St Leonard's House with dairy and dovecote, Nazeing

St Leonard's House in Nazeing, Essex, is a Victorian country house developed from the surviving core of an earlier 18th-century vernacular farmhouse.

Materials

The building is constructed of brick, mostly faced in render, and has a varied roofscape predominantly of hipped roofs covered in Welsh slate.

Plan

The building has evolved over time, resulting in an irregular configuration of spaces. There is a small polygonal courtyard at the centre of the plan, and multi-phased ranges at each of the compass points around it. Polite reception rooms were separated from the service areas of the house at ground floor, with lower status areas to the north and west of the central courtyard. Upper storeys contained sleeping accommodation, with staff quarters in the attics accessed by separate circulation routes.

Exterior

Roughly configured as four sides of a central courtyard, the whole structure is two storeys in height with concealed attics. It is coated in pebbledash render and is roofed in Welsh slate. The east and south elevations feature a widely spaced dentilated cornice.

The principal elevation faces east and incorporates three phases of construction. It is six bays in length: three older bays to the north, a single intermediary height bay joins to the south with a small section of hipped roof, and the final two southern bays are taller still. The fenestration is generally of two-light timber casement windows, though there is a large cruciform window at the first floor of the intermediary bay. The principal entrance is beneath a small oculus to the right of the centre of the elevation. It consists of a wide pedimented timber surround, a central six-panel door, and eight-light windows on each side.

The south elevation is staggered, with an accretion of out-shots and a lean-to workshop at the western end. More prominently there is a three-bay ballroom at the centre, and standing foremost are two bays of principal reception rooms at the eastern end. The eastern bays have large glazed French doors in slightly projecting surrounds, beneath a slate-covered weather detail. At first floor there are two-light casement windows with surviving hoods for awnings. The ballroom is a single-storey, double-height structure with a concealed attic. It has three large sash windows without horns, one pane over another, and above these a recessed band.

The west elevation has no fenestration and has not been intended for display. On the right-hand side, the west face of the ballroom features a central projection to accommodate the aedicule within it. On the left-hand side the large chimney indicates the kitchens.

The north elevation incorporates a single gabled bay at the left-hand side, six bays of two-storey irregularly fenestrated accommodation, partially in unrendered brick, and an additional double-height bay for the kitchens at the right-hand side. The kitchen bay features a very large multi-pane sash window. To the right of the centre of the elevation is a projecting glazed wooden porch with a corrugated roof (replacing an earlier pitched roof), leading to an 18th-century four-panelled door. The windows are a mixture of casements and sashes.

Connected to the north-east corner of the house by a brick wall is a square brick turret historically associated with a pump that may have been housed in the interior space at its base. The upper part, beneath a pyramidal roof, features nest holes for birds and suggests that it was once a dovecote.

To the north-west of the house is a detached brick outbuilding with a hipped roof, covered in pantiles on the north, east and west slopes and slates to the south. There are two arched windows each on the north and south elevations. The entrance is at the east and features a wooden door in an arched surround. Tie bars run through the length of the building and the interior retains no historic fixtures. Its function is unclear but may have been a dairy.

Interior

The ground floor is divided between historic reception rooms and the service areas of the house. The principal entrance at the east of the house leads to a stairhall that stands at the crossroads of these two areas. Moving through the hall to the left leads to reception rooms, terminating in the large dining or ballroom at the south-west corner of the plan. To the right of the entrance hall are rooms belonging to the 18th-century phase of construction, with lower ceilings, and a scullery, 19th-century kitchens and (below ground) coal and wine cellars at the north-western end of the building.

The entrance hall has a double-height volume with cornices and a ceiling rose. The floor is paved with limestone laid with slate diamonds at the corners. Opposite the entrance is a segmental archway through which a double or imperial staircase made of pine with mahogany handrails descends into the middle of the room. The reception rooms leading from the entrance hall on the left-hand side retain cornices, fire surrounds and joinery. Two have shuttered French windows. A vestibule connects the circulation route between these reception rooms and the ballroom (or dining room). The vestibule has a closet on one side, and an access route to the service areas on the other. It is lit by an oval-shaped laylight of obscured glass with a plaster frieze of honeysuckle patterns beneath it. The ballroom is a large double-height volume with three windows on the south wall and a fireplace on the north. There are doors placed symmetrically at the east and west ends of the north wall with plaster panels above; the eastern door is blocked whilst the western door leads to a stone-floored cupboard. At the west end of the room is a large recess or aedicule with a pair of console brackets at the top. There is a honeysuckle frieze and a cornice.

The historic kitchens at the north-western corner of the plan are connected (east) to a former scullery and (south) to a possible laundry or additional kitchen space. The main kitchen area is double height and lit by a large, multi-pane, segmental-headed sash window. There is a substantial, plainly-detailed fireplace in the western wall. The kitchen provides access to the wine cellar at the west, which retains its stone shelving. The possible laundry is stone-floored and contains a blocked fireplace and the brick support for what may have been a copper or boiler. The laundry gives access to the coal cellar.

At the centre of the ground floor plan is a small courtyard. There are timber screens on the east and north sides, the latter glazed with bullseye glass.

The first floor is principally given to bedroom accommodation, with some inserted 20th-century bathrooms and WCs. Pine floorboards, four- and six-panelled doors, skirtings, cornices, fire surrounds, windows and shutters have almost all been retained.

The attics contain some areas of staff accommodation, walled and ceiled with matchboard panelling and lath and plaster. At the north-eastern corner of the plan a slim first-floor staircase leads to two cellular attic rooms, one with a blocked window in the gable on the north elevation. A completely independent stair turret leads from service areas beside the ballroom up into its attic and houses a bellcote on its roof. There are four rooms at this upper level, one partially glazed internally suggesting its function may have been an office.

Throughout, the interior retains a consistently high degree of surviving historic joinery from the 18th and 19th centuries, including six-panelled and four-panelled doors, architraves, windows (sash and casement), shutters, skirtings, staircases and cupboards. Flooring is generally of pine boards, though the service areas at ground floor feature stone flags.