Ken Hill

Ken Hill

House built in 1878–9 by J.J. Stevenson for Edward Green (1831–1923), a Yorkshire industrialist and inventor of "Green's Economiser", and previously a patron of Thomas Jekyll. Although sometimes called 'Snettisham New Hall', it was built as a retreat rather than a country house, as noted in Building News on 2nd May 1879: "not a gentleman's House".

The building is constructed of squared, coursed dressed carstone with plain-tiled roofs and some free-stone dressings. It has a T-shaped plan with 3 storeys at the north-east, 2 storeys with attics in the centre, and 2 storeys at the south-east. The reception rooms are arranged on the piano nobile—dining room, saloon and drawing room—following the arrangement Stevenson recommended in his House Architecture (1880), which mirrors the mediaeval sequence of kitchen/screens, hall and solar.

Ken Hill is the first major provincial example of the "Queen Anne" or "Domestic Revival" style, fusing free "Gothic" planning with "Free Classic" detail. The central "hall" range consists of 6 bays with staircase and entrance at the north, a 3-bay centre section, and a single-bay oriel at the south. The windows are casement cross windows with 3 ranks of paired glazing barred lights, set within Gibbs raised rusticated surrounds with arched heads infilled with keystones. The ground floor features 3 arched-headed sashes with glazing bars, an external staircase with stone balusters and coping (with Gibbs surround segmental arch below to ground floor door), and an elaborate piano nobile doorcase with fluted columns, baseless pediment with keystone, and 2 leaf raised and fielded oak doors. Above this is a casement cross window with a bowed stone balcony on carved brackets, wrought iron railings below, and a half-dormer head with arch, keystones and Gibbs surround. String courses run at the bases and heads of the "hall" windows, with a pulvinated frieze and wooden eaves cornice above. The steeply pitched roof features 4 sashed and glazing-barred dormers with broken pediment gables containing central roundels. A single ridge stack sits at the centre, with paired end stacks featuring connecting bridges and pulvinated frieze coping at the south.

The south-east projection, occupying the "solar" position, is 2 storeys with 2 ground-floor arched windows and a first-floor Gibbs surround sash window with arched half-dormer head. A return to the garden contains a 2-storey 3-sided canted bow window projection with copper roof, all sashes with glazing bars. The north-east returned gable wing contains the dining room, with a blank ground floor, a first-floor 3-sided canted oak-framed oriel with Gibbs surround, and a segmental blank arched-head Gibbs surround window above, both sashes with glazing bars. Rusticated quoins and a blank rusticated panel occupy the ground floor. The north wall features 3 Gibbs surround blank niches screening the service court to the rear. At the rear stands a 3-storey service pile with returned south gable wing. A contemporary service wing at the rear comprises 2 lean-to ranges at the north-east, a curtain wall at the north-west, and a 1930s single-storey carstone and tiled addition towards the garden at the south-west.

Interior features services on the ground floor except for a late 17th-century style panelled Smoking Room. The Dining Room has largely moulded and carved wooden decoration, the Saloon combines wood and plaster, and the Drawing Room features entirely Neo-Adam style plasterwork with an inlaid marble fireplace. De Morgan tiles decorate many fireplaces. There is a repositioned overmantel by Jekyll with base reliefs of Green's sons, possibly from Jekyll's early remodelling of Heath Hall, Wakefield.

As Nikolaus Pevsner noted in North West Norfolk (1962) p.318: "The freedom from the imitation of anything in particular and yet the character of period allegiance are indeed Remarkable".