Hull Place

A house, originally built in the early 18th century for the Wyborn family, and subsequently altered and extended in 1915 and 1931 for Gilbert Elliot. It is now divided into three separate houses. The building is constructed of red brick with a plain tiled roof. The design centres around a small courtyard with a large 20th-century wing to the rear. The house has two storeys and a basement, with an attic space. It features a plinth and a modillion eaves cornice to a hipped roof, which has four hipped dormers, as well as stacks to the rear left and right. A central, two-storey projecting porch is square on the ground floor and canted on the first floor. The windows are arranged regularly, with six glazing bar sashes on each floor, five on the central porch, and four basement openings. The central entrance is a six-panelled door, decorated with a lion head and Tudor flower ornamentation, set within a porch with a gauged round headed doorway, keyed with a cartouche above, the keystone inscribed: G.C.E. There are three steps leading up to the door, with plain iron railings. The porch and the right half of the front elevation are 20th-century additions and repairs following a fire. A two-storey canted bay window is present on the right return, which is part of the original 18th-century structure. The central courtyard, originally containing a well, reveals the plinth, plat band, and basket arched openings of the 18th-century building. The interior includes an entrance hall and staircase extensively wainscotted, with a plaster ceiling and frieze; some of this may be from an earlier Jacobean building, while other portions date to a 1915 copy. A turned baluster staircase is also present. Attached to the rear block is a small 18th-century outhouse, containing an inglenook and a bread oven. Hull Place was the principal manor of Sholden, the historic seat of the Wyborn family, and was later purchased by Gilbert Elliot, a former Chairman of the National Sporting Club and Vice President of the British Boxing Board of Control, who also introduced ju-jitsu to the country. The panelling and plasterwork may be genuine elements from a previous building, or works completed during the 1915 improvements for a royal visit, and subsequent alterations in 1931. Sir Edwin Lutyens is thought to have been the architect for these works.