Barnett Hill

BARNETT HILL

House, now Conference Centre. Built around 1905 by the architect Arnold Mitchell for F. Cook in Carolean style.

The building is constructed of purple and brown brick with red brick and yellow stone dressings, with hipped plain tiled roofs and wooden eaves cornices. It follows an H-shaped plan with an entrance courtyard and service buildings in a range to the left.

The main facade is symmetrical about a central entrance porch and comprises a five-bay central range flanked by projecting wings, all two storeys with attics. Multiple lozenge-section chimney stacks rise from the front ends of the wings and from the centre of the recessed rear range. Above the central range, a parapet partially obscures the roof, with a small dormer window on either side of centre. A fine modillion eaves cornice with foliate brackets and an acanthus band runs below.

Windows throughout feature glazing bar sashes with stone sills and aprons. The first floor of the central range has five windows beneath gauged brick heads, with the entrance porch window containing 8 panes and the flanking windows 12 panes each; the ground floor has 24-pane windows with keystones over.

Square turrets occupy the angles between the wings and the recessed range, each topped with copper ogee domes and spherical finials. These towers display banded stone and rubbed brick angles, with 8-pane glazing bar sash windows on each floor of each face, and roundel windows set under eyebrow dormers above the cornice.

The court-facing return walls of the wings contain three 8-pane first-floor windows with stone sills and aprons, below which are three tall 12-pane glazing bar sash windows. Each wing end displays two 12-pane glazing bar sash windows flanking the chimney stack, with scrolls and garlands as ornament. Two steeply gabled dormers project from the wing roofs facing the entrance courtyard.

The central entrance porch features a projecting stone structure with a deep modillioned segmental pediment. A flamboyant cartouche ornaments the pediment tympanum, with panelled pilasters at the angles and foliate garlands applied to lugged panels. A central window with shouldered surround sits above, with a panelled apron below. The ground floor displays channelled rustication with aprons at the ends supporting the cornice. A central garlanded keystone appears in the cornice above a round-arched and coved surround to the stone-flagged porch entrance, which is vaulted above. The flanking porch walls contain first-floor windows in finely panelled and rebated surrounds, with stilted round-arched windows below under a cornice with keystoned head and coved recess surround. Half-glazed doors to the base of the towers provide further access.

To the left of the porch, a single-storey range projects across the front beneath a cross-ridge stack, with a taller dormered range to the rear.

The rear facade features projecting two-storey angle bays at the ends with dormers in the roofs. A central stone frontispiece displays a broken pediment at first-floor level and a broken swans-neck pediment above the ground floor. A fine cartouche at first-floor level connects to panelled pilasters through rich foliate garlands, with a central window in a rebated surround. A wider cornice at ground-floor level carries a central scroll keystone above a casement door, flanked by Ionic pilasters on pedestals. A service wing is set back to the right.

The interior features a barrel-vaulted entrance corridor with plasterwork panels on the ceiling and moulded doorcases.