Norton Edge

Norton Edge is a house located on Norton Road, built in 1913 by Bennett and Bidwell in the Arts and Crafts style, showing the influence of Baillie Scott. The house is one and a half storeys tall with a simple rectangular plan and features a projecting loggia on the south-west corner, which has been enclosed to form a sun room. The walls are made of roughcast brick, and the tile roof sweeps down to the first floor to highlight the gabled blocks. The first floor jetties out in the projecting bedroom wing, supported by tiled corbels. The north-west (rear) elevation is gabled, and there are hipped and flat-roofed dormers. The windows are 2, 3, and 4 light casements with diamond leaded lights. There are two brick chimneys, one of which has twin shafts on a rectangular base with tiled offsets. The entrance features a boarded door with a central narrow light. Inside, the house retains a good, complete original interior with solid joinery details, interesting elm plank doors, and outstanding hand-wrought iron door furniture. The living room includes a recessed inglenook with a beaten copper chimney hood and exposed ceiling beads. There is a good oak staircase with open balusters and a newel post, and the bedrooms contain original built-in cupboards. The house was designed for W J Dent, the publisher, whose printing division was established in 1906 and became one of the new factories in Letchworth.