Listing Text

NEWMARKET

TL66SW OLD STATION ROAD
177-1/0/26 (Southeast side)
30-OCT-06 Machell Place

II
Racehorse trainer's house. c.1850, built as a pair of semi-detached houses, then converted to a single house and enlarged 1884 by W.C.Manning, as a trainer's house. Late C20 alterations.
Red brick with stone dressings; gabled, fish-scale slate roofs with ceramic ridge tiles and pierced and scalloped bargeboards, hipped dormers, a large central, brick ridge stack and stacks to rear wings. Picturesque Tudor Gothic style.
PLAN: the original, mirror image, double-depth pair of houses, each with a rear wing, remodelled internally as a one house with addition at rear.
EXTERIOR: two storeys. Symmetrical front with offset stone plinth and stone quoins to slightly projecting, cross-gabled wing on each side. On the ground floor, adjacent to each wing, the blocked opening to the recessed porch to each of the former semi-detached houses, a brick infill under a stone Tudor arch supported on corbels; each infilled opening flanked by a slender buttress with two stone capped offsets, and in the centre of the front a similar buttress; between the buttresses to right originally a window opening replaced in 1884 by stone framed Tudor arched entrance doorway, the panelled door with leaded light glazing in upper half, under a timber gabled hood supported on brackets with pierced and scalloped barge boards to the gable; between buttresses on left, and in the end of each wing a stone-framed window opening. On the first floor in the centre two slightly projecting oriels in moulded stone, corbelled frames and gables with scalloped bargeboards and ceramic finials; a stone framed window opening in the front of each oriel and in the end of each wing, and above each former porch a narrow window opening rising into a hipped dormer with ornamental metal finial. Above each window a Tudor relieving arch. The sides and rears of the cross-gabled wings on both floors have similar stone framed windows. At rear late C19 extension; three cross gables with plain bargeboards; on both floors plain window openings with segmental arched heads. All window openings to the house refitted c.1980 with UPVC side hung sashes.
HISTORY: Formerly called Chetwynd Place. Originally a pair of semi-detached houses, c.1850, in a picturesque Tudor Gothic style for James [Jem] Robinson, jockey and trainer. Between c.1860 and 1880 at least one and perhaps both houses of the original semi-detached pair was owned by Sir John Astley, prominent racehorse owner, gambler, Steward of the Jockey Club, and the founder of the Astley Institute, a club for the stable lads of Newmarket. The pair was then converted to a single house and enlarged 1884 by W.C.Manning for Charles [Charlie] Wood, trainer, as the trainer's house for Chetwynd Place Stables at the rear of the house. They were later re-named Machell Place and Machell Place Stables [q.v.] in the late C19 after they were bought by Captain J.O.Machell, prominent racehorse owner and manager.
Very well-detailed in itself, the house forms a significant group with the grand and extensive stables to rear.
REFERENCE: Forest Heath District Council: Newmarket Horse Racing Training Yards: 1992.