Westbury House Flats 1, 2, 3, 4 is a Grade II listed building in the North Hertfordshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 9 June 1952. Flats, former farmhouse. 1 related planning application.
Westbury House Flats 1, 2, 3, 4
- WRENN ID
- odd-gable-wagtail
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- North Hertfordshire
- Constituency
- Hitchin MP: Alistair Strathern (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 9 June 1952
- Type
- Flats, former farmhouse
- Address
- Westbury House Flats 1, 2, 3, 4, Luton Road, Offley, SG5 3DG
- OS grid reference
- TL 141 270
- Coordinates
- 51.93068, -0.34191
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Westbury House is a former farmhouse that has been converted into flats, specifically Flats 1, 2, 3, and 4. It dates from the 15th or early 16th century and was originally an open hall house with two storeys. A south crosswing was added later in the 16th century, likely between 1564 and 1569 by Robert Ivory. The building features a jettied porch and a taller north crosswing, which may date from the same period or the early 17th century. There are also 19th and 20th-century gabled additions at the rear.
The structure is timber-framed with a stuccoed brick sill and roughcast exterior. The ground floor of the south wing at the front is plastered. At the south end, there is a roughcast, single-storey, L-shaped brick outbuilding. The house has steep old red tile roofs and is H-shaped, facing east and set at the back of a farmyard. It has two gabled crosswings, a gabled jettied porch with a pointed archway, and a two-storey canted bay window to the right of the porch.
A large internal chimney is located at the junction of the centre and north wing, featuring a semi-circular attached shaft and a broad stepped face above the roof with a renewed red brick corbelled cap. There are internal gable chimneys at the rear gable of each wing and a narrow projecting stair tower at the rear angle of the centre with the north wing. The front of the house has generally three-light flush 19th-century lattice casement windows, with two-light windows in the attic at the top of the gable of the north wing. A gabled dormer on the north roofslope also provides light to the attic floor.
Inside, the hall features an elaborately moulded cross-beam that supports the inserted floor, with a hollow moulded bracket supported by a chamfered post on the rear wall. The older south service wing consists of two bays with jowled posts, convex-curved tension braces set inside the wall studs, and a clasped-purlin roof with one purlin in each slope carried on collar-and-queen-struts. There are mortices under the tie-beam for a cross-partition into two rooms on the first floor and presumably for service rooms on the ground floor, along with an edge-halved scarf in the wallplate.
Local climate
Westbury House Flats 1, 2, 3, 4 sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 720 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 82% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 76% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 35 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 60% of listed buildings. Of these, 17 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.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 1 application
- 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
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings
Nearby listed buildings
- South Range of Farm Buildings at Westbury Farm, Running from Westbury House to Road
- Dovecote at Westbury Farm
- North and East Barn Ranges at Westbury Farm Alongside School Lane
- The Pond Cottage the Pond House
- Barn to North West of the Green Man Public House
- The Green Man Public House
- The Bull Public House
- Vine Cottage
- Court House
- Walls and Gate of Walled Garden at the Lawns