The Hermitage

The Hermitage

A house, later part of a school and now an Essex County Council Education Centre, situated on the north side of Shenfield Road in Brentwood. The building dates from the early 18th century, with significant additions and alterations from around 1800 and further 20th-century modifications.

The structure is built of red brick with a hipped slate roof punctuated by stacks at each end. The principal block is rectangular with a parallel rear unit, a servants' cross-wing at the east end with its own hipped roof and eastern stack, and a single-storey wing at the west end with a 20th-century addition.

The south front elevation displays two storeys and an attic with rear dormers. The main house has five bays, with the servants' unit of one bay set slightly back. All windows have been renewed in the 20th century as triple sashes with glazing bars: each window contains 1x4, 3x4, and 1x4 panes. The second bay from the west has both windows blocked behind the sashes. A central front doorway is flanked by a 20th-century flat-roofed porch on posts in simple Doric form, with a 20th-century two-leaf door featuring upper glazing with 2x3 panes and lower reeded panel.

The rear north elevation presents the principal block behind a second block with a similar roof. Ground-floor windows are segment-headed sashes with 5x4 panes. A conservatory porch of glass and brick contains a 20th-century door with 2x3 glazed upper panes and fixed glazed units with 3 panes high in combinations of 2, 2, and 4 panes wide. The first floor has three windows with 4x4 glazing bars. The servants' unit to the east features ground-floor segment-headed casement windows with 2x1 and 2x2 panes and a segment-headed doorway with 20th-century door and upper glazed panes. The west end's single-storey wing has a hipped slated roof with a 20th-century addition backed by a 19th-century lean-to with 20th-century top-opening casement windows (2x4 panes). The east side contains a boarded door and a 20th-century casement window (2x3 panes), alongside a single-light casement (2x5 panes) and a two-light casement with each light 2x4 panes, plus an upper fixed window.

The east end elevation of the servants' block displays two stacks, one reduced, with segment-headed sash windows on both ground and first floors, each with 3x4 glazing bars; ground-floor windows face north, first-floor windows face south. The west end elevation shows the principal block's ground floor with a 20th-century Voysey-style full-width shallow bay window with corner buttresses, flat roof and deep modillioned eave, topped by a four-light top-opening casement. The first floor contains a tripartite window matching those of the front elevation. A ground-floor extension to the north features a slated hipped roof with stacks behind and a large inserted French window with side and top lights with glazing bars, paired doors with top lights (each 1x3 panes) and blind box above. A 20th-century extension to the north has a simple door with glazed panel and two louvred windows above.

Interior

A considerable amount of circa 1800 detail survives, including a central passage with arched openings and a slender well stair with mahogany handrail and simple plain balusters. Numerous doorways retain reeded architraves and corner rosettes, with panelled reveals and six-panelled doors. The principal room in the southwest angle preserves doors and dado with partly surviving reeded rail, a ceiling with reeding and rosette decoration and Adam-style wheat-ear frieze, and two symmetrically projecting cupboards flanking the west window, each with Chinese-style fret glazing bars. The northwest corner room features bolection-moulded dado and panelling. The room height suggests a late 19th-century build, possibly incorporating older 18th-century panelling. Communication doorways, now blocked, formerly linked the eastern service unit with the main house.

The Hermitage forms part of a group with the Old House, Roden House, Newnum House, and Mitre House of Brentwood School, together with the monument to William Hunter.