Summary
House, about 1654, refronted and with C18, C19 and C20 phases.
Reasons for Designation
4 Hamond Hill is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as a multi-phase house which retains strong, legible evidence of its mid-C17 origins as well as subsequent phases of change;
* for the internal survival of notable features and fittings, reflecting the evolution of the building and the relative status of its interior spaces at different periods in its history.
Historic interest:
* as a comparatively well documented building which reflects the development of this part of Chatham following the establishment the naval dockyard in the late C16;
* as one of the earliest house in Chatham to survive in anything like its original form.
History
4 Hamond Hill, known as Camden House, dates to about 1654 and is believed to have been built by, or for, Thomas Heaviside (or Heavyside). It is thought to be the best surviving C17 building in Chatham dating from the period of development which followed the establishment the naval dockyard in the late C16.
The property was at one time part of the estate of the Chatham Chest, a charity founded in the late C16 to assist sailors in need and absorbed into the estates of the Greenwich Naval Hospital in 1803. The house, along with an orchard and summerhouse occupying land owned by St Bartholomew’s Hospital, is identified in an 1803 estate book of the Chatham Chest as being built ‘so long back as 1654’. This date is corroborated by dendrochronological testing carried out in 2023 which placed the likely felling date of several principal timbers on the ground floor at approximately 1651 to 1652.
Until the mid-C19 Hamond Hill was known as Heavisides, or later, Heaviside, Lane. Thomas Heaviside is variously referred to in sources as a scrivener (scribe) or schoolteacher. He was also registrar to Chatham’s parish church of St Mary. A secondary source mentions indentures made between Thomas Heaviside of Chatham and trustees of the Chatham Chest in 1652 (Crisp, p220). In his will of 1686, Heaviside leaves his ‘brickhouse with the orchard and appurtenances’, situated ‘in the parish of Chatham’ to his wife, Alice.
Lessees or tenants of the late C18 are identified in the 1803 estate book of the Chatham Chest. Thomas Peck, or Peek, is recorded in the estate book as having been reimbursed for a kitchen and washhouse in 1796. In 1799 a lease was issued to William Goddard, a governor of the Chatham Chest. The lease document refers to a quantity of money laid out by Goddard repairing and improving the property and describes the building as ‘lately divided unto and used as two several habitations or dwellings but now in one’. Mention is also made in the lease of a coach house, stable, outhouses, yard and gardens.
A plan which accompanies the lease shows the house with a long narrow kitchen and wash house range, adjoined by a privy, cistern and dairy, and a laundry range opposite, across a rear yard. The coach house is on the site of what is now 2 Hamond Hill and includes stabling to the rear. A narrow kitchen garden extends south to New Road with a summer house at the far end. The lease also includes the ground to the west, leased from St Bartholomew’s Hospital, which the plan shows as comprising an orchard with poultry yard, a pleasure garden with summer house and a kitchen garden. The depiction of the house indicates the presence of the front and rear parallel ranges and the passageway which cuts from front to back, both distinctive aspects of the surviving plan.
The house is later depicted in a plan of 1801 identifying buildings damaged by a major fire of June 1800 which took hold near the junction between the High Street and Heaviside Lane. The freehold of the property was sold by the Chatham Chest in 1808 to Thomas Milton, a builder, who had preciously sublet the orchard and pleasure ground. The house was known as Camden House from at least the 1830s, when it was occupied by a coal dealer, Thomas Hopkins, until his death in 1861. The orchard land belonging to St Bartholomew's Hospital was gradually developed during the C19 and Gundulph Road was built cutting through the former kitchen and pleasure garden towards the end of the century. The long narrow strip of garden running up to New Road appears to have remained with the house until the second half of the C20 when it was developed with a large extension of 12 New Road. The house passed through various owners and occupiers through the C19 and into the C20. At some point in the late 1960s or early 1970s it was once again damaged by fire, subsequently being repaired and converted to individual letting rooms with owner accommodation on the ground floor.
HISTORY OF CHATHAM INTRA
The area in which the house stands is sometimes known as Chatham Intra, a name associated with the sloping land which extends down to the river Medway, linking the historic settlements of Rochester and Chatham. It was split administratively between the two towns and straddled three parishes and was traversed by an ancient routeway running between London and Canterbury and onward to Dover, of Roman or earlier origin. Development here began in the late C11 with the construction of the Hospital of St Bartholomew for people with leprosy but more concerted building along the routeway only got underway in the C17. This came both from the west, as a suburban extension of Rochester, and from the east, as part of Chatham’s rapid growth following the establishment of the naval dockyard in the late C16. 4 Hamond Hill is one of a small group of buildings in the area with extant fabric from this period; others include The North Foreland, 325 High Street, The Ship Inn, 345-347 High Street and Featherstone House, 375 High Street, all listed at Grade II.
