Hindsmount

Hindsmount is a house dating from the 17th century, with an early 18th-century brick front and alterations and extensions in the early 19th century. It was occupied in the early 19th century by Sir Samuel Venables Hinde, a hero of the Battle of Salamanca (1812). The house is timber-framed with a brick and flint plinth, roughcast render, a red brick front, and steep red tile roofs. It is a two-story, internal-chimney, two-cell lobby-entry plan house, set back from the road, facing south. There are rear extensions and a single-story, west-end outshut.

The south front includes a plinth, plat band, two windows to each floor, and a central door. Above the door is a small, oval recess containing a figure of a hind. The windows are 3-light flush casements (4-lights to the ground floor on the left-hand side). A sash window with 3/3 panes is found in the single-story, parapeted outshut on the left-hand side. The six-panel fielded door, with the lower two panels being flush and beaded, is set within a heavy frame and is sheltered by a trellis porch. A brick chimney on the ridge, in line with the door, has two conjoined square shafts, with an added 19th-century shaft on the east side. The east gable end has roughcast gable triangle and side purlins, and features a canted, single-story bay window.

The house’s history includes a connection to Laurence Sterne, as the owner’s father, Captain Robert Hinde of Preston Castle, was his model for ‘Uncle Toby’. Around 1880-85, the house was occupied by Mary Forbes Curling, who wrote about Sterne and Bunyan in Macmillan's Magazine in 1877.