Broadspear House, Highclere Estate, Highclere, Hampshire

Summary

An estate house of C18, C19 and C20 dates with two show facades which were apparently designed to form an eye-catcher in the landscape surrounding Highclere Castle.

Description

An estate house of C18, C19 and C20 dates with two show facades which were apparently designed to form an eye-catcher in the landscape surrounding Highclere Castle.

MATERIALS and PLAN: yellow brick and red brick laid in Flemish bond with a plain tile roof which is gabled but may originally have been hipped. Three storeys with single-storey outshuts to the north and west sides.

EXTERIOR: the south front which now faces the garden, but appears to have originally been the entrance front, has three bays, built of yellow brick and symmetrically disposed. The bays are divided by pilasters which rise through all three floors but which stop short below the eaves. The central bay has a doorway wth a later-C19 or C20 red brick porch and a semi-glazed door. Above this is a small, first-floor casement of two lights which may be a later insertion. Above this again, at second floor level, is a two-light casement with a semi-circular,recessed relieving arch. The tympanum of this arched recess has been filled with C19 fishscale tiles. To either side of the centre the lateral bays have two-light casements which diminish in height as the building rises.

At the corners are paired pilasters flanking slender bays with niches. These have square heads to the lower storeys, but arched heads at second-floor level where there are also projecting bands between the floors and at mid-storey height.

Adjoining the west flank is an outshut with a recessed arched bay. This now holds a window, but the red brickwork below the ledge may indicate that it was previously a doorway. The half-gable of the lean-to roof above has red brickwork to the left and yellow bricks to the right.

The east flank has a three-bay symmetrical arrangement with flanking, paired pilasters and blank niches, similar to those on the south front. The ground floor has a two-light casement beneath which is a panel of red bricks, perhaps indicating that this was formerly a doorway. The first and second floors have blind, rectangular panels at the centre. The gable is stuccoed and has the appearance of a classical pediment. At right is the half-gabled end of the later, rear outshut. This has a round-arched recess in which is a two-light window.

The west flank has a C19 outshut to the ground floor with a two-light casement at left. Walling above on this gable end is of red bricks and blank, but with the two projecting ends of the bands seen on the south front apparent to the second floor at right.

The north side, or rear, has an outshut extending for the full length of the ground floor. Here, and on the walling above, is a mixture of patches of red and yellow bricks. At centre of the outshut is a round arched bay surrounding a panelled door. To the right is a two-light casement with cambered head and to the left are two, further relieving arches, one of which contains a window. The walling of the upper storeys is blank save for one central window to the second floor and appears to have been stuccoed or colourwashed at some stage.

INTERIOR: the later outshut masks an original entrance door to the house which was formerly external. Ground floor rooms have square clay tiles which appear to be C19 or earlier. The central hallway gives access to a dining room, which has a C19 fire surround, and to the sitting room, which has lost its fire surround. In both rooms there are arched alcoves with cupboards and shelving and there is a chair rail to the sitting room, however the joinery does not appear to be original. The sitting room has a plaster cornice which does appear to be of C19 date. The closed-string staircase has stick balusters and a plain handrail. Fire surrounds on the upper floors are C19 and cast iron. It appears that the interior has undergone remodelling on the upper floors in the C19 and the mezzanine window on the south front no longer corresponds with the alignment of the staircase, as would have been expected.

History

The land which now forms the Highclere estate has an ancient history dating to before the Norman conquest. It was granted to the church at Winchester in AD 749 and contained a deer park and fish ponds by the C12. In the C13 Bishop William of Wykeham carried out extensive building work on the house.

The estate was sequestered by Edward VI in 1551 and then passed to the Fitzwilliam, Kingsmill and Lucy families. In 1679 Highclere was bought by Sir Robert Sawyer, the Attorney General under Charles II, and he began to lay out the estate in the form in which it is now seen. The work was continued by his grandson, Robert Sawyer Herbert, in the early C18 and the estate has remained with the same family since that time.

Henry Herbert, who inherited the estate in 1769, became Lord Porchester in 1780 and Earl of Caernarvon in 1793. He commissioned a remodelling of the landscape from Lancelot Brown in 1770.

Buildings in the area of the current Broadspear House are first show on a map of 1739 with a ‘barn’ and ‘house’ identified, presumably a farmhouse. The tithe award map of 1838, shows the current grouping of house and walled enclosure to its south-west. They are referred to as ‘Park Lodge, garden and buildings’. In the census of 1851 it appears that the house was lived in by Edward Honeychurch, a building surveyor (presumably attached to or undertaking work on the estate). By 1861 the house is lived in by Elisha Smith, the head gamekeeper on the estate and it continued to be the house of the head gamekeeper until 1911.

Despite its use as housing for estate workers the building has two facades which appear to have been designed to register from a distance and these, the southern and eastern sides, would have been visible from across the park where a driveway or track led from Highclere Castle to the lake, north of the house. The Ordnance Survey (OS) map published in 1877 shows an avenue cut through Duns Mere Copse which would have allowed a view from the mere to the eastern front of Broadspear House. One of the surrounding buildings is also identified on the map as 'Kennel'. The tithe map of 1838 and the OS map of 1877 also show the rectangular enclosure to the south west of the house which corresponds to the walled garden which now exists.

Work continued on the principal house, Highclere Castle and buildings in the park during the C18 and C19, including The Temple to the east of Broadspear, which was built around 1760 and then remodelled in the mid-C19 by Barry. In roughly 1832-1833 work on the main house by Thomas Hopper included a remodelling of the exterior in a Greek Ionic style for the Second Earl, with prominent use of paired pilasters at the angles.

It seems possible that Broadspear House is the result of work which dates from both the C18 and C19. A survey of the form and possible dating of the building, undertaken in 2021 (see SOURCES), identified a number of possible different phases of construction including the C18 with later additions and alterations of the early-C19, mid-C19 and C20.

Reasons for Listing

Broadspear House, Highclere Estate, Hampshire is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* a building with a strong appearance as an eyecatcher which has an emphatic architectural composition to its southern and eastern sides.

Historic interest:

* as an indication of the appearance of buildings on the estate in the early C19, prior to the remodelling of Highclere Castle by Barry;
* as a structure which served as a working building on the estate and also as an ornamental feature within the landscape.

Group value:

* Broadspear House stands within Highclere Park which is a Registered Park and Garden (Grade I). It has group value with The Temple (listed, Grade II*), line arch bridge (listed, Grade II) and Milford Lake House (listed, Grade I).

External Links

Historic England Listing

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