Summary

A small country house in a French-influenced classical style, built in about 1908 to designs by Blow and Billerey for Elizabeth Antrobus.

Description

House, about 1908, to designs by Blow and Billerey for Elizabeth Antrobus.

MATERIALS: narrow, orange-red Dutch bricks with Chilmark limestone dressings and clay tile roof. Windows and doors are timber.

PLAN: the main house is one-and-half storeys high with a mansard roof and a compact, U plan centred on a double-height oval library with a domed ceiling. A large drawing room occupies the wing to the north-east, and the wing to the south-west contains a stair hall and dining room. The principal rooms frame three sides of an (originally) open-roofed loggia, all with far-reaching views to the south-east. The loggia has now been enclosed by a glazed screen and roof. The drawing room, library and stair hall are enfilade, an arrangement which extends into the service wing (now impacted by changes to the plan in this area).

First-floor bedrooms, bathrooms and dressing rooms are partially within the roof, arranged in a U around the oval drum of the library. There is a single bedroom at the very top of the house, over the library’s dome.

A lower, linear, one-and-a-half storey service wing, also with a mansard roof, is set back from the principal elevations and extends south-westward from the main house. This has been reconfigured to create an open-plan kitchen and dining area and a small living room, leading to the original arrangement of a walled yard with stores. Built against the yard wall to the north-west is a small, single-storey polygonal room with adjoining lean-to; the roof was rebuilt with its current pitch in around 1980 and a small enclosed porch linking it to the service wing was added at the same time. The first-floor of the service wing has been reconfigured, and is now served by an additional stair.

EXTERIOR: the house is in a classical style, the elevations characterised by orange-red brickwork contrasted with a pale limestone plinth, dentil cornice, and wide, flat architraves. To the ground floor the fenestration is predominantly multi-paned French windows, and to the first floor, multi-paned casement lucarnes which rise from the cornice to break through the wall head and light the first-floor rooms. Symmetrical and largely rectilinear, the elevations are sparingly punctuated with curvilinear forms such as oeil-de-boeuf windows, segmental-headed dormers and scroll motifs.

The principal front is to the north-west. It is of five bays, the central three projecting forward to enclose a wide, shallow entrance hall within. The hall is entered through the central of three pairs of French windows interspersed with oval oeil-de-boeuf windows. This central pair is an early-C21 replacement with diagonally crossed glazing bars. Above are lucarnes, and above these, at the centre of the composition, a large semi-circular, tripartite dormer window with leaded lights, set within a shaped architrave.

The garden front is composed of the end bays of the two wings, joined by a stone screen to enclose the loggia in-between. The screen is a continuation of the dentil cornice, supported on Tuscan columns (now with glazed screen set behind and glass roof over). Each of the three principal rooms opens onto the loggia.

The service wing to the south-west is of the same red brick but without the stone dressings. Ground floor windows are sliding sashes with flat gauged brick arches; two early-C21 French windows have been added. The first floor is lit by casement dormers.

INTERIOR: from the entrance hall three doors lead to the drawing room, the library and the stair hall, the latter occupied by a top-lit stone staircase which rises as a continuous curved flight in an open well. There is a delicate ironwork balustrade carrying a brass handrail. The entrance and stair halls are floored in black and white marble laid in a chequerboard pattern. The panelling to the walls of the entrance hall is a later addition.

The library has the most elaborate interior of the house. There are two pairs of opposing glazed doors, dividing the curved walls into four equal segments. The walls are lined in glass-fronted cabinets and there are two fireplaces with small marble chimneypieces. Niches over the fireplaces replace the original cabinets. A deep frieze at the base of the high, domed ceiling carries bas-relief quotes from eminent poets including William Shakespeare and William Cowper. The dome has gilded plasterwork decoration and four oeil-de-boeuf windows set with marbled glass, illuminated from behind.

The walls of the drawing room are lined in painted panelling with small panels of 9 by 14 inches; at the ceiling there is a simple dentil cornice. There is a moulded marble chimneypiece with mantle shelf over. The dining room has painted dado panelling. Both rooms are lit by French windows to the south, east and west and all three principal rooms have floors of oak parquet laid in a herringbone pattern.

The first floor has a curved hallway wrapping the outline of the library’s dome. There has been some reconfiguration of rooms to create interconnection between bedrooms, bathrooms and dressing rooms, but the distinctive character of the U plan remains, as do a number of the original two-panel raised and fielded oak doors. The central portion of the hallway is double-height and here a pair of curved stairs rise to meet a shared landing overhead. This lofty space is lit by the lucarne and large segmental dormer at the centre of the entrance front. The landing leads to a single room over the library dome.

