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Summary

Description

Philip Dalton Hepworth, 1930. Single storey and attic country house in English vernacular style. Curved irregular plan; entrance court and garage adjoined at northeast. White painted brick with elm weather-boarding; timber mullions; lead-paned glazing pattern in casement windows. Norfolk reed thatch roof. Two large set-off stone chimney stacks.

North Elevation: concave; semi-circular tower breaking eaves off-centre to left; deeply chamfered depressed arched doorway with deep roughly coursed stone surround; small windows flanking; long row of lights under conical thatched roof above. Three-light eyelid dormers in flanking bays, above variety of windows.

South Elevation: convex; semi-circular tower off-centre to right with mullioned and transomed windows at ground and row of lights under eaves above. Eaves of flanking bays above attic windows in flanking bays. Three bays to left with large semi-circular windows at ground and small tripartite window above, and similarly detailed openings in west gabled return elevation. Mullioned windows in two bays to right of tower with bipartite, tripartirte and four-light windows.

Single storey bays leading to circular garden room at west end.

Entrance Court and Garage: low, single storey and attic piended roofed lodge, adjoined to house. Eyelid dormers to north and east. Two garage doors in north (timber panelled doors), and porch to east. Pair of splayed painted brick walls forming court to north, flanking garage entrance, with thatched coping and drum piers with conical thatched caps: pedestrian gateway each side.

Terrace Walls: convex flight of stone steps flanked by square and snecked stone terrace walls by south elevation; flagstoned terrace.

Statement of Special Interest

Commissioned by Colonel Thomson in 1929. It is a most surprising masterpiece to find nestling comfortably to the east of Bolton Muir Wood; a late Arts and Crafts essay it makes a pleasing contrast with the modernist architecture of the 1930s. Oliver Hill's earlier design for Woodhouse Copse at Holmbury St Mary in Surrey of 1927, appears to have offered a precedent for Hepworth, with similar detailing in the design of the entrance bay, doorway and chimney stacks at Bolton Muir. Arts and Crafts door fittings give the finishing touches to the design.

It is among a relatively small number of traditional buildings with a surviving thatched roof found across Scotland. A Survey of Thatched Buildings in Scotland, published in 2016 by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), found there were only around 200 buildings with thatched roofs surviving, most of which are found in small rural communities.

The use of thatch saw a revival from the late 19th century as part of the Arts and Crafts movement. Around the turn of the 20th century, and then again in the 1930s, a range of Arts and Crafts style houses and cottages were built with thatched roofs in central, eastern and southern areas of mainland Scotland. The style employed a romanticised interpretation of traditional thatched buildings and rural living, seeking to reject prevailing revival styles such as baronialism. As it was primarily used for decorative purposes, the Arts and Crafts style did not attempt to recreate local thatched building traditions in either form or scale and was instead modelled on the English traditions of thatching.

Listed building record revised in 2021 as part of the Thatched Buildings Listing Review.

References

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