Details
This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 4 February 2022 to amend the description and reformat the text to current standards
1598/1/10012
TRING
COW LANE
Dunsley Bungalow
15-OCT-04
II
Bungalow, c1920 by Hertfordshire County Council as part of the Homes Fit for Heroes movement. Timber framed, weatherboarded in elm, half hipped tile roof, with tile-hung gablets, brick stacks. Single storey. Roughly central entrance set back under porch with posts supported on shaped brackets. Door of vertical lower boards under nine panes glazed with obscured glass. Vertical six-pane window to left, with similar glass. To left of entrance three-light small-paned timber casement, with original fittings and scrolled catches. Similar two-light window to far right. Small four-light fixed window to right of entrance. Three-light left hand, kitchen window, a timber casement replaced 1966. Right hand gable retains timber casement, but with some replaced ironmongery. Left hand gable, door similar to front door, and single-light window, inserted 1966, probably brought from the front elevation. Added porch. Rear retains two, two-light timber casements with fittings, and small larder window with mesh grill, and two-light timber casement, these latter probably changed round, reset and repaired, 1966. Cast iron guttering with scroll finials at angles.
Interior. Living room with brick fireplace with moulded lintels, the grate part blocked. Adjacent vertically boarded airing cupboard and store cupboard doors with cast iron door furniture. Slender picture rail and vertical timber strips, subdividing wall into panels. Two bedrooms, one with small moulded cast iron mantelpiece and grate, one with plain painted metal mantelpiece and grate. Unheated study, small closet by entrance. Doors vertically boarded with cast iron latches of two designs. Kitchen and bathroom area reordered 1960¿s. Lath and plaster ceilings survive under later insulation. The plan of the house conforms with standards of the day, south facing, providing light airy spaces, the living room lit from two aspects, and with good kitchen, bathroom and washing facilities.
The plot retains some cast iron boundary posts and wires, those to the north from the adjacent plot, c1930. The cartshed/piggery(see separate entry ) is common to many small holdings of this date.
The house is a rare surviving bungalow from the Homes fit for Heroes movement of housing regeneration after World War I, part of the wider movement of early C20 public housing in which Hertfordshire played an important role. It is built on a two acre plot, taken from Dunsley Farm, which was bought from the Rothschild estate in 1919 by the County Council. It was allocated to Mr A Jeacock, a market gardener who had served in the First World War, using the Land Settlement (Facilities) Act 1919 which specifically enabled local authorities to provide smallholdings to veterans. It is well documented as one of the first plots acquired by the County Council after the War. Plans for the house do not survive, but it is similar to an example from Tiptree Essex, by Kenneth M Cross, illustrated in Houses, Cottages and Bungalows, edited by Philip Chatterton, 1926. Plans survive for the cart shed and piggery by the County Land Agent¿s Office (1920) specified for Mr Jeacock. It was built in reverse. Plans survive, dated 1966, from the County Land Agents, for the reordering of the kitchen and bathroom. The final build differs slightly from the drawings. Comparable smallholdings remain at Baldock and Kings Langley but none are as complete.
It is set on a two acre smallholding, still intact and managed in the original manner, with an orchard and livestock. This is the only surviving managed smallholding of this period in the County. Apart from social and historical implications of the site it has a wide ecological diversity.
[A Social History of Housing, 1815-1985, John Burnett, 2nd edn, 1986
Homes fit for Heroes, Mark Swenarton, 1981
Hertfordshire County Council's Rural Estate, A Century of Achievement
Rural Housing, Homes for heroes, from Conservation of Devonshire Cottages, R.D.Shears, 1968
Hertfordshire County Council, County Land Agent's Office, drawings for 2 acre holding, Dunsley Farm, Tring, for Mr Jeacock, July 1920
Hertfordshire County Council, County Land Agent and Valuer, proposed alterations, Dunsley Bungalow, Tring, July 1966 ]
