roof, some stop-chamfered beams, and a reused C17 stair;
* the Cotswold stone front garden wall and gate piers help create a strong visual framing for the frontage of the house.

Historic interest
* as part of a former farmstead on the Hartham Park Estate, which has Grade II listed Hartham Park as its main house, designed for Lady Anne James by James Wyatt in the late C18, and with an early C20 landscape park design by Harold Peto for John Dickson-Poynder, 1st Lord Islington.

External Links

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