Chinthurst Hill

Chinthurst Hill is a house dating from 1893-5, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens for Miss Guthrie and built in the Tudor style. The garden terraces were laid out by Gertrude Jekyll. The house was originally divided and is constructed of Bargate stone block with tile-on-edge and ashlar dressings, featuring plain tiled roofs with tile-hung gables. Built on a hillside, the site incorporates terraced gardens to the rear.

The house is roughly L-shaped and generally two storeys high, with prominent ridge stacks of red and grey brick, topped with corbelled details, round arched panelling, and projecting tile-on-edge imposts to corner piers.

The entrance front has a recessed gable to the right, containing a three-light stone-dressed mullioned leaded casement window to the first floor. A continuous window to the ground floor left consists of two and three lights with a panelled mullion between. A three-light stone-dressed, leaded casement is present on each floor to the left of centre, set under a pentice extension of the main roof and tile-hung gable. A studded gabled loft door is diagonally placed within the re-entrant angle of the projecting wing, with a ground floor door in a splayed reveal and under an arch. A two-storey gabled porch is situated to the right of centre, with a tile-on-edge band across the base of the gable and ashlar kneelers above. It contains a four-light first-floor window above a square panel and diamond plaque, and a Tudor arched entrance to the ground floor, barrel-vaulted inside with tile-on-edge bands. The door retains its original lock plate and handle. The gable end of the projecting wing to the left has a three-light window on each floor. A hipped end roof has tile-on-edge eaves over a throughway with braced posts, and a further throughway to the left. A hipped roof wing has a two-light leaded window.

The garden front is three storeys high, with a projecting wing to the left, a square bay, and an offset buttress to the right. It features stone-dressed leaded fenestration with windows continuing around the corner on the first and ground floors. To the right of the wing, two round-headed arches rise through the ground and first floors, containing Gothic windows that illuminate the hall. Splay-sided depressed arches are on the ground floor, with a buttress between. A projecting square bay under a hipped roof is to the right of centre, and a single-storey range extends further to the right.

The interior includes a half-timbered staircase, a Tudor style Great Hall, and arched, vaulted corridors on the first floor.

Chinthurst Hill is one of Lutyens’ earliest designs.