The Cottage on the Heath

The Cottage on the Heath

The Cottage on the Heath is a former stables building, converted to residential use in the Vernacular Revival style around 1885. It was built by the surveyor H S Legg for No 6 Gainsborough Gardens in Hampstead.

The building is constructed with red brick in Flemish bond at ground floor level, with tile hanging on the upper floor in alternating bands of plain and fish-scale tiles. The roof is half-hipped and plain tiled. Windows are timber casements or sashes throughout. The building is rectangular in plan with one and a half storeys, and has flush gabled dormers on the north and west elevations. There is an off-centre axial ridge stack and a tall internal stack at the rear. The building occupies a prominent, bastion-like position within the Gardens, with the outer wall forming part of the boundary with Hampstead Heath, and steeply dropping land to the rear.

The courtyard elevation is the most altered face of the building and comprises three irregular bays. The entrance is vertically boarded with chamfered rails and muntin, set under a tiled canopy supported on pierced iron brackets. It is flanked by an integral small-paned horned sash to the right and a smaller similar sash to the left. The outer bay contains a small-paned horned sash beneath a cambered brick arch, with a probably inserted 2-light casement above. A shallow 2-light casement dormer lies to the left, while to the right the former ground-floor openings have been altered to accommodate twentieth-century glazed French windows, with a 3-light casement dormer above. All dormers have pebbledash rendered gables. The right-hand return has an inserted ground-floor door, while the left-hand return features a single-storey outshut under a tiled roof with a tall 2-light dormer above. The rear elevation has irregular small-paned casements and fixed lights on both storeys, with upper-floor windows flanking the tall internal stack. The chimney stacks are square with vertical moulded strips and dentilled caps. Each gablet of the main roof is topped by a terracotta finial. The courtyard is contained within red-brick walls with tile coping fronting the road, and access is via a pair of brick gatepiers with chamfered bases, chamfered square upper piers, and octagonal moulded stone caps surmounted by ball finials.

The interior has been partitioned for domestic use and the former stables fittings removed. The building's special interest therefore lies principally in its external architectural quality and group value.

Gainsborough Gardens was laid out between 1882 and 1895 on land belonging to the Wells and Campden Charity Trust. Plots were developed speculatively under the close scrutiny of the Trust and H S Legg. The development adopted the newly heralded ethos demonstrated at Bedford Park, Chiswick (developed from 1875), where different architectural styles cohere informally within a planned leafy environment. E J May, recently appointed principal architect at Bedford Park, designed the first building, Nos 3 & 4 Gainsborough Gardens, in 1884. Both architecturally and historically, this represents a significant step in changing attitudes towards the emerging suburbs.

This development occurred against efforts to limit expansion onto Hampstead Heath and the preservation of Parliament Hill Fields, an achievement attributed to C E Maurice who built and lived at No 9A. He was married to the sister of Octavia Hill, philanthropist and founder of the National Trust. The history of Gainsborough Gardens is prominent in the broader history of open space protection, particularly in Hampstead, where the seeds of national conservation awareness were sown. The scheme and individual houses are well documented, providing an important record of the Gardens' development. The outcome is a scheme of significant historic and architectural importance with particular aesthetic quality, based on a fine balance between building and open space, both of which survive almost intact. Legg's buildings in Gainsborough Gardens group well and demonstrate fitness for purpose using the Vernacular Revival idiom which he practised so creatively.