The Hermitage, Darwin College

The Hermitage, Darwin College

This is a former house built in 1853 and extended around 1870, now part of Darwin College. The building is roughly rectangular on plan, facing north towards Silver Street.

The original 1853 structure is two storeys high and six bays wide. Around 1870, a three-storey extension of four bays was added to the west. Both phases have hipped slate roofs and walls of gault brick laid in Flemish bond. Windows throughout are six-over-six pane sash windows without horns. A continuous platband runs over the ground floor, with a sill course to the first floor.

A tall gault brick chimneystack rises from the west side of the 1870 extension. The easternmost bay of the original two-storey range previously featured a portico with a round-arched door surround, but this was replaced by a window around 1970 when the Rayne Building was added to the east. The easternmost bay of the three-storey range has a double-height timber-boarded oriel window to the ground and first floors, also added around 1970.

On the west side, a single-storey screen wall curves around the corner of Silver Street and Newnham Road. The rear (garden) elevation is two storeys high, featuring a full-height curved projection towards the east end topped with a conical slate roof and three sash windows on each level overlooking the gardens to the south. To the left of this curved projection is a late-19th-century single-storey veranda with a lean-to roof supported by four cast-iron columns with vine decoration on carved stone plinths and a coloured tiled floor. Further left are a 20th-century multi-paned glazed door and a two-bay oriel window. The Hermitage is attached to the Rayne Building to the east and the Dining Hall to the west, both built between 1967 and 1970 to designs by Howell Killick Partridge and Amis.

The interior was substantially reconfigured around 1970 to create a central corridor and stair, a common room in the south-east corner with a curved bay overlooking the gardens, a graduate bar in the north-west corner, and a recreation room in the south-west corner. A lift was introduced in 2021 in the former entrance hall in the north-east corner.

The main staircase, reconfigured around 1970, rises straight to the first floor from the corridor. It bears carved monogrammed initials 'SP' for Stephen Parkinson and 'LEP' for his wife Lucy Elizabeth Parkinson, who were the owners and occupiers until 1913. The newel post displays a carved coat of arms showing three hounds and a stag above, topped with a Gothic pointed finial. The stair has turned balusters and a moulded handrail, with similar newel posts repeated on the first floor.

The common room on the ground floor has a carved marble fireplace on its west wall with a pale-coloured tiled surround, cast-iron grate and hood. The east wall features two round-arched panelled doors to the recreation room, with a third round-arched door from the corridor. The bar in the north-west corner has groups of three arches on the east, south and west walls, with those on the south providing access from the central corridor and recreation room.

On the first floor, two rooms south of the stair overlooking the garden have been combined into one large function room. The marble fireplace on the east wall retains a marble mantel supported by two brackets, a tiled surround of eight transferware tiles depicting the months of the year by Helen Miles (manufactured by Josiah Wedgwood pottery, Etruria, Staffordshire in the 1870s), and an ornate cast-iron grate and hood. The rooms to the west and north were converted to kitchens and a servery for the neighbouring Dining Hall around 1970.