Juniper Hill

Summary

A house, designed and built between 1957 and 1959 by John Madin for Jack Davies.

Reasons for Designation

Juniper Hill, a house of 1957-59 designed by John Madin for Jack Davies, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural quality: the design shows considerable quality in its response to its setting and to the needs of the clients and their family. Materials are well used, and fixtures are of high quality;

* Functioning: the planning is clearly designed to allow for modern family life as it developed in the later-C20 with a flow of space, but also a careful division of functions where needed;

* Intactness: the survival of much of the internal plan and the great majority of the original fixtures is remarkable.

History

The house was designed by John Madin for his client, Jack Davies. The client bought the plot of almost three acres of farmland in the mid 1950s and the design was commissioned in 1957 and completed in 1959. The design included living rooms and bedrooms on one level with a studio or playroom for the children on the first floor, and the intention was that the house should continue to provide comfortable living for Mr and Mrs Davies into their old age. Mr Davies was a timber merchant and his knowledge of trees is reflected in the garden, where five large oaks which stood on the site, were supplemented by stands of trees, predominantly conifers, and including specimen trees. Many were planted in the late 1950s and early 1960s and they are now a feature of the surrounding landscape and screen the house. The building has undergone little alteration since its completion.

Details

MATERIALS: the building is of hand-made brown bricks to the ground floor and hardwood panelling at first floor level, with a felted roof and hardwood window surrounds, doors and fascia panels.

PLAN: two stories, with interconnecting living rooms at the north-western end and bedrooms grouped at the south-eastern end of the ground floor and a playroom or studio to the first floor approached from a staircase off the kitchen. Extending from the north corner of the house and projecting north-east is a single-storey service wing with boiler room and lavatory leading to a double garage.

EXTERIOR: the house has a prominent, gabled roof with a shallow pitch and deep eaves, which projects further at the centre of each long side (thus forming an irregular hexagon), and which sweeps low over the short flanks of the building. The pitch of the roof is shallower on the south-eastern slope. The apex is therefore set towards the north-western end and the entrance to the house is below this.

The entrance front faces north-east. This, and the opposite garden front, are lengthy. Except for the buttresses on the garden front, the building has brick walling to the ground floor and vertical planks with chamfered edges to the first floor and beneath the eaves. The entrance has a hardwood door and glazed panel set beneath a flat-roofed porch, supported by a metal pole which rests on a tall, rectangular brick planter that projects in front of the house. To the right of this is a long kitchen window, and at left are a series of seven, small, rectangular lights to bathrooms in the bedroom wing and a cloakroom. The first floor has a full-height window of four lights above the entrance. To far right the garage and service wing project, the wing having horizontal slit windows and the garage a shallow, mono-pitch roof and buttresses which have a sloping outer face.

The garden front has three bays to left of centre which are flanked by brick piers. These near-central bays are of two storeys and have deep windows above a low brick wall, marking the reception rooms, and glazed doors to the left bay. The games room at first floor level has full-height glazing and a projecting balcony with horizontal planks forming the balustrade. To the right of this are the bedrooms with three identical windows at ground floor level. At left, the dining room walling and window are deeply recessed to form a covered verandah, which has crazy-paving laid in a chequerboard of alternating green and white marble squares. The relatively narrow flanks of the building have brick buttresses with a battered outer profile.

INTERIOR: the entrance hall rises through both floors and leads to the lounge and dining room which interconnect. An external door in the sitting room leads to the garden and another in the dining room connects with the verandah. Wall surfaces are a combination of bare brick, plain panelling and plaster. Bedrooms have their original fitted cupboards and bathrooms mostly have the original sanitary ware. The kitchen, which is to the north of the entrance hall, has a crazy-paved floor of blue and white marble and its original cupboards and work surfaces of blue Formica. There is a breakfast alcove off, with fixed seating, and a telephone lobby. Stairs lead up from the kitchen to the games room, which has plastered and boarded walls and sliding, glazed doors leading to the balcony.

Sources

Books and journals
Clawley, A, John Madin [20th Century Architects], (2011)

Websites
John Madin - Architect & Planner (e-book, 12 March, accessed from http://www.john-madin.info

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