Little Snowfield

Little Snowfield is a house designed around 1912 by the architect Andrew N Prentice (1866-1941) for Baroness Orczy and her husband Montagu Barstow, to provide a home for Baroness Orczy's mother. The house is built in the Kentish Vernacular style and retains good original features, though it has undergone some late 20th-century alterations. A single-storey extension on the south-west side, added in the late 20th century, is of no special architectural interest.

The house is constructed with a ground floor of red brick laid in Flemish bond with blue headers, and a first floor of tile-hanging combined with close-studded timber-framing with rendered infill on the garden front. It has steeply pitched tiled roofs with two red brick chimneystacks, and wooden casements with leaded lights throughout.

The plan is cruciform, created by projecting elements on both the entrance and garden fronts. Originally the interior contained a central staircase-hall to the north-west, a drawing room to the north-east, a dining room at the centre of the south-east side, and a service end to the south-west, with four first-floor bedrooms and attics above.

The north-west or entrance front features a projecting two-storey central staircase bay with an attic storey topped by a large half-hipped gable with wide eaves below and asymmetrically placed casement windows of two, three or four lights. An oak studded plank door is set in a left-side doorcase. The north-eastern side displays a two-storey six-light canted bay window beneath overhanging eaves. The south-west or garden front, the principal elevation, presents a steeply pitched hipped tiled roof with two tall brick chimneystacks featuring moulded cornices and two gabled dormers with bargeboards and timber-framing. A central projecting gable with plain bargeboards dominates this front, with upper floors of close-studded timber-framing and jetting. The attic contains a two-light window, the first floor has a six-light canted bay with moulded cornice supported on carved wooden brackets, and the ground floor has a canted bay window of six lights, the central four-light section later adapted into French windows. The right side of the ground floor contains a two-light window, while the left side has a narrow plank door with moulded architrave and ornamental hinges, with a four-light window—a later insertion—adjoining it. The south-west service end is plain with a two-light ground floor window.

The interior retains significant original features. The staircase hall contains a well staircase with stick balusters, moulded handrail, and square newel posts with moulded cornices, together with a series of four-panelled doors and a tiled floor. The drawing room features a wooden bolection-moulded fireplace lined with white marble and a round-headed china alcove with keystone, pilasters and serpentine shelves. The central ground floor room, originally the dining room, has a wooden moulded fireplace lined with tiles. The first floor contains two bedrooms with wooden bolection-moulded fireplaces lined with tiles and iron grates, and a narrow cast-iron fireplace with diamond motifs.

The house was built to exacting standards. The specification of works, dated September 1912, stipulated that all glass be "the best—free from bubbles, specks, waviness and all other imperfections" and properly puttied. Paint was specified to be composed of best white lead, pure boiled linseed oil, spirits of turpentine and colouring pigment. The cost for two lavatories, one bath, one basin and a copper-lined sink in the pantry was set at £20, while the heating system cost £56 and the servants bells £5. The house was set in wooded gardens of one acre.

Baroness Orczy (1865-1947) and her husband Montagu Barstow had purchased Snowfield, a large existing house to the south-west, in 1906, probably on the proceeds of "The Scarlet Pimpernel", which became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1905. Snowfield was remodelled by Andrew N Prentice in a Neo-Georgian style, and around 1911 Prentice also built a matching garden house at Snowfield for the same client.

In 1918, Baroness Orczy's mother returned to Hungary, believing her presence as an enemy alien was causing harm to her daughter and son-in-law. She subsequently became a captive of the Bolsheviks. It is thought that Baroness Orczy moved from Snowfield to Little Snowfield in 1919 and lived here for two years before she and her husband departed to the Villa Bijou at Monte Carlo, Monaco. Baroness Orczy returned to England after the Second World War but died in Brown's Hotel, Mayfair.