Listing Text

TRING

1598/1/10013 COW LANE
15-OCT-04 Cartshed and piggery at Dunsley Bungalow

GV II
Cartshed, 1920 by Hertforshire County Land Agent's Office for Mr Jeacock, first tenant. Drawings signed Andrew Gray. Timber framed on brick base, weatherboarded in elm, ledge and batten doors of deal, corrugated iron roof over close boarding, concrete base with inset flat brick paving to piggery floor. Cartshed to right with pair of full height doors, piggery to left with stable door. Rear timber fixed light window. Pig farrowing box has floor of brick paving laid flush in concrete base. Timber shelf above. Perimeter guard rails fixed with wrought iron cramps no longer survive.

The house is a rare surviving bungalow from the Homes fit for Heroes movement of housing regeneration after World War I, part of the wider movement of early C20 public housing in which Hertfordshire played an important role. It is built on a two acre plot, taken from Dunsley Farm, which was bought from the Rothschild estate in 1919 by the County Council. It is well documented as one of the first plots acquired by the County Council after the War. Plans for the house do not survive, but it is similar to an example from Tiptree Essex, by Kenneth M Cross, illustrated in Houses, Cottages and Bungalows, edited by Philip Chatterton, 1926. Plans survive for the cart shed and piggery by the County Land Agent's Office (1920) specified for Mr Jeacock, first tenant. It was built in reverse. Comparable small holdings remain at Baldock and Kings Langley but none are as complete.
The plot retains some of its cast iron boundary posts and wires.

It is set on a two acre small holding, still intact and managed in the original manner, with an orchard and livestock. This is the only surviving managed small holding of this period in the County. Apart from the social and historical implications of the site, it has a wide ecological diversity.

A Social History of Housing, 1815-1985, John Burnett, 2nd edn, 1986
Homes fit for Heroes, Mark Swenarton, 1981
Hertfordshire County Council's Rural Estate, A Century of Achievement
Rural Housing, Homes for heroes, from Conservation of Devonshire Cottages, R.D.Shears, 1968
Hertfordshire County Council, County Land Agent's Office, drawings for 2 acre holding, Dunsley Farm, Tring, for Mr Jeacock, July 1920