Boscobel House

Boscobel House is a farmhouse and hunting lodge of significant historical importance. A 16th-century farmhouse was remodelled as a hunting lodge for John Giffard between around 1600 and 1630, then extended in the 19th century.

The building is timber framed with close studding, almost completely hidden behind cement render, and has plain tiled roofs. It comprises 2 storeys with an attic over a cellar. The main front has 3 bays to the west, with a lower gabled cross wing to the left forming the western bay of the original 16th-century farmhouse, later incorporated as a parlour to the lodge in the late 18th century.

The most prominent feature is a large side stack in the centre of the west elevation, with offsets to left and right. The front of this stack is painted with decorative features including false lattice casements. The fenestration is irregular, with a tall stair window to the left above a simple doorway, paired sashes of around 1816 to the ground floor right with Gothic leading, and a gabled end to the south, slightly jettied to first floor and attic, with similar windows. An angled turret at the south-east corner, formerly for a staircase, also has Gothic sashes. The cross wing has 19th-century casements on each floor, with a wide 2-light segmental-headed window on the ground floor and a projecting entrance to the right with a gabled timber lattice porch.

To the rear, the 2-storeyed 16th-century farmhouse projects to the east for 3 bays, with timber framing showing square panelling and short tension braces, and irregular fenestration. Traces of a timber-framed firehood remain in the east wall of the first bay from the west, where the farmhouse and late 18th-century parlour meet. To the north-east stands a large 19th-century brick range with cross wing, painted black and white in imitation of timber framing.

The interior of the hunting lodge was considerably altered during the 19th century, with much of the panelling and decorative plastered friezes dating to this period. The principal ground floor room, known as the Dining Room and possibly the original hall, contains an 18th-century Purbeck marble fireplace after Batty Langley, with an overmantel decorated with scenes of Charles II's escape from Cromwell's men. The so-called Oratory in the south-east corner turret is perhaps more likely to have been a closet and the position of the original staircase. On the first floor, the right-hand room has a small closet or garderobe to the left of the fireplace with a Delft tile surround; the "hiding-place" in the floor of the closet is probably a 19th-century creation. The smaller room to the left, also panelled, was formed by partitioning off part of the larger room. The attic is now divided into 2 rooms. At the top of the stairs, which once continued to an upper garret, is the trap door to the secret cavity where Charles II is said to have spent the night after his flight from the Battle of Worcester in 1651; the inner room retains traces of wall painting.

The house is set in a reconstructed formal garden, which retains a 17th-century viewing platform. The house is a Scheduled Ancient Monument in Guardianship.