Summary
A detached, two-storey house in the Tudor Revival style with Arts and Crafts influences, constructed in 1926 to designs by Blunden Shadbolt as part of the Pinner Hill Estate.
Reasons for Designation
Pond Cottage with its sunken gardens, patio and garden paths, 1926, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as a well-preserved example of a picturesque suburban house built on a private estate designed by Blunden Shadbolt, an architect celebrated for his Tudor Revival-style houses built using historic materials;
* for its varied and picturesque exterior, using reclaimed timbers and bricks applied with good attention to detail;
* for the survival and visual interest of the plan form and internal fittings, including inglenook fireplaces, plank-and-batten doors, and exposed timbers.
Historic interest:
* as a good example of the smaller type of suburban house designed by Blunden Shadbolt in his customary style at an important stage in his career;
* for the survival of its plan form, which has a clear separation of functions within a compact space and provides understanding of how a suburban middle-class house would have operated in the 1920s.
History
By the 1920s, central London had become both a very expensive and unhealthy place to live due to increased rents, pollution, noise and overcrowding. The improving efficiency and cheapness of rail travel and the increasing popularity of motor cars opened up the possibility of relocating to cleaner, quieter suburbs and commuting into London. The Metropolitan Railway was particularly important in creating ‘Metro-land’ and transforming previously rural locations such as Pinner into viable commuter settlements. At the same time, nostalgia for the notion of a pre-industrial ‘Merrie England’ across literature, art, entertainment and leisure manifested in architecture as the widespread popularity of the Tudorbethan style. The 1920s witnessed a fashion amongst the middle class for rebuilding and adapting dilapidated country cottages and farmhouses in an effort to obtain an ideal, Tudor-esque home in an idyllic, rural location.
The Pinner Hill Estate originated as part of the Manor of Harrow, which was owned by the Archbishops of Canterbury from the early C9. Apart from a few farm buildings, it remained largely undeveloped until the death of Samuel Lammus Dore in 1919. The estate, which had expanded over centuries but had remained as one lot, was sold to F W Griggs, who created a 137-acre golf course planned by J H Taylor and formed Country Garden Estates Ltd to divide the rest of the land into individual plots for suburban development. Many of the houses subsequently built were architect-designed, including Pond Cottage, which was constructed in 1926 to designs by Blunden Shadbolt (1879-1949). The house takes its name from the pre-existing pond in the rear garden, formed by a natural spring and first visible on the Ordnance Survey (OS) map surveyd 1864. It was built for the songwriter and composer D’Auvergne Barnard (1867-1929) and his wife. After training as a choir boy at the Temple Church and teaching himself the piano, Barnard began composing aged 19 and under various pseudonyms wrote hundreds of songs and piano pieces, achieving popular success with songs such as Bid Me To Love, I Trust You Still, and Whisper and I Shall Hear. Pond Cottage features prominently in P A Barron’s The House Desirable (1929), which explains that the Barnards were avid collectors of antique furniture and china, and for several years had been searching for a suitable home with historic character in which to display their collection. Mrs Barnard had considerable involvement in the planning of Pond Cottage: the house has irregular rooms with many corners, alcoves and sloping ceilings intended for the display of their antiques. Despite the backward-looking nature of the house’s composition and construction, the design included important features for contemporary suburban life: a garage was provided within the envelope of the building, and a secondary staircase provided access between the maid’s bedroom and the kitchen entirely separated from the rest of the house.
Pond Cottage has undergone a few alterations since its original construction. A glazed rooflight has been inserted into the canopy of the loggia to the rear elevation, probably in the late C20, and more recently an electric hoist lift was inserted between the original dining room and the bedroom above. There also appear to have been some minor repairs and replacement carried out to the timber frame of the first-floor bow window to the rear elevation. It is possible that some individual glass window panes have been replaced. The bathroom and kitchen have been modernised. There are a few small differences between the plan of the house published in The House Desirable (1929) and the extant building. The front elevation of the coal store has been brought forward so it is almost flush with the north-east elevation of the adjacent garage, and the window arrangement to the ground floor of the south-east elevation is subsequently different to that of the plan. Also, the bottom landing of the principal staircase is accessible from both the dining room and living room, whereas it is only accessible from the latter on the 1929 plan. It is not known if these changes were implemented during construction or if they were made slightly later, but the appearance of the coal store and staircase and annotations on a copy of the plan found in Pond Cottage suggest the former is more likely. A photograph of Pond Cottage published in The House Desirable shows the coal store and adjacent windows in their present arrangement.
Blunden Shadbolt commenced practice in 1900 but his career accelerated after he exhibited a house constructed from materials salvaged from a C14 friar house at the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition in 1924. That house was in 1926 transported to Hillside Road in the Pinner Hill Estate and named Monks Rest. Shadbolt specialised in the re-use of historic timbers, moss-covered tiles, and ancient bricks to create new houses that appeared genuinely old. In some cases, he dismantled, transported and rebuilt whole medieval barns in new locations to create picturesque dwellings. His buildings, particularly from 1924 onwards, typically feature prominent timber frames, complex multi-gabled roofs with irregular rooflines, and brickwork deliberately laid out of true alignment to give an aged appearance. This technique was a popular trend in Tudor Revival homes of the 1920s and 1930s, and Shadbolt is described as one of the most skilled architects in this oeuvre in The House Desirable. Several of Shadbolt’s buildings have been listed at Grade II, including: Wheelrights, Peasmarsh (NHLE: 1257367); 254 Petersham Road, Richmond (NHLE: 1389380); 1 and 2 Beacon House, Haslemere (NHLE: 1409752); and Cobblestones, Elmbridge (NHLE: 1425577).
