Kneesworth House School

Kneesworth House School is a country house dating from 1901 to 1906, with a dated sundial. Designed in a Neo-classical style by Roland Plumbe for Lord Knutsford, it is constructed of dark red brick with lighter brick dressings, quoins, and a gauged red brick plinth. Limestone is used for the portico and verandah, and the roofs are plain tiled with flared mansards.

The house has two storeys and attics, arranged in an irregular plan which comprises a main north-south block with symmetric projecting bays and wings. A porticoed entrance faces north, with a second entrance in the angle of the north-east service wing. A verandah runs along the south elevation. The west elevation is symmetrical, featuring nine bays, with three bays flanking the main garden entrance slightly advanced, and a further three bays recessed as a wing to the north. Two symmetrically positioned stacks are present, each with blind brick arches. A service block of seven bays extends to the north-east. The building is characterized by a deep modillioned eaves cornice, rusticated brick quoins, and a brick plinth. The garden entrance has double glazed doors, patterned cast iron glazing bars to a semi-circular fanlight with a moulded segmental hood on carved brackets.

The windows consist of eleven ground floor and twelve first floor hung sash windows, with twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four panes within cambered gauged brick arches. Dormer windows are present; three large hipped dormers, two four-light casement dormers with segmental pediments over central lights, and two smaller dormer windows in the north wing. The north entrance portico is semi-circular with a flat, copper-covered roof, a deep moulded cornice, and a panelled parapet, supported by Ionic capitals. The south verandah mirrors these details.

The interior features pedimented eared doorcases with panelled mahogany doors, windows with moulded cases and shutters, a painted wooden chimney piece in the garden room with fluted, paired Ionic capitals, a Queen Anne style staircase and landing balustrade, and deep moulded cornices with egg and dart and dentil enrichments.

Kneesworth House was built on the site of the original hall, which was sold in 1897 to Sidney Holland, later Lord Knutsford. In 1948, the building opened as a boys’ approved school, which was then transferred to Cambridgeshire County Council in 1967-8.