Building record 6002/1/1 - Hunsbury Hill Farmhouse

{1} C18, with additions. Ashlar, Welsh slated roof with stone coped side gables. 2 storeys and attics, gabled dormer. 1st floor has 3 sash windows with vertical glazing bars under cambered relieving arches. 2 ground floor canted bay windows with glazing bars, entablatures. Lower 2 storey wings at oblique angles, on south C18, on north mid to late C19. Single storey late C19 pentice roofed addition to main block on west.

{4} As built, the original farmhouse was of three bays, two storeys high plus attics, and with identical single-bay, two-storey wings at either end, aligned at about 30 degrees to the main house. The front elevation is symmetrical, of local limestone ashlar with an ogee cornice. The roof with stone-coped gables and 18th century kneelers is covered in Welsh slate, although originally it had plain clay tiles. A central front door leads to a stone-flagged entrance-hall and staircase-bay. A door at the back of the hail lead to the yard whilst doors either side lead to the dining room on the south and the drawing room on the north. Both rooms have high ceilings with cornices and are panelled. Both would have had large fireplaces but only the dining room one survives: a fine late 18th century Adam-style chimney-piece in two colours of marble. A doorway alongside the fireplace, now blocked, would have led from the kitchen in the south wing. The large open fireplace in the kitchen has had its fire- beam replaced and has a later bread oven to one side. There is an external door into the yard. The north wing would have contained the dairy and possibly a brewhouse, and had only a single external door to the yard. During the 19th century this arrangement seems to have been reversed, the kitchen being transferred to the north wing and the dining room and sitting rooms interchanged. The staircase leads to a small first-floor landing that provides access to bedrooms over the two principal downstairs rooms; a corridor along the back of the house leads to the north wing bedroom. The bedroom over the sitting room is the most private with a small fireplace and a closet, and without interconnecting doors to other rooms. The bedroom over the dining room, also with a small fireplace, interconnects with the room in the south wing. All the bedrooms were panelled. Three rooms in the attic are reached via a staircase from the landing. These would have been used as servants’ rooms and for storage, the central one lit by a dormer to the front elevation, the outer two by dormers to the back, replaced by fanlights after 1938. It is clear from the visible timbers that the roof was originally more substantial with multiple but-purlins, but was altered to a single clasped-purlin type when the house was re-roofed with slates in the 19th century. There were no attics over the wings. Plans in a deed of 1872 show that the two-storey brick and slate extension on the farmyard-side of the north wing had been built, providing a second staircase, and a first floor bathroom and water closet. Likewise, the two attractive bow-windows to the drawing and dining rooms would certainly have been added during the Victorian period. The plan also indicates that an extension had been built onto the front of the wing. From later photographs and Dick Rose’s description, it was a single storey extension containing the back kitchen and the dairy, implying that the main kitchen had been moved into the north wing by this time and the dairy displaced into the extension. A separate conservatory and greenhouse were also constructed on the front of this wing in the 19th century. Subsequently, possibly around 1900, a single storey brick and slate pentice was built against the back wall of the house to provide an access corridor from the kitchen to the principal downstairs rooms. It cannot be ascertained whether clay tiles on the main house were replaced by slate at this time or were part of the earlier ‘renovation’. The elliptical-shaped garden to the east of the house, shown in the c1770 plan seems to have survived through to the present day. The only additions have been some 19th century trees, such as the large cedar and the ubiquitous monkey-puzzle tree, introduced into Britain at the end of the 18th century and popularised by the Victorians. In the beginning of the 20th century it is said that there was a tennis court and a croquet pitch on the front lawn.

{5} Three photos dated 1990;

<1> Clews Architects, 1980s, Database for Listing of Historic Buildings of Special Architectural Interest: Northamptonshire, 17/514 (checked) (Digital archive). SNN102353.

<2> 1976, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest ("Greenback"), H14 (unchecked) (Catalogue). SNN1000.

<3> Northamptonshire Industrial Archaeology Group, 1996-2013, Northamptonshire Industrial Archaeology Group Newsletter, Issue 103 Summer 07 (checked) (Newsletter). SNN55360.

<4> Conlon R., 2005, Hunsbury Hill Centre, Northampton: Historical Report, (checked) (Report). SNN105421.

<5> Photographs of buildings in Northampton (Photographs). SNN114989.

Record last edited

Jun 14 2023 3:15PM