Details
A detached, two-storey house in the Tudor Revival style with Arts and Crafts influences, constructed in 1926 to designs by Blunden Shadbolt.
MATERIALS: the house has external walls of red and brown brick with exposed timber framing, and a plain clay tile roof.
PLAN: the house is roughly T-shaped on plan. The long, principal range oriented north-west to south-east is one room deep; it has a living room and a dining room (latterly used as a study) divided by an irregular hallway and a central staircase which can be accessed from both these rooms. A central cross-wing projects from the north-east elevation and houses a kitchen and WC at ground floor level, with a bathroom and separate WC on the first floor. A garage occupies the south-east part of the ground floor and is contained within the envelope of the house. A small lean-to extension to the south-east elevation originally housed a coal store. A secondary staircase rises from the kitchen and provides the sole access to a maid’s bedroom, which is otherwise separated from the three bedrooms that occupy the rest of the first floor. All of the main rooms are irregularly shaped with various alcoves, sloping ceilings and inglenook and corner fireplaces.
EXTERIOR: the house is of two storeys, timber-framed with red, yellow and brown brick nogging laid in herringbone, basket-weave and random bonds. The first floor is slightly jettied in parts of the north-west and north-east elevations. The principal, north-west to south-east range has a hipped roof with a gablet to the north-west slope, and there are gables to the north-east and south-west elevations rising from the cross-wing. The roof is covered with plain clay tiles. The fenestration largely comprises side-hung metal casements in timber frames. The glazing is leaded in a diamond pattern, with occasional panes of coloured glass.
The north-east (front) elevation faces Pinner Hill and has a prominent gable end to the projecting cross-wing, which has a protruding chimney stack with a tiled offset where it rises from the kitchen. The centre of the gable has a row of five casement windows at first-floor level, with another row at ground-floor level set off to one side. To the south of the gable a timber garage door occupies the ground floor, with a small casement window to one side and two more above. Adjacent to the south-east is the coal store, housed in a lean-to extension with a board-and-batten door with iron strap hinges. The south-east return wall of the cross-wing has a similar plank-and-batten door accessed by stone steps that leads to the kitchen. The principal entrance is on the opposite return wall of the cross-wing, covered by an open, gabled porch supported on a pair of tree trunks with arched braces. The northern half of this elevation has a gabled half-dormer with a pair of casement windows at first-floor level, and a row of five casement windows below.
The north-west elevation has a protruding chimney stack with a tiled offset to one side and a row of three casement windows to the other at first-floor level. There is a decorative S-shaped tie plate to the stack. The south-east elevation has a pair of casement windows to the first floor and a single, narrow window to the ground floor. The south-west elevation, facing the garden, has a prominent, central gable flanked asymmetrically by brick chimney stacks of different sizes. The gable and stacks project slightly from the elevation, and the stacks have irregular tiled offsets and S-shaped tie plates. A row of six casement windows, arranged in a shallow bow beneath a large timber lintel, spans the gable at first-floor level. Below this is a loggia formed by a tiled canopy carried on timber brackets and supported by a pair of brick piers. One half of this canopy has had glazing inserted, probably in the late C20. There are two sets of French doors leading to the living room and dining room. The other ground-floor windows comprise casements of various sizes, and there is a single triangular window to the first floor set against a timber tension brace.
INTERIOR: the principal entrance opens into an irregular hallway, which leads to the three main ground floor rooms. The largest of these is the living room, which has two inglenook fireplaces beneath gnarled bressummers with corbelled-out brickwork rising to a tapered chimney breast in Shadbolt’s customary style. There is fielded panelling of timber below the windows and exposed structural beams to the ceiling. The dining room, latterly used as a study, has another similar inglenook fireplace and a built-in cupboard with an oak plank-and-batten door. Some of the ceiling beams in this room have empty mortices indicating their historic use in an older building. The kitchen has modern cabinets but retains the original larder door and brick fire surround above the kitchen counter. Adjacent to the kitchen is a toilet and a narrow staircase, which is lit by a small window in the south-east wall and rises to what would originally have been the maid’s bedroom. The principal staircase stands between the living room and dining room and is accessible from both. It has roughly-carved newel posts, handrails and balusters flanking the first three steps, at which point the staircase is walled on both sides with exposed timbers and some match-boarding to one side.
Upstairs, the maid’s bedroom has a sloped ceiling and an alcove with a small dais and a corner fireplace, now bricked up. The two central bedrooms are divided by the staircase wall which extends up to the bow window to the south-west elevation, splitting it across the two bedrooms. The south-east bedroom has a brick fireplace with a timber mantel-shelf that wraps around one corner. This room also hosts the electric hoist lift, which rises from the dining room through a small opening cut into the floor. The middle bedroom also has a brick fireplace with a timber mantelshelf. The ceiling in this room appears to have been altered with machine-cut timbers painted white. The north-west bedroom has a brick fireplace with a timber mantelshelf and over-mantel with glazed cupboard doors and display shelves behind. In the cross-wing there is a bathroom and separate toilet, both of which have been modernised. The bathroom retains the original built-in linen cupboard with plank-and-batten doors with H hinges.
All of the internal doors are of oak plank-and-batten construction with iron H or HL hinges, string-operated timber latches and idiosyncratic doorknobs of moulded timber. All the rooms are asymmetrical and irregular with alcoves, inglenooks and sloping ceilings.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the rear garden has two small sunken gardens bordered by low drystone walls and intersected by a raised path which extends from the patio adjacent to the house, all of which are covered with crazy paving. These are original features of the garden that are visible on an aerial photograph taken in 1927 (see Sources).