From the C18 the area began to develop an increasingly commercial and industrial character, including ship-building, brewing and the movement of goods, notably coal and timber. Through the C19 and into the C20 Chatham Intra was a flourishing place, it’s High Street supporting a lively mixture of shops, theatres, public houses and hotels. Decline came in the later part of the C20, with the loss of military facilities and the closure of the dockyard, but despite losses the area retains a considerable amount of historic fabric and an urban grain shaped by the historical patterns of growth and redevelopment that define its present-day character.
Details
House, about 1654, refronted and with C18, C19 and C20 phases.
MATERIALS: of brick and timber construction, now faced in painted roughcast render; clay tile roof.
PLAN: the building faces east onto Hammond Hill which connects Chatham High Street to the north with New Road to the south.
It is rectangular in plan, double-pile with parallel pitched roofs behind a front parapet. The three-bay front range is larger: deeper and taller, with attic rooms and a cellar. It has gable-end stacks to north and south (lost above the roof to the north). The rear range may once have been single-storey, perhaps under a catslide, later raised to form a full first floor.
A central passage with dog-leg stair to the rear bisects the loosely symmetrical plan from front to back. To either side of the passage is a large principal room to the front and a smaller room behind. First and attic floors have a small central room over the passage.
To the rear are a number of additions of various date, the most substantial being a range which projects at right-angles from the rear of the building, running westward along the southern boundary of the site. This is partly two storied, with a gabled mansard roof, and partly single storied, with a mono-pitch roof and large chimney stack. Although now altered this may, in origin, be the kitchen and wash house depicted on the 1799 lease plan, possibly added by John Peck in 1796. A brick porch around the rear door supports a central projecting first-floor WC; this addition was in place by 1864 (the survey date of the 1866 town plan map). A single storey addition along the northern boundary of the present site is roughly in the location of the laundry range depicted in 1799, which had been lost by the mid-C19. The current addition appears to be of late-C20 build.
EXTERIOR: the building is double-fronted with the attic storey treated as a full second floor. Three-storey canted bay windows flank a central Tuscan porch, beneath which is a half-glazed door in an arched opening with panelled reveals. Recorded in the 1996 List entry as having plate glass sashes, windows are now (2024) all uPVC replacements. The brickwork is rendered in roughcast and has storey bands. The rendering happened at some point after 1943 (based on an image taken in Autumn of that year); leaving exposed a small name plaque reading CAMDEN HOUSE on the upper left-hand side of the elevation.
What is visible of the north flank elevation shows a mix of early and later red brick with first and second floor plat bands.
The rear elevation is rendered, the ground floor largely screened by later additions. The first floor is distinctive for its five-bay arrangement with tall, narrow proportions to the window openings, now with later timber casements, and the gabled stair tower which rises over the central bay. The rear roof slope of the front range has gabled dormers (now blind).
INTERIOR: internally there is fabric diagnostic of the building's mid-C17 origins, alongside a quantity of notable joinery, features and fittings from later periods.
Each of the two principal ground floor rooms has a large ceiling beam (running north/south). Both have evidence for what would have been sizable hearth openings, now narrowed or blocked.
The right-hand room is more elaborate, decoratively. The beam here is moulded and panelled and a modillion cornice runs around three sides. The room also contains one of the most striking features of the house: a large Jacobean chimneypiece with tapered pilasters carrying a deep ovolo mantleshelf and overmantle with smaller tapered pilasters, perspectival niche motifs and small square-eared panels. The wide arched opening to the back room has reveals painted with sprays of flowers and foliage, probably dating to the C19.
Within the central passage, to the immediate left of the front door, is evidence of an early doorway, now blocked. The dogleg stair to the rear is possibly of early-C18 date. It has a cut string and flat scrolled brackets; the balusters are turned, with a group of four forming the newel. The stair continues to the attic level where the balusters are of a simpler columnar design.
Further features of C17, C18 and C19 date include chimneypieces, dado panelling, moulded overmantle panels, hobgrates, sections of modillion cornice, cupboard doors, ironmongery and wooden pegs. More early fabric of this type may survive behind later finishes. Some structural timber is also exposed in the upper floors, including stop-chamfered beams in the first-floor rooms to the front.
