The Red House

The Red House is an agent's house and Ashridge estate office, dating to 1870 and built for Lord Brownlow, with possible incorporation of a 17th-century Holly Bush Lodge. Constructed of red brick with sandy red brick dressings, and featuring polychrome herringbone brick tympana to moulded brick arches, the house has tall, steep old red tile roofs. The building is a large, two-story-and-attics structure arranged in a U-plan, facing west towards the garden. The west front has three asymmetrical windows. First-floor windows are carried up as prominent gabled lucarnes, with eaves carried forward on timber brackets. Each lucarne features a two-centred moulded brick arch and scale-pattern polychrome brick tympana above transomed wood casement windows. Similar arches are above the deeper ground floor windows. Glazed double doors are positioned in the middle openings. The building incorporates arcaded corbelling to the eaves and a string at the upper window sill level. Projecting gable chimneys are topped with corbelled caps, offsets above roof level, verges bracketed out beyond their projection, and a monogrammed date plaque. Behind the house lie former estate workshops.