Reasons for Designation
Green Place, a house of 1906-07 by the architect MH Baillie Scott and extended in 1913 by the same architect, is designated for listing for the following principal reasons:
* A good example of a modest house by Baillie Scott in the Arts and Crafts style.
* A subtle design using many Baillie Scott devices in its massing and plan.
* Quality materials and attention to detail in its architect-designed fixtures and fittings.
Details
This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 22/03/2013
307/0/10006
30-JAN-09
STOCKBRIDGE
SOMBORNE PARK ROAD
Green Place
II
House, 1906-07 for Mr & Mrs Stratford Hill to the designs of the architect MH Baillie Scott. Extension of 1913, also by Baillie Scott. Minor late C20-early C21 alterations.
MATERIALS: Rendered brick except for chimneys and buttresses which are of exposed red brick; tile roofs.
PLAN: Original holiday cottage of 1906-07: a 'U'-plan, single-storey building. Extended to the west in 1913 with the addition of a two-storey range in the same style and a hipped kitchen range at right angles, with boiler and coal house and outside WC to the north. Original configuration no longer clear except for the 'U'-shaped corridor with two reception rooms to the south-east and north-east, the latter opening from the entrance lobby, the former an impressive hall (now the drawing room). The service area is now in the addition of 1913, to the north-west with one bedroom on the ground floor and the remaining three above.
EXTERIOR: It has a main entrance range to the east under a gableted roof. The original wings and the extension of 1913 have hipped roofs. There are a number of tall and slender brick chimney stacks with cream chimney pots. Windows are oak framed with leaded lights.
The main entrance is through a rounded archway with a tile detailing leading into an enclosed porch. The front door is at right angles to the entrance arch and is an original Baillie Scott design: a broad and solid panelled door which is illustrated in Haigh (1995, p76) as an exemplar of his front door designs and attention to detail. To the south of the entrance is a four-light flat-roofed dormer providing light into the main hall at clerestory level. There is also a square bay window to the south and shallow raking buttresses flanking the entrance. The west garden elevation is not as coherent a composition. Here one sees the internal courtyard of the original holiday house as well as the extension of 1913. Although these are in the same style the design is therefore a little lop-sided and does not have the symmetry of the early house.
INTERIOR: The reception room off the entrance hall has a herringbone brick floor and panelled walls. This leads to a corridor running around the internal courtyard of the 'U'-plan houses. The corridor has exposed posts and beams with curving braces, all painted white, some brick noggin and wooden floorboards. (It is likely that the timbers were originally unpainted as Baillie Scott chose his wood carefully for its quality and colour.) The hall (or drawing room) is the most impressive internal space and is open to collar height. There are exposed oak structural timbers (posts, arch braces, truss and curving struts). There is an inglenook fireplace with a brick hearth and an oak bressumer which has the carved inscription: 'Elen Mary Stratford Hill, wife of Arthur Norman Hill of Liverpool, built this house in 1906'. The inglenook is lit by a small window in the west wall. Many of the original internal broad plank doors survive with iron furniture and wooden latches and finger plates. Much of the original iron window furniture also survives. There are some original fireplaces typified by tile surrounds or mantles, but some have been removed, particularly on the first floor, and the dining room fireplace is a replacement. In the ground floor bedroom, at the west end of the 1913 extension, is a painted inscription on the wall which reads: 'AND IT FELL UPON A DAY OF DAYS THAT THEY WERE IN A GREEN PLACE AND THEY WERE IN THE SUN AND OUT OF THE WIND AND THEY WERE NEAR THEIR FRIENDS AND THEY COULD SEE EVERYONE AND NO ONE COULD SEE THEM’ The inscription, with slightly different wording, was originally in the dining room (Haigh 1995, 67) but was then removed and repainted in this room, possibly by Arthur Hill. It is believed that the motto, taken from a Celtic fairy tale, would have been chosen by the architect and his clients to reflect the sentiments of the owners in setting the house in a rural landscape (see Baillie Scott 1906, 47-49). Opposite this bedroom is a small ground floor dressing room which has Delft tiles to the fire surround, a cast iron grate and floor to ceiling panelled walls. The kitchen has been opened up and modernised as it is spanned by a reinforced steel joist, but the pantry and utility room retain their stone slabs for cool storage.
ANCILLARY FEATURES: Garden building to the north-east, also by Baillie Scott and in the same style as the house: roughcast rendered brick walls with an exposed brick raking buttress; pitched tiled roof; leaded casements in oak frames. It has a post supporting the roof at its north-west corner, creating a covered porch/entrance. This relates to the early holiday cottage as is shown on the 1910 Ordnance Survey map.
HISTORY: Green Place was designed by the architect MH Baillie Scott and built in 1906-07 for Ellen Mary Stratford Hill. Her husband, Arthur Norman Hill (known as Norman Hill), was the solicitor for the White Star Line during both the Titanic and Lusitania enquiries. He was later knighted for services to shipping and elevated to the baronetcy for his work during the First World War. The house was designed as a holiday cottage but was enlarged, also by Baillie Scott, in 1913 to provide more accommodation so that the Hills could live in the house permanently, which they did from circa 1920.It was subsequently owned by Lady Barbara Wykeham who was an architect and painter known professionally as Barbara Priestley (she was the daughter of the writer JB Priestley). There have been more recent alterations and additions to the house, in the late C20 and early C21, including some minor reordering. For example, a reinforced steel joist now supports the kitchen ceiling, indicating the removal of an earlier wall to open up this space. The door into the Hobby Room has been moved, and cupboards and modern French doors, leading out from the same room to the former polycarbonate conservatory (now demolished), have been inserted. Some of the roof tiles have also been replaced with machine made tiles. MH Baillie Scott (1865-1945) was a notable architect of the Arts and Crafts style, an English aesthetic reformist movement which was at its height between approximately 1880 and 1910. The movement was a reaction against a perceived soulless machination and a return to quality craftsmanship in an affordable manner, influencing not only architecture but also garden design, decorative arts and crafts, and furniture design. Baillie Scott was a prolific architect in this genre with over 300 designs to his name, although not all of these were realised.
SOURCES:
Baillie Scott, MH, House and Gardens, 1906. London: Newnes
Haigh, D, Baillie Scott: The Artistic House, 1995. Academy Group Ltd, particular references at pages 67, 76 and 127.
Kornwolf, JD, MH Baillie Scott and the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1972.
REASON FOR DESIGNATION:
Green Place, a house of 1906-07 by the architect MH Baillie Scott and extended in 1913 by the same architect, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* A good example of a modest house by Baillie Scott in the Arts and Crafts style.
* A subtle design using many Baillie Scott devices in its massing and plan.
* Quality materials and attention to detail in its architect-designed fixtures and fittings.
