Hilfield Castle

TQ 19 NE BUSHEY HILFIELD LANE (Northeast side) Patchetts Green

7/120 Hilfield Castle 1.6.84

GV II*

Large house. Circa 1798-99 by Jeffry Wyatt for G.Villiers. Rendered brick. Slate roofs. Picturesque Gothick. Symmetrical villa with attached conservatory. 4-storey central tower flanked by octagonal turrets to lower 4-storey bays with outer 2-storey bays with a later mansard attic. Basement throughout. 5 windows. Central porte cochère has 3 Tudor arches, diagonal buttresses and crenellated parapet. Blocked ground floor window to right has 3 lights with cusped heads, rectangular bay with mullioned windows to left, other windows with hood moulds. Turrets have slit windows, machicolated and crenellated. Timber canted bay window with glazing bars and pierced parapet over porte cochère. Casements with 2-centred heads on upper floors. Crenellated parapet. Octagonal corner turrets with offsets, slit windows, machicolations and crenellations. Many octagonal - shafted chimneys. Left return: ground floor, canted timber bay. Garden front in similar style: canted ground floor verandah with Tudor arches and crenellated parapet flanked by large 3-light windows. Canted centre to tower has square headed sashes on first floor and casements with 2-centred heads above. Corner turrets. Single storey 4-bay buttressed range to left of garden front has 3-light windows with intersecting tracery to 'chapel' with 4-light window and crocketed finials to diagonal buttresses, crenellated turret on ridge. 1 bay beyond with an oriel window. Interior: vaulted entrance hall, octagonal breakfast room, repositioned C17 panelling, stained glass, ornamental bosses to ribbed vault in conservatory. A low crenellated wall with octagonal piers extends to far right from entrance front. The house was built as Hillfield Lodge replacing Slys Castle. The garden (south) front differs only in minor details from the extant elevation drawings representing one of Wyatt's earliest known designs. (D.Linstrum, Sir Jeffry Wyatville, architect to the King, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972).

Listing NGR: TQ1529096295