Within the service wing the doors are thick, vertically-planked, and have multi-paned fanlights over. Some of these are in situ, others have been re-sited to suit the revised floor plan. With some exceptions, most other interior fittings within the service wing have been renewed.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES
To the immediate south-east of the house, aligned with its central axis, is an upper and lower terrace linked by a cascade of pools with fountains. Flanking stone steps originally had a serpentine outer edge; this has now been straightened and the steps re-laid. The upper terrace is on two levels and at the centre of the lower terrace is a larger pool with fountains. The terraces have low walls of ironstone rubble with limestone copings. The ensemble was built to the designs of Blow and Billerey in around 1910 and was restored in the early 1980s.

History

Charles Hill Court was built around 1908 to designs by Blow and Billerey for Elizabeth Antrobus. Antrobus remained at the house until her death in 1944.

The house was built on land formerly belonging to Heatherdene, a house of around 1870, now named Turner’s (National Heritage List for England (NHLE) entry 1352747). Heatherdene’s south lodge, walled garden, stables and coach house became part of the new Charles Hill Court estate, the latter two have since been sold into private ownership. The house is sited on the south-east side of Charles Hill, orientated to give its principal rooms far-reaching views over the Surrey landscape. An upper and lower garden terrace linked by a cascade, modelled on the baroque cascade at Villa Torlonia at Frascati near Rome (Elliot, p 64), was built on-axis to its garden front in around 1910, also to designs by Blow and Billerey.

Stylistically, the house is unusual for its period, referencing French C18 classicism at a time when the Arts and Crafts Movement, and styles rooted in English architectural identity were the dominant influence on such houses. Country Life likened the house to French C18 ‘pavilions and pleasure houses [built] for the last of the Louis’ (Country Life, 1910, p 7), referencing in particular Le Petit Trianon, Versailles, 1762-1768, designed by Ange-Jaques Gabriel for Louis XV.

The house was sold after Antrobus’ death and modifications have been made under subsequent owners. This included a sensitive programme of interior refurbishment and upgrading in the early 1980s by the conservation architect Rodderick Gradidge (1929-2000), working in association with the practice Stedman Blower, and further remodelling, principally of the service wing, in the early C21. A swimming pool and changing pavilion, and office and garage, were also added to the grounds at this time.

Detmar Jellings Blow (1867-1939) studied architecture at the South Kensington School of Art and later the Architectural Association, London. While still a student he was drawn into the circle of John Ruskin, William Morris and Philip Webb who instilled in him the hands-on approach espoused by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Rejecting the convention of joining an architect’s office, early in his career Blow chose instead an itinerant lifestyle, living on-site to oversee restoration works and the construction of first others’, and then his own, designs.

Blow’s early reputation was built on his country house work, which was rooted in the craft-based ideology of his mentors. In 1905 he went into partnership with Fernand Billerey (1875-1951), a Frenchman trained in the Beaux Arts tradition. Blow and Billerey came to rival the success of Blow’s friend, Edwin Lutyens, in the country house market, and the practice’s fashionable French-inflected classicism brought them prominent commissions in London’s West End. Charles Hill Court is unusual in their canon, for its translation of the classical mode adopted for their London commissions to a rural context.

By 1914 they were one of the most distinguished practices in the capital. With the outbreak of war, Billerey returned to France to serve as an officer in the French army, and in 1916 Blow was appointed to the personal staff of the 2nd Duke of Westminster. Blow remained in this position after the war, taking increasing responsibility for the management of the Duke’s Grosvenor estate in London until his retirement in 1933. Billerey returned to London after the war and reassumed architectural practice.

Elizabeth, or Lily, Antrobus (1866-1944) was the granddaughter of Sir Edmund Antrobus (1792-1870) who had employed Blow at the family seat, Amesbury Abbey, Wiltshire. Lily was a collector of English C18 ceramics and donated a number of pieces to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She was also sometime President of the Farnham and District branch of the Women’s Suffrage Society and a keen gardener, latterly opening the gardens of Charles Hill Court to the public. The glazed cabinets which line the library housed her collection of ceramic birds and animals, as well as books.

Reasons for Listing

Charles Hill Court, a house of around 1908 to designs by Blow and Billerey is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* for its creative planning and refined detail, realising a small English country house in the mould of classical villas and pavilions of C18 France;
* from the narrow Dutch bricks and Chilmark stone of its exteriors to the plasterwork of the library ceiling and internal joinery, the building demonstrates a consistently high degree of quality in its materials and craftsmanship
* for the garden terraces and cascade to the south-east, which extend the architecture of the house into the landscape and add drama to its relationship with its site.

Historic interest:

* as a work by the highly regarded practice of Blow and Billerey, stylistically unusual both in the context of their canon, and more broadly within that of the English domestic tradition at the turn of the C20

Recommended Books

• 
  Hampshire: South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6
• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2
• 
  The Shredded Chef: 120 Recipes for Building Muscle, Getting Lean, and Staying Healthy
• 
  London 1: The City of London: City of London v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)