St Joseph's Hut, Broxwood Court

A garden house thought to date to the 1860s and attributed to William Andrews Nesfield.

MATERIALS: brick with a timber veranda, slate roof.

PLAN: rectangular, orientated with its shorter ends to north-west and south-east.

EXTERIOR: single storey under a pitched roof with gable ends to the north-west and south-east. The building has a veranda around all four sides, with the veranda roof supported by chamfered timber posts with diagonal braces. The veranda roof is incorporated with the main roof as a catslide to the long north-eastern and south-western slopes, while to the shorter sides it meets the gable ends as a lean-to. The centre of the south-western catslide rises to a small, pitched roof porch for the building’s doorway. Walls are brick in stretcher bond, tied by a horizontal timber at window cill level. The door and windows are timber, with the windows having ogee headed lights with coloured glass in the tracery above.

In the front, south-west facing elevation is a single window to either side of the central glazed timber double door, which has a brick threshold and arched surround. The south-east elevation has a window with three mullions, and above the veranda roof in the exposed part of the gable is a small stone niche housing a statue of Our Lady; this is a replacement for the original statue of St Joseph that had been damaged. A brick chimney stack projects from the solid, long north-eastern rear elevation. The north-west short end is solid.

INTERIOR: the interior is open to the roof. The walls are exposed brick, with the timber ties visible in the exterior seen here too. The floor is concrete. A simple brick fireplace is in the centre of the north-eastern wall.