Molewood House Molewood Lodge

This is a house, originally a miller's house associated with Molewood Mill (which is no longer part of the property), now divided into two separate dwellings. It was built around 1840, with alterations and extensions made in the late 19th century and the 1920s. The construction is brick, with a stucco finish beneath a low-pitched roof of Welsh slate, visible as low gables on the west side. The chimneys are stuccoed.

The building's plan features a three-bay front with a central entrance, alongside a long rear service wing. It was widened in the 1920s.

The two-storey front elevation has three recessed 16-pane sash windows on the first floor, each with twin blind boxes decorated with sawtooth valances. There is a stucco sill band at first-floor level. The ground floor features two larger 16-pane sashes flanking a central doorway. The doorway has a half-glazed door with flat lower panels, set within a panelled surround and flanked by fluted Tuscan Doric pilasters, topped with a modern cornice hood. On the east side, the doorcase mirrors this style, with flat, fluted antae and responds, a 20th-century flat hood, and a half-glazed door with a recessed lower panel.

The west-facing garden elevation exhibits double-gabled, low-pitched roofs, with two long 12-pane sash windows on each floor. The first-floor window to the left sits above a late 20th-century French window. A wing built in the early 1920s adjoins the garden elevation, characterised by multi-pane metal casement windows and a hipped roof covered with asbestos tile.

The interior retains simple joinery from the mid-19th century. This includes 6-panel doors with central moulded beading and broad architraves, an open-string staircase with nosed treads, a moulded hardwood handrail, and stick balusters.

Molewood Mill itself was recorded in the Domesday Book for Bengeo and operated as a corn mill until 1888, when it was purchased by Hertford Corporation to establish a water pumping station.