Greenhouse At King Edwards Place

The greenhouse, accompanied by an attached boiler house, was built around 1914 for James White, a property developer and horse racing enthusiast, as part of an expansion of King Edward’s Place, formerly Foxhill Stud Farm. Constructed of wood and glass, the greenhouse stands on a white-rendered brick base. A rear decorative stepped wall of rendered brick incorporates a lean-to boiler house, which is also of rendered brick and has a slate roof and a chimney stack at its north gable. The front of the greenhouse, facing east, features five projecting bays. The central bay is the deepest and contains a gabled entrance porch with a decorative cast iron finial. Flanking bays on either side have lean-to cold frames built against their brick bases. Further entrances are positioned at the north and south ends. The one-storey, five-bay lean-to boiler house is located behind the greenhouse and has casement windows and a wood-panelled doorway in the second bay from the right.

Inside the central bay, a rectangular well collects rainwater via underground cast iron pipes. A cast iron pump transferred water from the well to cast iron tanks in each bay. Surviving features include a cast iron network of heating pipes with a built-in humidifying system, wooden benches, cast iron trellis work and a ratchet mechanism for a complex light and ventilation control system. The interior also retains panelled doors with decorative brass door furniture, quarry tiled floors with decorative cast iron drainage covers, and decorative terracotta rope-band edging along the growing beds. The boiler house internally consists of two rooms on the ground floor, with a cellar accessible via a coal chute.