Observatory Tower, at Walton Lodge 10 Metres West of House is a Grade II listed building in the East Hertfordshire local planning authority area, England. Observatory tower.
Observatory Tower, at Walton Lodge 10 Metres West of House
- WRENN ID
- burning-arch-evening
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- East Hertfordshire
- Constituency
- Broxbourne MP: Lewis Cocking (Con)
- Country
- England
- Type
- Observatory tower
- OS grid reference
- TL 371 123
- Coordinates
- 51.79321, -0.0126
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Observatory Tower, located at Walton Lodge 10 metres west of the house in Great Amwell, is a two-storey structure built in the 18th century. It was relocated to its current site by the Mylne family between 1822 and 1839. Originally constructed by Mr. Hodson of Hoddesdon about half a mile southeast of the village, the tower is made of buff brick with a short upper section featuring weatherboarded timber framing. It has a conical roof covered in tiles, topped with lead and a ball finial. The roof is essentially square in shape but has a segmental convex curve on each side.
The tower features a wide boarded soffit with a shaped bracket at the centre. Its square structure is supported by wide corner pilaster buttresses, a projecting floor band, and corbelled dentilled courses beneath the timber-framed section. There is a large round-headed blocked opening with a low sill on the east side and on the ground floor to the east and west. The upper floor has a recessed sash window with a flat gauged arch, where the upper sash is three times higher than the lower sash. The lower opening has been blocked with riven laths and plastered.
Local climate
Observatory Tower, at Walton Lodge 10 Metres West of House sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 700 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 90% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 88% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 34 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 52% of listed buildings. Of these, 16 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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