Eynsford Hill And Attached Terrace Walls, Masonry, Steps And Gazebo

Eynsford Hill is a house with attached terrace walls, masonry, steps and gazebo, located on Crockenhill Lane. A pantry window is dated 1913. The architect is not known with certainty, but the building is in the Vernacular Revival style and may be a lost work by M H Baillie Scott, designed in 1912 and described by the architect in an article titled "A House in a Wood" published in The Studio in January 1914. The house was built for the distinguished author Arthur Mee and remained his home for forty years until his death.

The building is a rendered house with sandstone window dressings and tiled roofs with four tall cement chimneystacks. It is two storeys with irregular fenestration and follows an L-shaped plan. Windows are casements with leaded lights.

The north or entrance front is asymmetrical and L-shaped, featuring four gables. The right side gable projects and connects via a section of walling to a one-storey service wing with one four-light casement and a one-storey garden building with a hipped roof, one casement window and two garage doors. The middle two gables are of irregular size with a pattern of four air bricks and windows comprising one two-light and two three-light casements to the first floor and one three-light and one four-light window to the ground floor. The left side has a round-headed doorcase with impost blocks, tiled hood moulding and decorative full-height metal grille. The recessed left gable has an external channelled chimneystack and one four-light window to the ground floor. A terrace wall in stock burr bricks with tiled coping and ball finial extends northwards from the house.

The west elevation has a gable to the south and service wing to the north with four casements. The pantry window, dated 1913, is in solid metal pane.

The south or garden front is symmetrical, two storeys with five windows. It comprises a recessed central three bays and projecting end bays. The centre has a ground floor seven-light canted bay and above a French window flanked by two two-light casements. The penultimate windows are three-light casements. The projecting gables have four-light casements, and a doorcase flanked by sidelights appears to the left side ground floor. Further terracing in stock burr bricks with tiled coping forms three sides of a rectangle to the west of the house. The west side includes a built-in flowerbed and two flights of steps. The south side has two sets of steps and incorporates stone fragments said to come from the old Houses of Parliament, including two mediaeval angels bearing shields and a central fragment with quatrefoil and three trefoils. The south-east corner incorporates a gazebo with a round-headed arch with tiled keystone, balustrading and a stone statue of mother and child.

Internally, the staircase hall has panelling and a dogleg main staircase with large painted turned balusters, square newel posts and two round-headed arches with impost blocks. The Dining Room has built-in seating to the bay window. The Library, where Arthur Mee wrote his books and articles, contains original oak bookshelves, display cabinets, an oak fireplace with marble surround and copper firehood, a carved wooden settle, coved cornice and stained glass panels in the windows, including one with the initials M E M (his daughter's initials). The first floor has a built-in settle at the western end of the corridor and a service staircase with trellis-work balustrading. A number of two-panelled doors and coved cornices survive.

Arthur Henry Mee (1875–1943) was a journalist on the staff of Lord Northcliffe and a prolific author of children's books including Children's Encyclopedia (first issued 1908) and Arthur Mee's Thousand Heroes (1933–40). He edited Children's Newspaper from 1919 to 1943. He also produced The King's England, a survey of ten thousand towns and villages in the country, comprising an introductory volume and thirty-seven county volumes published between 1936 and 1943. M H Baillie Scott built a number of houses in the Sevenoaks area, and Eynsford Hill was situated in the middle of a wood.