Park Farmhouse

Park Farmhouse

Farmhouse, c.1860, built for the 7th Duke of Bedford. Yellow brick in Flemish bond with brick plinth, gauged window lintels and chimney stacks. Stone dressings to entrance porch, gable copings and window cills. Slate roofs with steep pitched gables. A Jacobean style farmhouse forming an integral part of a planned farmstead.

The building has a square plan of intersecting gabled ranges. The west elevation features a steep advanced gable to the right, a central entrance porch, and a steep gabled dormer to the left. The pitched roof has half-hip details and a wide ridge stack. To both sides are 3-light casements to the ground floor below 4-light casements to the first floor. The porch has side buttresses with stone copings, brick piers with stone corbels, and a central door under a semi-circular brick arch with keystone and semi-circular overlight above a wide 4-panel door with glass to the top two panels. A circular brick detail ornaments the gable with a finial.

The north elevation has a slightly advanced gable to the right with a canted bay window containing tall casements in each bay, brick cornice and parapet, and a 2-light casement above. A Bedford Estate plaque sits at the apex. To the left is a central door and 3-light casement to the ground floor, a pair of 2-light casements above, and a single 2-light casement to the attic gable. The east elevation displays a dentil course below the eaves and tumbled brickwork to the gabled section on the right. A door sits under a semi-circular arch with semi-circular overlight. The south elevation features gabled dormers to the left with a 2-light casement above a 3-light casement, and to the centre a tall stair window. To the right is a larger blank gable with truncated chimneybreast. A central ridge stack rises above. Most openings have gauged brick lintels and stone cills.

The interior contains an entrance porch leading into a hall with stone flag flooring. Off the hall is a half-turn stair with landings and moulded handrail, stick balusters and square plan newels with ogee stops and decorative caps. Windows to main rooms feature panelled soffits and folding panelled shutters. Some fitted cupboards, fireplaces and 4-panel doors are present.

The Bedfordshire estates of the Russell family form one of the county's most extensive holdings, controlling almost the entire parishes of Houghton Conquest, Ridgmont, Lidlington, Eversholt, Millbrook, Marston Moretaine, Steppingley and Stevington in the vicinity of Woburn. The family became firmly linked with farm improvement, rebuilding complete farmsteads and villages. After a period of neglect, Francis, the 7th Duke, inherited in 1839 and initiated a further period of estate investment. Wood and thatched buildings were replaced by brick and slate or tile. The late 1840s and 1850s saw great building activity to satisfy the requirements of improved agriculture and to help tenants meet competition from free trade in corn and other agricultural produce. Brick construction was chosen to protect against arson and ensure building durability. Expenditure on permanent improvements peaked in the 1850s, with £17,000 spent in several years. Although this scale of investment did not produce the hoped-for financial returns, it resulted in some of the finest farm buildings in England. The buildings at Steppingley are described as "new" in the 1860 Annual Report. This farmhouse is part of a group with the contemporary range of farm buildings to the north, with which it was designed as a unified composition.