Emery Down Almshouses (Boultbee Cottages), Lyndhurst, Hampshire
Grade II, Forest Central South conservation area in the New Forest National Park
Extension to each cottage for new kitchens and bathrooms
Emery Down Almshouses are known as Boultbee Cottages in reference to Admiral Frederick Moore Boultbee who retired to this hamlet near Lyndhurst in 1856 and gave the parish church, the almshouses (both by William Butterfield), and the village school.
All were built in the mid-1860s, the almshouses in a rather vernacular Victorian Gothic style typical of Butterfield with timbering and barge-boards. The almshouses are listed Grade II.
The almshouses appear to have been built in two stages; the west range consists of two cottages, mirrored on ground plan, while the north range is longer, effectively similar but with a third cottage sitting in the angle adjacent to the west range, but not attached to that range. The five cottages now provide four single cottages and one double.
The upgrading works carried out after 2014, were for kitchens and bathrooms. Previously these had been very restricted, in simple, small, but haphazard extensions of various dates behind the cottages. These were removed and replaced by larger extensions, where site boundaries permitted, to give each cottage a full bathroom and kitchen, the latter with sufficient room, for instance, for a dining table.
Externally the extensions have a simple vernacular appearance, with black weatherboarding and hipped roofs with small catslides. In a tight group of almshouses, where substantial additions might have harmed the group, their appearance complements the Victorian Gothic character of Butterfield’s design and the setting in the New Forest.
